Think about your relationships – friendships, boyfriend or girlfriend, or groups of friends that you either know from school, college or the area where you live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As we get older, we develop relationships with lots of different people and each relationship will be different. Some are healthy and will make you feel good about yourself, while others can go wrong along the way and may make you feel uncomfortable, unhappy or scared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At times, it can be difficult to know who you can trust. Sometimes, people might want to take advantage of you and ask you to do sexual things and you might find yourself in dangerous situations without even realising it. This is called child sexual exploitation (CSE) and it\u2019s not okay for this to happen to a young person. In fact it is abuse and young people have the right to be safe from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
CSE can happen to anyone, regardless of their gender, age or background, so it\u2019s important that you are aware of the warning signs of CSE, so you can be careful about who you can trust, and can recognise if someone is trying to exploit you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You may have become close friends with someone either from school or your community, or perhaps a person you met online. It is important to think about how they behave and whether they may be trying to gain your trust so they can trick or manipulate you into sexual activity, either with them, or with other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They might try to isolate you from your friends, family and support network, so that you are alone and vulnerable. They could force you to do things that you don\u2019t want to do with them, or with other people that they know. They might ask for sexual favours for themselves, and\/or other people in return for the gifts they were giving you for nothing before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A person might be trying to groom you if they:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are times when we worry about our friends and what they might be getting involved in. It is important that friends look out for each other as often they can be the first people to notice if something isn\u2019t right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some warning signs to look out for in your friends could include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you are worried that you, or someone you know is at immediate risk, the first thing you should do is contact the police on 999<\/a>. If you have general worries about your own, or somebody else\u2019s situation contact MASH (Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub) on 0345 155 1071<\/a> or email mashsecure@devon.gov.uk<\/a> and give as much information as you can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ChildLine<\/a> – 0800 111 Think about your relationships – friendships, boyfriend or girlfriend, or groups of friends that you either know from school, college or the area where you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":125,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-66554","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 10:54:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/66554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/66554\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/children-families-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Other support services and telephone helplines<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>Missing Kids UK –<\/a> 116 000
<\/strong>Y-SMART<\/a> young people’s drug and alcohol service <\/strong>– 0800 121 4751<\/strong> (freephone) or 01271 38816
<\/strong>Devon County Council out-of-hours social care – 0845 000388
<\/strong>Think u know<\/a> – the latest information about the sites you like to visit, mobiles and new technology
Space<\/a> (formerly Devon Youth Service)
The Eddystone Trust – Devon sexual health services<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"