Invitation to a Harmful Practice virtual tabletop exercise (Safeguard Leads - Harmful Practices event)
It is believed that across the country there are currently 60,000 women and girls at risk of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and recent research has suggested that, during the restrictions caused by the pandemic, that figure may have increased. Reports of FGM in Warwickshire are very rare, therefore not all of our teams are comfortable dealing with this highly complex area of safeguarding and investigation. Learning from recent high-profile cases, including the first successful prosecution for FGM in London in 2019, has shown that there are likely to be significant gaps in the professional response. Through the work of the Warwickshire Harmful Practices Group and the Warwickshire VAWG Board, we are keen to identify locally where these gaps may be and develop an action plan to ensure that when we do receive a report, we collectively provide the best possible response.
We would therefore like to invite education professionals to participate in a virtual tabletop exercise looking at the multi-agency response to FGM in Warwickshire. The event will work through a given scenario (involving a call for support around a child) and run through the partnership response from start to finish.
The objectives of the event are to test our multi-agency response to FGM, gain a better understanding of each other's roles and responsibilities, identify any gaps in current provision and look at ways to address these.
This event is taking place over Teams from 11am-2pm on Thursday 19th May.
Please complete this brief survey to register your interest in attending the event.
We would particularly like to encourage attendance from all frontline professionals. Please forward this invitation onto all relevant colleagues in your service.
If your role doesn’t fall into this category but you would still like to attend, please do express an interest as we are keen to involve as many partners as possible.
We may not be able to allocate a place to everyone who expresses an interest as there will be a need to ensure a balance of agency representation in the discussions.
We will, however, plan to make a recording of the event available afterwards for anyone who is unable to attend.
We will circulate a calendar invitation to the event during the w/c 9th May.