The Grooming Process : County Lines & Beyond

A film resource for UK Secondary Schools (KS3 & KS4), £240 inc. VAT The short film gives students a clear example of how grooming can develop over time. From there, the session becomes teacher-led, using discussion prompts, teaching slides and short reflection activities to explore the wider grooming process. Students are introduced to a six-stage model of grooming — Identification, Engagement, Building the Relationship, Building Dependency, Entrapment and Checkmate — and then use that model as a lens to consider how similar behaviours can appear in other forms of exploitation and abuse, including: child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse radicalisation and extremism abusive and controlling relationships financial exploitation online exploitation abuse within sport, clubs and other trusted settings The aim is not simply to teach young people about one form of exploitation. It is to help them recognise the common patterns of grooming that can sit behind many different forms of harm: building trust, creating influence, increasing dependency, applying pressure and gradually reducing someone’s freedom to choose. The complete resource has been designed to work as a 55-minute session, including the 10-minute film, but it is deliberately flexible. It can be delivered in classrooms, with larger groups or as part of an assembly, and staff can adapt the pace, extend discussions or split the material across more than one session to suit their students and setting. The core message is simple: grooming often begins with something that feels positive, and recognising the pattern can help young people understand when trust is being used to create pressure, dependency or control.