Second Reading, House of Lords
Key messages
- Research indicates that few children tell anyone that they are being sexually abused at the time it happens, and where they do, this is most commonly to family and friends. Furthermore, reviews have identified a lack of understanding about child sexual abuse across professionals and organisations working with children. It is vital that a mandatory reporting duty is accompanied by culturally sensitive training and support for professionals to feel confident in identifying and reporting signs of child sexual abuse.
- Where children do tell professionals what is happening to them, this is a process that can take time and involves building up trust. Professionals have highlighted the challenges of balancing confidentiality with safeguarding responsibilities. Any mandatory reporting duty must recognise the importance of safe spaces and time for children to work with professionals to build confidence in reporting.
- As identified by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, discussion about child sexual abuse can be seen as taboo, which means that it is less likely to be spoken about. We agree with the Inquiry’s recommendation to increase public awareness and challenge myths and stereotypes, in order to support children and families to be more comfortable speaking about this form of abuse.
- There is significant evidence that comprehensive sex education has a positive impact on the likelihood of children reporting sexual abuse. It is important to consider carefully the content of the sex and relationships education curriculum to ensure that children are equipped with the knowledge they need to tell someone if they are experiencing abuse.
- There are significant shortfalls in support services for victims of child sexual abuse. To support children effectively, the Government must commit to ensuring that specialist support services for victims of CSA are fully and sustainably funded.
Background
Identification and reporting of CSA
Child sexual abuse is significantly under-reported and is affected by a particular stigma that can both prevent victims coming forward and lead to differing responses from professionals. Research indicates that just one in three children who were sexually abused by an adult told anyone, and just one in six children who was were abused by another child. Where children do disclose abuse, it is most commonly to family or friends rather than professionals. Disabled children and boys are less likely to disclose abuse than other children, while there are also unique barriers to disclosure for children from some black and ethnic minority backgrounds.
The Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse highlighted that “discussion about child sexual abuse remains an uncomfortable subject for many”, and noted that children and young people who engaged with the inquiry wanted to see “a cultural shift at societal level so that talking about child sexual abuse ceases to be a taboo.” We agree with the Inquiry’s recommendation that there should be regular programmes of activity to increase public awareness of child sexual abuse and to challenges myths and stereotypes. This could support children and families to feel more comfortable speaking about and disclosing abuse.
It is important to ensure that children have the words and understanding to be able to identify what is happening to them as abuse. This applies to all children, but is also important to consider with regard to children from certain communities – research for the CSA Centre highlights that “some victims and survivors of CSA – in South Asian Muslim and Haredi Jewish communities, for example, may be less able to name their experience as abuse because of a lack of knowledge about sex and consent.” There is significant evidence that comprehensive sex education has a positive impact on the likelihood of children reporting sexual abuse. It is important to consider carefully the content of the sex and relationships education curriculum to ensure that children are equipped with the knowledge they need to tell someone if they are experiencing abuse.
When it comes to children themselves reporting abuse and professionals managing the response to that, the CSA Centre highlights that “confidentiality is...important to children who worry about losing control over their information. Professionals have highlighted the challenges of balancing confidentiality with safeguarding responsibilities. Sharing information too early may jeopardise a child’s sense of trust, but not acting on information risks further abuse to the child as well as a failure to comply with organisational safeguarding procedures.”
Understanding and acting on the signs and indicators of sexual abuse reduces reliance on children making verbal disclosures, however we know that recognised indicators of abuse can also be signs of other factors in a child’s life and it is vitally important that professionals have the necessary flexibility to be able to work with a child and their family to understand what may be happening to them. Professionals must be able to use their professional skill and judgement to identify the best way to work with and safeguard a child at that moment.
Need for training and support for professionals
The Home Office Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy identified that “there is a concern that professionals do not have a good enough understanding of the signs of child sexual abuse and lack the confidence and skills to talk about it.” A programme of joint targeted area inspections in 2018-19 found that professionals lacked the training and knowledge to identify and protect children, and relied too heavily on children to verbally disclose abuse. It is imperative that we provide professionals with the training and support necessary to give them the confidence to identify and report potential cases of CSA. This needs to be culturally sensitive, recognising that different children will face different issues (for example, fear of ostracization or forced marriage for children in some communities).
In its recent report on protecting children and responding to child sexual abuse within the family environment, the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel noted that “practitioners often lacked an understanding of intrafamilial child sexual abuse” and stated that
the whole children’s workforce, including those in universal and early help services and those working with children and families in other capacities, [needs] to be equipped with the knowledge, skills and practical guidance to identify and respond confidently to children whenever there are concerns of intrafamilial child sexual abuse, including online.
