County lines: the essentials

Download your ready-made resources here

Use this county lines presentation with video explainer and optional activity to get your staff up to date on:

  • What 'county lines' is
  • Who's at risk
  • Signs to look and listen out for
  • What to do if you think a child is being exploited or is at risk

Under Keeping Children Safe in Education, your staff should know the potential indicators of involvement in serious violent crime (including 'county lines'), what the risks are, and what measures are in place to manage these risks.

How to use these resources

  1. Download the PowerPoint presentation, facilitator notes, group activity, common questions, staff factsheet and remote delivery guide (whichever guide is right for you)
  2. Decide whether your staff need in-depth training, or more of an overview
    • If you want to cover this topic in depth, use all the presentation slides, activity and scenario. The session should last 45 minutes, and take 30 minutes for you to prepare
    • If you want to give staff more of an overview, show the video and deliver slides 1 to 4, and 15 to 16, in the presentation. The session should last 20 minutes, and take 15 minutes for you to prepare
  3. Work through the facilitator notes. They tell you everything you need to know to prepare and deliver the PowerPoint presentation effectively, including what slides to use or delete to run this session in 45 minutes or 15 minutes. You’ll need these to hand when presenting - if you’re training remotely, print them out or have them open on a separate device so you can refer to them easily while presenting your main screen
  4. Read the common questions document to help you confidently answer questions from staff on this growing issue
  5. Provide each member of staff with a staff factsheet that they can refer to during and after the training
  6. Use the remote delivery guide to get everything set up as you need it if you're delivering the session via Microsoft Teams (part of Office 365 Education) or Google Classroom and Google Meet (part of Google Workspace for Education). You’ll learn how to make the tech work for you and facilitate remote collaboration with confidence

Remember: you need to be logged in to The Key Safeguarding to watch the video.

Want to share the video with your staff?

Send them this link so they can watch it.

Next ...

... follow up a week or two later with our safeguarding scenario on serious violent crime. Use it to check whether your staff can spot the possible signs of involvement with county lines, and how they would respond.

Children cheering