Let’s Talk is a service for children and young people who have displayed problematic sexual behaviour (PSB) and their parents or carers.
We work with children and young people and their parent or carer to encourage safe, respectful behaviour, build confidence and understanding and support emotional wellbeing.
Let’s Talk is a short-term service to help children understand healthy boundaries, emotions and relationships in a safe and age-appropriate way.
We aim to appropriately support children and young people who have displayed problematic sexual behaviour (PSB) and enable them to experience healthy and expected sexual development and expression.
Let’s Talk is underpinned by being:
This service is currently being piloted to evaluate what works and what impact can be made in different contexts. During this pilot, Let’s Talk will only be provided in:
> Find out more about what problematic sexual behaviour (PSB) is
Let’s Talk runs for a number of sessions and lasts between 5 and 15 weeks.
During the first sessions, the Let’s Talk practitioner will talk to the child or young person to understand and assess the help they need. They may also do a home visit and meet the child or young person’s parents or carers separately.
After these assessment sessions, the practitioner will discuss with the child or young person and their parent or carer whether the child or young person needs continued support from Let’s Talk and if so, what this support would look like.
The Let’s Talk practitioner will do up to 12 one-to-one sessions with the child or young person and up to 6 one-to-one sessions with their parent or carer.
They will build a range of key messages, tools and strategies with the child or young person, for them to take forward in future to prevent further problematic sexual behaviour.
With a toolbox of activities, the service can be tailored to children and young people of different ages, stages of development, gender, ability, culture and religion.
Activities with the child or young person may focus on:
Sessions with their parent or carer may focus on:
A follow-up review takes place around 3 months after the last session to check on progress.
Let’s Talk is for children and young people aged up to 18-years-old who have displayed problematic sexual behaviour, online or offline.
Children and young people who have learning disabilities can also access the service up to the age of 19.
One of the child or young person’s parents or carers is typically involved. They are offered individual sessions as well as joint sessions with their child or young person, where appropriate.
A referral must be made with the consent of the child or young person. Once a referral has been received, the Let's Talk team will review it and consider:
To do this, they will speak to those who know the child best and work with other professionals to understand the family.
To find out more about the service, please email lets-talk@nspcc.org.uk. Please refrain from sharing personal, confidential or sensitive information with this email address.
During this pilot, Let’s Talk will only be provided in:
Access guidance, resources and training to help you respond to and prevent incidents of problematic sexual behaviour and harmful sexual behaviour, including child-on-child and peer-on-peer sexual abuse.
Assessment, treatment, consultation and training for and about children and young people where there are concerns about harmful sexual behaviour (HSB).
Our training package helps teams to understand what harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) is, how it happens and increase confidence in identifying and responding to incidents.