The Isle of Man Constabulary will identify and pursue those who seek to target the most vulnerable in our society.
That's the message from the Island's Detective Inspector for Protecting Vulnerable People this Safeguarding Week.
In this second special Newscast, Siobhán Fletcher speaks to Sam Cannell about how the police work with its partners to act on any intelligence it receives that could leave people at risk.
Hi, I'm Siobhan Fletcher and welcome to the latest edition of our newscast. Now all this week the island is marking its second joint adult and children's safeguarding week, hosted by the Isle of Man's safeguarding board, and this year's theme is all age exploitation. But what is safeguarding and what do the teams across the island who work in this area do on a day to day basis to keep our most vulnerable people safe? Yesterday we heard a little bit more about the safeguarding board itself, and that whole interview with Leslie Walker is now available as a newscast on this feed. But today we're going to turn our attention to the police. My name is Sam Cannell, I am the detective inspector for protecting vulnerable people within the consubulary. Perfect and so we're chatting today about safeguarding week which is taking place all this week. I want to chat today about the sort of your role then in safeguarding across the Isle of Man. So I suppose what's your role in particular and also how do the police get involved in safeguarding? Yeah thanks so safeguarding is something that the Constabulary do day in, day out. I mean if you're not involved in policing you may only see a marked police vehicle that might drive past you will be parked outside an address. But in fact the organisation have dedicated staff who are highly trained of which I have some and they're absolutely brilliant and they work full-time with multi-agency partners to tackle a variety of different elements of vulnerability that exist within our community. So that could be for instance reports of child abuse, child neglect. It could be tackling exploitation which is what we're talking about today. Could be for instance around domestic abuse, could be youth justice, could be managing sex offenders and violence offenders in our community as well as other vulnerable adults and working with our multi-agency partners around making sure that those people are as safe as they can be. And so in terms of safeguarding then like you mentioned there this week the theme is all about all age exploitation. So what is that I suppose in general terms and what does it look like here on the island? So when people mention exploitation the word exploitation it does conjure up a lot of anxiety really around potentially cases that have happened more broadly within the UK and further afield. And I'd say that up until certainly 2019, 2020 we weren't using the word exploitation and labeling this horrific thing properly and therefore not recognising it. And I think with the onset of Covid and the fact that we closed our borders and we had more control as to who was coming and going from the island and we had tighter restrictions around the importation of our post to the island and that really helped to expose the issue of certainly our younger community and our juveniles were being approached by those that would seek to exploit them with the purpose of importing controlled drugs via the post and using them either to accept or to deliver packages, parcels, etc. And certainly that demographic allowed us to recognise to the greatest extent what the problem was on the island and I think from there in collaboration with getting the multi-agency safeguarding hub up and running and working more closely with our partners and social care in health and with education but it's really helped us to come together to form a structure for how we can actually tackle exploitation. And when I say exploitation what I mean is I mean child criminal exploitation for instance the drug trafficking trade which is often referred to in the UK as county lines or it could be child sexual exploitation which we know does happen on the island as it does elsewhere it just may not be as visible as other forms of exploitation. And then in addition to this we have certain vulnerable adults that live in our communities that for the reasons around their vulnerability they are preyed upon by those that would seek to exploit them and that could be in the same way or it could quite simply be because they have a home address that these people want to use to either frequent and use to deal drugs from or to receive parcels and packages themselves. So you mentioned you know tackling exploitation particularly since since COVID and the tighter borders as well. I mean how do the police tackle this big topic and also what advice are supposed to have for parents or carers who may be worried about their kids? Yeah so I think it's true to say in this day and age the access to children and young people by those that would seek to exploit them is far greater than it ever was for instance everybody's got a mobile phone in their pocket now everybody's got access to social media so various social media platforms and messaging platforms which are really hard and can be sometimes difficult to infiltrate. However a large part of the constabulary's work is around pursuing offenders so if we receive information and intelligence which supports somebody being exploited the constabulary whilst working with our partners to support that vulnerable person and to hopefully remove them from that situation the constabulary's focus is on as on the perpetrator and how we can target that person so whether that be by virtue of arrest investigating any offences that have been committed or by just taking some real proactive and direct action towards that person to make it really difficult for them to operate in that environment is certainly what we would do as our priority in that instance. So you mentioned the multi-agency safeguarding hub there and your answers that's