2023 Project progress (Surrey)
Cold Chips and Money is an interactive digital story exploring child criminal exploitation (CCE), sometimes more commonly known as ‘county lines’. Child criminal exploitation is where “children and young people are manipulated and coerced into committing crimes” (NSPCC, 2020).
Having been awarded funding from the University of Surrey’s Arts & Humanities Impact Acceleration Fund, the project is now live in Surrey. Between May 2023 and May 2024 we are connecting with schools, Alternative Provision providers and Youth Offending Teams as well as professionals involved in safeguarding, policing, children’s services and Personal, Social, Health and Economic education.
We are supporting approximately 10 organizations to use the resources in their settings in the 2023/24 school year. We will report on how things go!
Surrey County Council children’s services, the police and other partners across Surrey are working together to safeguard young people and prevent them from experiencing any form of exploitation. Our Cold Chips and Money project is on this same topic. Whilst the most familiar form of exploitation is child sexual exploitation (CSE) the council are also working to protect young people from:
- exploitation linked to drug dealing and county lines activity
- building up drug debts or bonds
- being drawn into serious criminality
- being pressured into carrying weapons
- being pressured into sexual activity
Media coverage
The Uncensored Critic Podcast (14 minutes, 12 seconds in)
Surrey Business Magazine, Issue 68 (p.71)
Guildford School of Acting attempts to tackle County Lines exploitation
2021 Project Report (Hampshire)
Click below to read an evaluation of the 2021 phase of the Cold Chips & Money project. We developed the interactive digital story, in collaboration with Active Communities Network (Hampshire), several professionals from a range of Children’s Services backgrounds and the University of Portsmouth. The story was then used by teachers and a Youth Offending team and we reached 1.451 young people. The report is written by Dr Catherine McNamara (project lead) and Alexandra Russell (project facilitator and evaluator).
Signposting
Know your school Safeguarding officer: Who is it in your school? How do you contact them. Ensure young people know this.
