On the 20th July, Ben gave a talk at Homerton University Hospital in East London. This was to support the launch of a new Safeguarding Training Package developed by the Children’s Society and commissioned by the Department of Health with the aim of training a variety of healthcare professionals to ensure that they are able to identify the signs of child sexual exploitation (CSE) and abuse.
Ben spoke about how Sami was supporting a friend who was subject to CSE at the time of her death, referred to as Christine. He talked about Christine’s story and discussed some of the aspects of her abuse, which started at just 12 years old. There is also some discussion about how he feels and his hopes for the training package.

The interactive training package features hard hitting facts about how frequent child sexual exploitation is in the UK and identifies that anyone who has regular contact with children will be exposed to victims of CSE.  This training is targeted to reach 750,000 healthcare professionals. After the talk Ben was invited back to the children’s society headquarters in central London where he gave a similar talk and met with some of the front line staff that work for the children’s society.