Partnership & Prevention

Multi-Agency Preventing OCSAE (MAOCSAE) Group

The MAOCSAE group meets quarterly with a focus on new innovation, public safety awareness, as well as recognition of streamlining and mutually supporting media activity and campaigns.

Stop It Now! Scotland (SIN!) is a key MAOCSAE member driving the inception of a group to focus on the ‘Indirect’ victims of OCSAE – the partners and families of persons arrested and charged with OCSAE offences who endure enormous impact and strain but often lack support. Police Scotland continues to provide those arrested for OCSAE offences with SIN! literature which signposts to SIN! services.

Barnardo’s and Police Scotland have worked collaboratively for a number of years to tackle OCSAE through the RISE (Reducing the Impact of Sexual Exploitation) Service. This seeks to support Police Scotland’s operational child protection response by improving support to children under 18 who have been affected by Child Sexual Exploitation through the provision of additional specialist advice and consultation.

Police Scotland has strengthened relationships with Ofcom Scotland in anticipation of the new Online Safety Bill and Ofcom Scotland’s enhanced regulatory role in the Bill. A memorandum of understanding has been developed to ensure clarity of process to allow Police Scotland to effectively recover any Child Sexual Abuse Material received by Ofcom in Scotland.

Given the prevalence of female victims in OCSAE offending Police Scotland recognises the importance of ensuring our VAWG (Violence Against Women & Girls) work is informed by our OCSAE work and there is integration where possible. As such the emerging trends and threats discussed at MAOCSAE can help make informed assessments and decisions regarding VAWG.  

Cybercrime Harm Prevention

Police Scotland’s Partnerships, Prevention & Community Wellbeing (PPCW) Cybercrime Harm Prevention (CHP) Team has a multifaceted approach to educating young people about online abuse, grooming and exploitation. Where possible children and young people are addressed directly, however, work is also done with parents, schools, sports clubs service providers and various partners to reinforce messaging.

CHP is a member of MAOCSAE and national campaigns are also supported by disseminating alerts, resources and campaign materials via internal networks across local policing divisions and via an extensive external network of Web Ambassadors.

CHP is a key member of the Cyber Scotland Partnership, taking a leading role in the annual Cyber Scotland Week event, tailoring events to attract engagements from parents and schools.

CHP works with Police Scotland’s Children & Young Persons team to increase the number of school liaison officers who access the Glow network. This has almost doubled to 142 nationally. 

CHP has also partnered with the Children’s Hearing Scotland national training leads to commence work on sessions for 22 divisional teams consisting of 3,000 panel members. These will focus on the realities of online experiences of young people, exploitation and online safety.

Horizon - EU  

Police Scotland is part of the Horizon-EU funded “Prevent & Protect Through Support” (2PS) project. This is a 22 strong international consortium of partners, funded for 3 years, to fight child sexual abuse, reduce the number of abused children and protect those at risk of exploitation. The consortium is made up of a number of EU law enforcement agencies, academia and other organisations.

Childlight - Global Child Safety Institute

Police Scotland is actively engaged with Childlight, with the Chief Constable speaking at its launch event at the University of Edinburgh in March 2023. Childlight aims to understand the prevalence, nature and scale of child sexual exploitation and abuse worldwide. Police Scotland is working to share data to inform Childlight’s work.

ISPCAN European International Congress 2023

Police Scotland will co-chair the upcoming conference being held on 24th to 27th September in Edinburgh this year. ISPCAN has also partnered with Childlight - Global Child Safety Institute.   Planning for ISPCAN remains ongoing.

Use of Technology 

Police Scotland has a Policing in a Digital World Programme to examine how to grow and shape capabilities to meet the increasing threat and harm from child sexual abuse and exploitation. 

Police Scotland aims to make best use of available technologies to assist us, whilst recognising the need to ensure public confidence and appropriate safeguards in developing new technologies, to better enable us to fulfil our statutory obligations in keeping children safe.

Developing and introducing new technologies often also requires significant financial investment and additional resource to assist with the change and transformation process.

There are a number technical solutions which would bring greater efficiency in the world of OCSAE investigations. Although the vast majority of NOCAP offending relates to Indecent Imagery of Children there is a growing number of investigations which requires the identification, examination and analysis of chat logs. This can be in tandem to imagery or as a standalone aspect of investigation. There are a number of tools which can assist on these fronts, some of which are detailed in Appendix 2.