Safe and Sound charity’s mission is to transform the lives of children and young people in Derbyshire who are affected by child exploitation. Through delivering innovative, hands-on programmes, Safe and Sound enables children, young people, families and carers, whose lives are affected deeply by their experience of child exploitation, to move not just to a place of safety, but to emerge unshackled and undefined by their experiences and enabled to reach their full potential.
This project supports children and young people as they leave their one to one support to progress through creative arts therapy to a safer and healthier place. While we cannot mitigate the damage, we can seek to maximise the road to recovery which minimises the risk of exploitation escalating in the future. This creative therapy may address the exploitation itself or the vulnerabilities surrounding it.
Our approach to our support is very much child or young person centred. It is individual and holistic, taking account of all aspects of their lives. What we do know about exploitation is that any child can be exploited anywhere at any time but there are many vulnerabilities that raise the risk including poverty, self-harm, isolation, domestic abuse, family dynamics and relationships etc. This is part of our asset-based approach. We take full account of the adverse trauma caused and the impact on each young person. We work through the challenges as part of our one-to-one support with relevant resources and where necessary involvement of specialist organisations. We also cover positive sessions including building healthy relationships, gaining confidence etc.
We want to empower our young people, build on their strengths, developing their skills, networks and resilience to thrive independently.
When a young person is affected by exploitation it affects the whole family. This grant will help us to work with young people and families and support them to rebuild their relationship. We are very grateful to Pixel for their amazing support.