A national public health campaign, improved training for professionals and better use of social media to engage young people are among recommendations to be made by a cross-sector forum set up to hold the government to account on tackling female genital mutilation (FGM).

Urgent action is needed to address a lack of awareness among NHS employees, social workers and teachers who are bound by a duty to report cases of FGM to the police, say experts who attended a panel of the newly formed Anti-FGM Network.

“I train doctors, nurses and social workers and there really is a shocking lack of awareness about what FGM is, the different types and what the law is,” Dr Sharon Raymond, a GP and safeguarding expert, told the forum, which is made up of representatives from the police, CPS and voluntary sector.

“The Serious Crime Act 2015 brought in mandatory reporting of FGM in order to secure successful convictions. But if the professionals are not aware of that duty we are not going to get very far.”

Raymond, who has published a handbook on FGM, added: “There is a black hole of data making it hard to analyse the current picture but from what we know about mandatory reporting, the figures appear very low when we consider the available statistics on the prevalence of FGM in the UK.”

It is estimated that 137,000 girls and women in England and Wales have been affected by FGM, according to the NSPCC. There were 30,480 attendances by women and girls at medical centres in relation to FGM between April 2015 and June 2018, according to data from NHS Digital.

Comprehensive data on mandatory reporting has proved hard to obtain owing to differences in the way police forces record data, but figures provided by the Metropolitan police show there were just 60 cases of mandatory reporting in London over a three-year period from October 2015.

“While the data is not directly comparable because professionals are only bound to report cases of those under 18 who have made a direct disclosure, this snapshot of one region suggests more work needs to be done to train professionals and make them aware of their safeguarding duties,” said Raymond.

On Friday the mother of a three-year-old girl became the first person to be found guilty of FGM in the UK, in a case that campaigners welcomed as a breakthrough.

Since the introduction of FGM protection orders in 2015, 248 have been issued.

The Anti-FGM Network is calling for a cross-department ministerial action group on FGM to be established to push the government to fund a national campaign and improve bespoke clinics and services for survivors.

There are currently eight clinics in London and five across the rest of the country where women can seek help with the physical complications of FGM. But there is just one specialist paediatric clinic in the whole of the UK, and there are very few counselling services.

Joy Clarke, a midwife and FGM specialist, said: “Women who have undergone FGM need a lot of psychological support. There is only one bespoke counselling service for survivors of FGM in Europe, the Dahlia Project, and that is not enough.”

Other recommendations include the establishment of a dedicated national FGM hotline, blanket screening of patients across all NHS registration systems and questions about FGM to be included at sexual health screenings.

Police and charity workers also said more cooperation was needed from schools and wider communities to share intelligence around FGM.

Insp Allen Davis, of the Met police, said there was evidence of so-called cutters working in the UK. He told the forum: “There is lots we need to do around awareness and information sharing. We need to be working with young people in schools, and to a large extent we are not where we should be with that.”

Leethen Bartholomew, a former social worker and head of the National FGM Centre, said while there were examples of good practice where schools had introduced FGM lesson plans, these successes needed to be far more widely replicated.

“It’s a no-brainer that we need to start talking more about these things in schools. I’ve sat in sessions with eight- and nine-year-olds which have proved very effective and children have grasped these ideas well.”

Charities that have devised teaching resources for children say they have experienced significant pushback from some schools in what are believed to be practising communities.

Afrah Qassim, from the domestic abuse charity Savera UK, said: “There are schools that follow certain beliefs and religions that refuse to work with us or say they need to seek the consent of parents. Our main concern is the children whose parents refuse to allow them to attend these sessions are the ones most at risk. We need to make FGM part of the curriculum.”

Soad Omer, a programme manager at the east London-based charity Women’s Health and Family Services, said she had experienced significant difficulties with schools in practising communities, and when the charity was allowed to speak to pupils, boys were often excluded from the conversation.

While FGM will be included in the new relationships and sex education (RSE) curriculum to be brought in next year, it is unclear in what capacity it will feature.

The chair of the Anti-FGM Network, Alex Adams, said: “We will be lobbying for mandatory basic FGM awareness training in all schools for all staff, not just teachers. Evidence from grassroots organisations has shown the effectiveness of empowering children and young people as gatekeepers of their human rights. We have plans to better leverage the use of social media and technology to engage with them on the issue of FGM.”