It recommended that “Government should take the necessary steps, working with professional bodies, to ensure that practitioners and managers have the necessary skills,
knowledge and capabilities.” The Panel noted this should apply across councils, police, health, schools and other education settings, probation, youth justice and Cafcass.
Training on how to respond to disclosures of or concerns about CSA is also necessary. As the NSPCC identified, research has shown that ineffective or insensitive responses can impact on the likelihood of children and young people seeking help in the future. We also know that there is already a tension which professionals must manage effectively between working with children over time to understand what is happening to them and respecting their views and wishes, and taking action to safeguard children where they are at risk. We must ensure that, should children seek help from a professional, they receive an appropriate response that ensures they feel supported and believed.
Funding children’s services
Despite councils’ best efforts, financial pressures are affecting the scale, range and quality of council services provided to local residents. The clearest evidence of this is that councils’ service spending is increasingly focused on adult and children’s social care; on average social care councils allocated 65.6 per cent of their 2024/25 service budgets to social care.
A significant area of cost pressure facing councils, and children’s services in particular, is in placements for children in care. LGA research has shown that in 2022/23 councils paid for over 1,500 placements costing £10,000 or more per week – more than 10 times greater than the 120 placements purchased by councils at this price in 2018/19. This has created huge pressure on councils’ budgets with budgeted real terms spend on children’s social care increasing by £2.8 billion (25.7 per cent) from 2019/20 to 2024/25. There appears to be no real sign of this budget pressure reducing. Of the additional £2.8 billion in budgeted spend since 2019/20, £1.3 billion of this increase was from 2023/24 to 2024/25.
As funding has fallen, councils have focused their spend on meeting their statutory obligations. This has led to a reduction in spend on preventative services and a greater focus on reactive, demand-led provision.
To better protect children, we are calling on the Government to use the forthcoming Spending Review to meet existing cost pressures in children’s social care while also funding additional funding to improve early help services to reduce demand over time and prevent children experiencing abuse in the first place.
Support services
The CSA Centre highlights that
“disclosure [by children of CSA] can be traumatic and have short- and long-term effects on children’s emotional wellbeing…some children report feeling ‘relief’ and ‘pride’ after disclosing. However, children also report feeling embarrassment, anger and sadness. Some describe their life ‘falling to pieces’ after disclosing sexual abuse.”
It is therefore vital that the right support services are in place to ensure that children swiftly receive the help they need both to keep them safe and to help their emotional wellbeing. This includes support for families, who may struggle to respond appropriately and cause further harm to children’s wellbeing.
IICSA identified a significant shortfall in provision of specialist support for children and young people who have experienced sexual abuse. One study estimated a shortfall of over 57,000 places for children in therapeutic services, while one provider of child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) stated, “Unfortunately it’s no longer enough to have experienced a trauma like sexual abuse. We can only see children with a severe mental health condition requiring therapy.” To support children effectively, the Government must commit to ensuring that specialist support services for victims of CSA are fully and sustainably funded. This must also ensure that services are accessible for families, including those without means to travel.
Preventing abuse
It would be helpful to allocate resources towards a “public health” approach to addressing the prevalence of abuse and neglect. Barlow and Calam (2011) argued that safeguarding cannot be addressed by approaches that focus primarily on the identification of children who are being abused with little evidence-based intervention thereafter suggesting instead that there is a case for the delivery of safeguarding using a public health, population‐based strategy that is aimed at ensuring that all parents are able to develop the skills they need to parent effectively.
Such an approach could include the development of tailored work programmes and awareness campaigns aimed at professionals, parents / carers, schools, the wider community and children and young people themselves in order to raise awareness of child protection issues and how best to act when concerns arise:
- A broader range of professionals and volunteers who come into regular contact with children and young people should be offered training, information and advice to help spot the signs of all forms of abuse and neglect and know how to act on any concerns.
- More work with the wider community is needed to help them play an active role in the fight against exploitation along with a campaign to tackle misconceptions around children being able to consent to their own abuse.
- Children and young people should be helped to understand what healthy relationships look like and taught to recognise the signs and symptoms of grooming in themselves and their friends with suitable educational experiences at school.
- We must also look to address the broader cultural and social issues at the heart of grooming and sexual exploitation e.g. the over sexualisation of children, young people and women in the media, as a matter of urgency. Social media has contributed to the normalising of abusive behaviours and this can no longer be ignored if we are to tackle the root causes of this issue instead of simply treating the symptoms.
Contact: Zahraa Shaikh
Public Affairs Support Officer
[email protected]