Safe and Healthy Sexual Behaviour Forum

The Safe and Healthy Sexual Behaviour Forum is a multi-agency/service community initiative to address the concern of reactive or harmful sexual behaviour for children and young people.

The Forum is made up of service leads from across Devon and offers a consultation process for information, advice, and guidance. It uses AIM3 mapping tools to support and inform next steps, along with the wealth of experience and intelligence sharing within the Forum.

The following services are represented on the Forum:

• Forensic CAMHs
• Police
• The Youth Justice Service
• Education Safeguarding
• Public Health
• Early Help services
• Children’s Social Care
• SPACE (Youth Service)
• Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC)

The Forum was created in recognition of the fact that healthy and safe sexual relationships and being free from sexual harm are the right of all, as well as to acknowledge that we have a joint responsibility to prevent harmful sexual behaviour.

One route for all assessments and intervention plans

The Forum is the one, sole intake route to agree any AIM3 assessments and intervention plans. Should any service be considering commissioning outside of the Forum, a referral to and discussion in the Forum should still take place, to ensure quality and sustainability of the approach being sought.

We will offer from our community team a pair of trained practitioners (or a practitioner to support your own worker in some situations), together with a dedicated trained supervisor for AIM3 Mapping, Assessment and Intervention work.

How to access the Forum

• The Forum meets on the third Tuesday of each month.
• Starting in July 2026, we are offering a triage, where professional can attend to seek advice around Safe and Healthy Sexual Behaviour or discuss potential referrals if required (Triage not essential prior to referral but may be helpful). Triage takes place every other Wednesday between 2pm and 4pm. You can book a triage slot here.
• To access the Forum, please complete the consultation form and send to the Forum email address at childsc.earlyhelpreactiveharmfulsexualbehaviour-mailbox@devon.gov.uk. The child’s name should not be included in the email title. If you work outside of Devon County Council, please ensure that the email is password protected and sent securely.
• Each request will be individually considered, we may require additional information and will we will endeavour to discuss every case at forum at the earliest possible opportunity, please indicate if you feel the case needs to be heard as a priority.
• Where possible, please refer to the AIM checklist tools before submitting your consultation form (you will be required to create a free account to access the checklist) the checklist will inform your consultation and aid us in the triage process.
• Once you have submitted your consultation form, you will be sent an email acknowledging it has been received. You will receive a request to attend the Forum and will be sent an allocated time and date so that you can discuss your child/young person.

Please note that consent and participation by the young person and their parent or carer/s is always desirable and will be sought by the referring agency in line with their own protocols and procedures. However, this may not always be achievable in practice. Consent by the individual may be overridden, namely for public interest and/or safeguarding reasons.

When completing a request for forum please consider the following:

• Ensure a safety plan is in place while awaiting a specific safeguarding and/or HSB assessment and that parents/carers have a clear understanding of it.
• Adopt a child-centred approach (listen to and consider child’s wishes and feelings and act in child’s best long-term interests).
• Consider child development including sexual development and maturation.
• Consider context of behaviour.
• Always consider whether any sexual behaviour has been consensual in the context of power relationship/imbalance and exploitation.
• Recognise that problematic, abusive and violent sexual behaviour is often an expression of a range of problems or underlying vulnerabilities (consider family / social factors/ privacy and boundaries within the home).
• Look out for patterns of behaviour and the reasons behind it (including use of social media).
• Try and gain an overview of the child’s situation.
• Focus on each individual child’s behaviour.
• Consider each child’s needs, the risk to each child (including their networks) and the risk they pose to others – include a safety plan if necessary.

For more information, please refer to the following guidance:

• Guidance for completing request for consultation form
• Guidance for completing request for Under 12s consultation form

Next steps

The Forum will support with next actions.

If more information is required, we will support you with a trained supervisor so that you can confidently use the AIM 3 mapping processes to gather the missing information, which will then be brought back to Forum for joint decision making.

If the Forum decides that the next step is an AIM 3 assessment and intervention, we will assign you practitioners from a multi-agency pool of trained assessors, who in turn will be supported by one of our trained AIM3 supervisors.

If it is felt that some work is required, for example, around healthy relationships or consent laws, we may provide you with resources and tips to help you feel confident to deliver this yourself. You can request a Forum-trained supervisor to help and to oversee the work if you think this would better support you and the young person(s). The Forum may also suggest this option in some situations.

The Forum may also ask you to return at a future date to review how the advised actions are working, and to see if any adjustment to the course of action is necessary or you may choose to return for further advice or consultation.

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