We speak to Dr Tracee Green from the Centre of Child Protection on how their simulations train the police and other sectors.
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00:00Now, each Wednesday we'll be looking at the impactful research that affects our everyday lives here in Kent.
00:05Joining us today is Dr. Tracey Green, Head of the Centre for Child Protection.
00:10Tracey, thank you so much. Tell us a little bit about the Centre, give us an overview of the work that's done.
00:16Well, the Centre's been in operation for about 13 years now and we were one of the first institutions,
00:23one of the first centres to bring serious game simulation learning technology into the Child Protection Remit
00:29because simulation training is known to be quite impactful, long lasting ways of learning and engaging with complex topics and knowledge
00:39that's really important to know in real life situations where you don't want to make mistakes or you want to reduce mistakes that are made there.
00:48And can you tell us a bit more about those simulations, how they actually train people?
00:52Yeah, absolutely. So there is a lot of immersion within the simulation, so you would be able to get to know characters,
01:00you get to feel their emotions, what they're going through, you have to make decisions, really complex, challenging decisions,
01:06you get to talk through those decisions as well. And we're really careful with our simulations not to tout them as being best practice
01:13because best practice will be different for different people and how they approach things.
01:17So it's about opening up discussions and dialogue and getting people to think their responses through in safe situations.
01:25And with that in mind, one of the key things that we want to get across with this section that we do every week
01:32is that these sorts of activities aren't just in an academic silo, it's not just writing papers,
01:39it's not just lecturing at institutes, it's about those real world implications.
01:44So tell us about some of the collaborations you have and why those collaborations are so important.
01:50We've worked with a number of key stakeholders within child protection, such as the NHS, we've worked with the Home Office before,
01:58we've worked with CAFCAS. So it's really important that we work closely with people because we could write any story we want to,
02:06any sort of fiction that we wanted to, but it has to have real life implications and connections within the real world.
02:11So we need to be working closely with those front line professionals.
02:14Most recently we've done the Robin and Molly simulation where we worked with Kent Police to create a more,
02:20to tackle that really critical capability gap in policing to make sure that police officers are responding in a trauma informed way with young people.
02:30That is making sure young people, particularly, we focused on girls with lived experiences of child sexual exploitation,
02:37but making sure they feel comfortable, making sure that they feel in a trusted place, in a safe place,
02:42so that they can share what's happened to them in a safe way, in a better way as well.
02:49Because what we find is if you aren't feeling safe, you're not going to recount the information as accurately as if you did feel safe.
02:56So it not only avoids re-traumatising young people if responses from police are more trauma informed,
03:03but it also enables police to have better evidence from young people,
03:08and it also then leads to better prosecution outcomes for offenders of child sexual exploitation as well.
03:15And you mentioned the police, but there are other people you train.
03:18How does this training make an impact on keeping children safe?
03:23So there's a number of different simulations we have, and the impact is great across all of them.
03:28I mean, lots of it is with regard to working with professionals,
03:31so making sure professionals have the right skills, the right knowledge, and it's applied knowledge.
03:37And again, if I go back to the Robin Mollie simulation, police officers, there's a lot of training at the moment on trauma informed practices,
03:44which is brilliant, but it's applying that knowledge in a setting that feels realistic, that feels real,
03:51where they can discuss it and they can unpack it and critically engage with that, which is what our simulations offer.
03:57So there might be knowledge out there, but it's another thing to be able to apply that knowledge,
04:01which the simulations enable you to do.
04:03What are the challenges that you've found with navigating social media
04:08and how savvy young people are or not are with social media?
04:13Because we've seen just this week the biggest show on Netflix, Adolescents,
04:18and it's all about social media and influences and personalities and the effect that they can have on young men and young boys, especially.
04:29For you and your team, what are those challenges that you've had to navigate with social media and the work that you do?
04:35Well, we do have a couple of simulations which start to tackle those elements.
04:40Sometimes it's linked to child sexual exploitation, similar to Robin and Mollie,
04:44but we've also got another simulation called Looking Out for Lottie.
04:47We've got a simulation called Behind Closed Doors and so on, and they tackle grooming.
04:52And sometimes the grooming can be done face to face.
04:55Sometimes the grooming is done online, which kind of links into some of the adolescence elements,
04:59where children can go down a rabbit hole.
05:02Adults can also go down that same rabbit hole sometimes and they get sort of inundated with the same content.
05:08So some of our simulations are very much geared towards us training professionals
05:12so that they can then support young people to help keep themselves safe.
05:17We don't want to put the responsibility on young people,
05:20but we want to help young people to identify risks and concerns for themselves
05:24as well as for their peers that they might notice online as well.
05:27So there's some really nice simulations that have been used within school settings,
05:30within youth groups to help them develop those key skills as well as the professionals around them.
05:35And how can families and children be supported to keep themselves safe?
05:41So you mentioned grooming, so what would you say to them to kind of know more about that?
05:46To know more about grooming. I mean, I think discussions are really important.
05:49Education comes back to being really important.
05:52But again, that applied knowledge is really important too.
05:56And I mean, I come back to, I'm going to repeat it because I think it's so important, but discussion.
06:00Whether children are having those discussions in the school with teachers
06:05who are prepared and ready to have those discussions,
06:08and then those can be facilitated in peer group settings as well so that they can learn together,
06:13or whether they're having those conversations at home.
06:16And sometimes our parents need the confidence and the skills
06:19to be able to have those conversations with their young people as well.
06:23So it's having those safe people and those safe places where young people feel they can go and they can talk.
06:28And I don't want to say we need to overly monitor children,
06:33but we do have to monitor the content that our young people are engaging with.
06:37And are you seeing through your research and just how the general discourse has changed over the years,
06:42are you seeing those conversations are more prevalent in schools, in peer groups, with families,
06:48and not just more prevalent, but do you see that those conversations are, you know,
06:54there's more depth to them, that they are, there is a lot more substance to them?
06:58I mean, I think so. I think, again, when people are, sorry to bring it back to our simulations,
07:03but I think with our simulations, we've had people changing safeguarding practices within their schools
07:08because the professionals learn things, the students bring things up.
07:11We've had some of our training where safeguarding concerns are brought up on the back of them as well.
07:17And I like to say that there's an interest in these things.
07:21There's a desire and need for these resources to support those discussions with young people as well
07:26so that they can be had and that safer places can be created.
07:30Yeah, and you mentioned that schools have changed their practices.
07:33So how are practices changing within the education settings?
07:36Well, you know, there's still the PHSE education.
07:41So that's a really important one that we're trying to support schools with.
07:47Again, with our simulations, particularly the ones,
07:50not all of our simulations are geared towards children specifically,
07:53but the ones that are can be really valuable for schools to be able to do that.
07:58But I think there are some other resources.
08:00I know we work with somebody in the locality with Kent County and Medway areas
08:05where they take another simulation of ours called Young Zack the Gamer,
08:10which is a series of blogs, and they present that to schools and generate some discussions around them.
08:16There's some workshops that can be delivered around that, which again gets young people talking.