Child Exploitation and Serious Violence Programme
In partnership with Manchester City Council, AFRUCA delivers a holistic menu of services to support children and families in Black and ethnic communities across the city at risk of or affected by exploitation and youth violence. Our Child Exploitation and Serious Violence Programme includes a Support Programme For Black and Ethnic Families Affected By County Lines Child Trafficking, a Coding Project for Children at Risk of County Lines Child Trafficking (completed), our REVIVE project for boys and young men at Risk of Exploitation and Serious Violence and the Phoenix Project for Young Women and Girls at Risk of Exploitation (completed). We have also established a Manchester Network on Child Exploitation and Serious Violence as a grass-root led forum to share learning and advocate for change
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The REVIVE Project
The AFRUCA REVIVE Project supports young people in Manchester, who are from Black and Ethnic communities affected by, or at risk of Youth Violence and Criminal Exploita.ion We work alongside Manchester Youth Justice and local organisations within Manchester to deliver a flexible 10-week intervention project with the objective of bridging the gap in culture, identity and empowerment. We provide one to one mentoring for young people. We aim to support young people to promote confidence in their identity and enhance their independent and critical thinking skills. Ultimately, young people wil be able to reflect on the impact of violence on themselves, their families and communities.
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One-to-One Family Support for Parents
We provide one to one practical support for parents with children aged 11+ who may be affected by county lines child trafficking or criminal exploitation. Signs might include, the presence of a questionable adult or peers, mood swings, frequently missing from home, having unexplained new possessions and many more. We support parents to address emerging issues and also signpost to services not available at AFRUCA
If you are a parent who is experiencing any of these challenges or has any worries about your child’s behaviour and wellbeing, please contact us for a friendly, confidential discussion to see how we can help.
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Community Outreach
We visit schools, churches, mosques and local agencies to deliver training and education on county lines, child exploitation, gangs and youth violence.
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AFRUCA Young Coders Club
Thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund, AFRUCA’S one-year pilot project provided 10 weeks of Free Coding Classes for 3 cohorts of 10 children in Manchester targeting children between the ages of 12–18 years.
AFRUCA Young Coders Club supported Children and Young people to gain new, useful and life-changing skills and increased aspirations through learning how to code, while tackling food poverty by providing them with hot meals during the programme.
The coding sessions held in 2023 and is now completed.
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The Phoenix Project
The AFRUCA Phoenix project for young women and girls at risk of exploitation delivered a range of prevention and early intervention activities to support our project participants. We employed an Empowerment Approach to work with young women/girls to address intersecting issues affecting them and their well-being that puts them at risks of abuse, coercive control, gang manipulation, grooming, exploitation. These intersecting issues include trauma from childhood/ongoing abuse, poverty and deprivation, patriarchy/cultural/religious practices, generational struggles and identity issues that could lead to disconnect from family, increase vulnerabilities outside the home and problems at school.
This programme has now concluded with end of funding.
The need for our work
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Many parents in Black and ethnic communities face multiple challenges which might limit their capacity to protect their children from different forms of abuse, harm and exploitation outside the home. These challenges include no recourse to public funds which limits the family’s capacity to care for their children, language barriers, mental health problems, unemployment and other factors.
Parents might be at risk themselves from threats of violence from traffickers based on false accusations that money is owed to them. They might also find it difficult to navigate the statutory systems, due to eg language barriers, hence experience difficulty in accessing support and assistance for their children.
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Many children at risk of child exploitation and trafficking also have different forms of neurodivergence. Without access to early help and support for parents to help meet their needs, children might be vulnerable to grooming, recruitment and trafficking for different forms of exploitation especially county lines drug trafficking which is a growing problem across Manchester.
Children who have lived experience of county lines trafficking might experience trauma, frequently go missing from home and might not disclose to their parents or siblings their experiences of abuse and exploitation. Girls might experience bias and discrimination from service providers and treated more harshly than their peers (adultification). They may be at risk of gang manipulation and induced to commit crime by peers. It is critical that parents are supported to identify the indicators of exploitation and extra familial harm which their children are exposed to and provided with tools to support their children to access early help.
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Parents
-Provide parents with basic training in child protection and the law so parents understand their roles in protection and safeguarding and can identify the indicators of exploitation and abuse.
-Provide support and guidance for parents who might be struggling to understand their children’s behaviour, especially where issues of identity, peer pressure and absence of a positive male role model are concerned
-Support parents to engage with a range of statutory agencies involved with their children including the police, education, youth offending, social services and others.
-Signpost parents to other service providers where such services are not available at AFRUCA.
Children
-Provide children with the skills to discern situations of risks and how to make positive decisions
-Provide children with the skills to protect themselves from risks of abuse and harm
-Support children to address issues they may experience at school, with other statutory agencies (police, youth justice)
-Enable children to have confidence in their identity and culture, and be able to make independent thinking
-Help children to raise their aspirations by giving them new life changing skills, thereby increasing their future career prospects.
Communities
-Support communities to improve knowledge and understanding of different forms of extra familial harm, abuse and exploitation and increase their ability to protect children in the community.
Parent
“AFRUCA has been helpful; with them I have learnt so many things about the influence of street life and how to handle my son’s antics. I’ve also been taught how to prevent certain things from escalating. Thank you.”
Parent