Diagram 3: Spoke worker locations
Voluntary organisation Police team
Children’s services HUB
Universal service
Outreach
Multi-agency CSE team
Before presenting the findings from the evaluation of the model’s implementation, it is important to note the national context which formed the backdrop to this funding programme. This is explored below, prior to a description of the proposal to scale up the Hub and Spoke model as a significant policy transfer programme.
5. Public Policy Context
The key aim of the Hub and Spoke programme was to trigger cultural and systemic change in the way local areas responded to the issue of CSE. Since the inception of the CSE Funders’ Alliance’s work, child sexual abuse (CSA) and CSE has been a significant focus of public conversation and political action across the UK, affecting the local and national contexts in which the Hub and Spoke model was being delivered. This development was not necessarily anticipated by the Funders’ Alliance. The turn of the current decade saw a series of publications highlighting the scale of CSE and the need for a sea-change in local and national responses (Barnardo’s, 2011; CEOP, 2011; Jago et al., 2011). The messages were also reinforced in public consciousness by media coverage of a series of CSE-related criminal trials in Preston (2010), Derby (2010), Telford (2012) and Rochdale (2012). However, successive government action plans had failed to deliver or invest in wide-scale reform of CSE responses (Department of Health, 2001; DCSF, 2008; DfE, 2011). Furthermore, significant cuts to public services indicated that this was unlikely to change. After 2012, the Funders’ Alliance strategy therefore focussed on capacity building within specialist voluntary services as a means to drive improvement in local responses.
Alexi Project Evaluation: Final Report
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The sudden acceleration in the profile of CSA/E over this period has largely been attributed to sustained media reporting of two public scandals. The first related to criminal trials revealing the extent of sexual exploitation and violence perpetrated by groups of men in Rotherham,