The Preventing Child Sexual Exploitation Conference 2024

Sarah spent 16 years in the civil service working in key roles to tackle serious organised crime and protect children, including leading the Online Child Sexual Abuse Threat (CEOP) at the National Crime Agency and co-chairing the Virtual Global Taskforce. Sarah recently moved over to Ofcom to head up Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) policy, Triage and law enforcement engagement, as part of Ofcom’s new responsibilities under the Online Safety Act. Sarah led the development of a number of measures to protect children from online CSA, which will form part of the first illegal harms code of practice to regulate online services.

 Jess is the Senior Policy Adviser for Childhood Harms at Barnardo’s. She leads Barnardo’s policy work on child sexual abuse and exploitation, child criminal exploitation, domestic abuse and online safety. Jess’ career has been dedicated to ensuring children’s protection from a policy perspective, previously working at Save the Children. Jess has a legal background, studying L.LB Law and L.LM International Law at the University of Sheffield. She is passionate about creating change to ensure the best protection outcomes for children.

Tom is the Assistant Police & Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands. He is the Co-Chair of the Strategic Board for the new MoJ/Birmingham Problem Solving Court for Women, sits on the National Family Drug & Alcohol Court Advisory Board and various other public and third sector boards focused on early help and children and families.

He was previously a practising charity lawyer. He is also a Policy Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Science & Policy and Senior Visiting Practitioner at the University of York’s Administrative Fairness Lab.

Julie has been the Safeguarding Licensing Manager since 2005, when the government reformed its licensing regime to include an objective for the protection of children from harm.  Locally, she has executed the responsibilities of the Sheffield Children Safeguarding Partnership, using licensing legislation to improve safeguarding practice across the business community and to work collaboratively with enforcement agencies, to disrupt locations where there is a risk of child exploitation.  Julie contributes to safeguarding nationally, as an advisor around business engagement to the National Association of Licensing Enforcement Officers, the National Working Group Network for Tackling Child Exploitation and the University of Bedfordshire’s UK Advisory and Implementation Panel for Contextual Safeguarding.  Her role involves regulating and integrating safeguarding practice in businesses and she has led on the development of training and resources to support business operators including taxis, hotels, shops, pubs, clubs, sex venues.