"Co-designing community resilience to online child sexual victimisation: demonstration project". Independent safeguarding consultant, Dr Sarah Carlick, teams with the West Yorkshire Violence Reduction Partnership to deliver a project aimed at testing the framework’s transferability, identify local needs, and to explore how community resilience to Online Child Sexual Victimisation (OCSV) can be strengthened across diverse settings.'

Online Child Sexual Victimisation (OCSV) is an escalating concern for police, partner agencies, families, and communities. Rapid technological advancements and evolving offender tactics have outpaced current prevention strategies, leaving children increasingly exposed to harm. Despite efforts, online interventions have not curbed the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), and urgent, locally grounded action is needed to prevent its creation and impact.

As part of its problem-oriented research, the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre delivered a project on Co-designing Community Resilience to Online Child Sexual Victimisation. The project brought together professionals, community members, and children in Blackpool to collaboratively develop a Quality Standards framework aimed at strengthening multi-agency responses to OCSV. The framework reflects lived experiences and frontline insights from practitioners, ensuring it is both practical and community-informed.

To assess whether these Standards could be effectively applied in different contexts, the Centre funded a demonstration project in West Yorkshire, which brought together Dr Sarah Carlick, an independent safeguarding consultant and the West Yorkshire Violence Reduction Partnership. This project aimed to test the framework’s transferability, identify local needs, and explore how community resilience to OCSV can be strengthened across diverse settings.

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