some of that I'm interested in looking at this week so what is MASH I suppose it's known more generally as and how does it work? Okay so the multi-agency safeguarding hub came together when as a partnership we realized that our information sharing could be better it could be slicker and it's certainly what the national movement is to in terms of multi-agencies moving together and effectively what it looks like it's there's no mystery to it it's a bunch of professionals all representing different agencies working in the same room in the same environment and being able to share information really really quick time in order for there to be a much more rapid response to a concern so that could be a general concern about child neglect or abuse or it could be for instance a concern around child sexual or criminal exploitation. So it's multi-agency obviously we're hearing from a few different elements of it this week what how does the police slot into that then you know when you have these conversations I suppose how does that how does that work? So the constabulary is amongst all the agencies that the largest referrer of safeguarding information and concern into the hub and that's really because we go out on a day-to-day basis multiple times a day into people's homes and we come across situations and we respond to calls for service nine and nine calls and the likes to to concerns within the community so we are the largest referrer of information of concern because generally when we come across a a safeguarding concern be it could be the condition of a home address in which a child is living or it could be we've come across a child who who is dealing drugs on the street for instance and if a child is dealing drugs on the street and they're under 18 well actually they're probably being exploited by someone and they're being either paid with money or in other ways to do that and and that is exploitation and that's that's what we see and I think to a certain extent in recent years maybe we've not acknowledged that that's what it is but that's what it is we need to label and we need to tackle it and I suppose with that I mean like we were mentioning earlier about about parents and maybe what they should look out for you know where should their sort of alarm bells start to go off I suppose yeah I just want to say because I'm a parent myself fortunately my kids are younger at the moment but today in today's society it is really difficult to spot these signs because like I said before the accessibility of children and young people now by virtue of social media and other messaging platforms makes this really difficult and we know that and we acknowledge that and and we want to work with parents and with families to support them and educate them around any concerns that they have but for me and I'm sure some of my multi-agency colleagues will go into to some depth some of the things to look out for but is your child going missing frequently and you don't know where they are and have you got a concern around where they are have they changed peer groups have they got a new friend that may not be of an appropriate age they may be older are they starting to metaphorically go off the rails and is their attention waning from previously where it could be focused on school is their school attendance dropping off how how do they appear are they starting to adopt new habits that could be are they starting to vape a lot of kids seem to be vaping nowadays vaping has become a commodity like cash it's become a commodity to trade and is used within the realms of exploitation and that's not to say that every child that chooses to vape is being exploited but we are really sensitive to these red flags and when you look at them in totality and you look across the board then you can start to spot signs of exploitation but we totally accept that as parents it's really difficult especially when you're working all day you're doing your best and your child should be in school and through no fault of their own they are being exploited by someone. I suppose as well I think it's worth maybe getting the message across that you know if if parents are concerned they can reach out to the police you know it isn't just always that the police are responding when further down the line surely they can you know reach out and say you know look these are the things that I'm concerned about and maybe what would the police response be there? Yeah so if if a parent has a concern we will meet with the the parent if we are able to meet and speak and speak with the child we will absolutely do that to understand what it is they're going through and because from time to time children who get exploited they may end up with for instance a huge debt that they actually owe someone because if they've agreed this is a hypothetical example to have a parcel sent to the home address in return for say 50 pounds for instance and the police infiltrate and intercept that parcel so it doesn't make it to its destination. That parcel may contain I don't know 20,000 pounds worth of drugs that 20,000 pound debt now sits for that child to pay and we've seen families under significant pressure to pay debts and for parents to fork up cash because they love their child and they want to want to safeguard their child and that's not right and so therefore the constabulary will work with families and we will engage our partners in the mashup in social care in health and in education to support and try and try and rid that child of that experience and that situation that they are in and then the constabulary will take it on ourselves to target that perpetrator where we can and that might be directly or it may be sharing information with our colleagues in England or Wales or further afield to get some law enforcement action doing on the other side of the water. Thank you for making it to the end of the Manx Radio newscast. You are obviously someone with exquisite taste. 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