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When young people are sexually exploited, parents and professionals alike can feel uncertain about how to balance the need to protect the child's rights to agency and autonomy while also reducing the risk of harm. Despite the shared interest in keeping young people safe, there remains a substantial gap in the research literature about how practitioners engage parents to increase capacity to safeguard their children, particularly within the context of a child protection system ill‐equipped to address forms of extrafamilial harm such as child sexual exploitation. This paper aims to contribute to understanding how professionals effectively engage parents by drawing upon evidence from research evaluations of two programmes in rural/urban North and urban South locations in England, both providing specialist support to parents/carers of sexually exploited children and young people. Through interrogating elements of effective support work evidenced across both programmes, a set of emerging key themes are presented, proposing that parent support and engagement can create a 'virtuous' cycle, whereby families are strengthened and are better able to protect their children from sexual exploitation and other forms of extrafamilial harm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary A qualitative approach was used to explore the experience of exiting sex trade industry work from the perspective of 19 adults formerly involved in the sex trade industry. A narrative approach to data collection was used to explore the participants’ experiences of successful exiting and phenomenological analysis was employed to identify themes that reflected the ways in which participants developed resiliency throughout the exiting process. Findings Themes include connection (including subthemes: survivor presence, children and spirituality), resources (including subthemes: networks, structure and safety) and personal growth. Significance These themes represent women with diverse experiences in the sex trade industry, including a majority who were victimised by (internal) sex trafficking. The findings demonstrate opportunities for social work practice to address the diverse needs of individuals exiting the sex trade industry, specifically for those who experienced sex trafficking and sexual exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]