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The government will create a national agency to provide oversight of child protection practice in England, the safeguarding minister has revealed.

The Child Protection Authority (CPA) will provide “national leadership and learning on child protection and safeguarding”, with work to establish it beginning this year, Jess Phillips told the House of Commons this week.

Creating a CPA in each of England and Wales was one of the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s (IICSA) final report, published in 2022.

Inquiry’s proposal for Child Protection Authority

IICSA said these should be independent statutory bodies that would be repositories of expertise on child protection and tasked with improving practice, advising governments on policy and, where necessary, inspecting institutions.

The inquiry said they would fill gaps in current arrangements by inspecting non-statutory or unregulated organisations where children spend time and multi-agency child protection arrangements.

However, the then Conservative government rejected the proposal – in relation to England – in 2023, on the grounds that many of its proposed functions were already being carried out by existing bodies. These included the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (“the national panel”), which reviews learning from serious child protection cases.

The Welsh Government has said that the country’s existing National Independent Safeguarding Board fulfilled IICSA’s proposed remit for a CPA.

Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel remit to be expanded

In her statement to the Commons, Phillips said the CPA would initially be set up within the national panel, with work starting immediately to expand the panel’s role.

This would involve giving the panel “the resources it needs to increase its analytical capacity and its capability to develop high-quality material for practitioners”, said an accompanying Home Office report on the government’s approach to IICSA’s recommendations.

Later this year, the government will consult on the make-up and remit of the CPA, including any aspects that would require legislation. The Home Office report did not commit itself to retaining the CPA within the national panel in future or setting it up as a separate body, meaning this may be consulted upon.

Phillips told the Commons that the consultation would “take time” and not involve “upending an entire system”.

Authority ‘must help make difference to children’

The panel welcomed the plan for it to “help create the foundations for a new Child Protection Authority across England” and said it was committed to working closely with the government on this.

Its chair, Annie Hudson, said: “The panel’s oversight and work to support learning from serious incidents where children have died or been seriously harmed, inside and outside their families, provides important insight about how children can be better safeguarded and protected from all forms of abuse.

“It is important that the powers and remit of a new Child Protection Authority will help make a difference to children.”

“We are committed to working closely with government and other stakeholders as plans develop and the detailed roadmap is progressed,” she added. “It is vital that all those who work with children participate in the forthcoming consultation so together we develop a child protection system that keeps children’s needs at the heart of all decision making.”

No inspection function for Child Protection Authority

While the department said that IICSA’s recommendations would be “core to the development of the consultation”, it ruled out giving the CPA any role in inspection.

This was to ensure that agencies were “transparent about failings” with the CPA to enable it to “provide expert advice on how to improve and change”, an approach that could be impeded by giving it inspection powers.

The Home Office also highlighted findings from IICSA and other organisations that inspectorates had “failed to identify abuse taking place in institutions”.

Joint inspection on CSA within families

In relation to inspection, it said it Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the police and probation inspectorates would carry out a joint targeted area inspection (JTAI) of agencies’ response to child sexual abuse in family settings in autumn 2025.

The Home Office also pledged to create a cross-government working group to look at improving single and joint inspection of child protection and post-inspection accountability arrangements, to ensure areas acted on recommendations.

IICSA also recommended that the government appoint a cabinet-level minister for children to provide a sharper focus across government on
issues affecting them.

The Home Office said the government would not be implementing this specific recommendation, with the education secretary – currently, Bridget Phillipson – remaining the cabinet minister responsible for children’s issues.

Cross-government child protection board

However, it said that a “keeping children safe” ministerial board, including all ministers with roles affecting children, would be set up to support cross-government working on safeguarding. Its role would include:

• Monitoring delivery of the CPA and taking advice from it, on government policy on child protection, once it had been established.
• Tracking progress on the implementation of national panel reports, including its 2024 review of intrafamilial child sexual abuse (CSA). This found that children were too often ignored or disbelieved by practitioners, who lacked the knowledge, skills and confidence to combat this form of abuse.
• Overseeing the work to strengthen multi-agency child protection inspection.

Plan for mandatory reporting of CSA

The government has already pledged to implement one of IICSA’s key recommendations, the introduction of mandatory reporting of CSA by those in position of trust over children where they have received a disclosure of, or witnessed, abuse.

This will be introduced through the Crime and Policing Bill. However, the government has departed from the inquiry’s recommendations in two key respects:

• There will be no criminal sanction for failing to report CSA in line with the duty. Instead, such a failure would constitute “relevant conduct” that would be liable to have the person being included on the Disclosure and Barring Service’s list of people barred from working with children.
• There will be no requirement to report CSA based on the reporter witnessing recognised signs of the abuse, such as sexually harmful behaviour, physical signs of abuse or consequences of sexual abuse, such as pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.

Specialist therapy for victims and survivors

IICSA also recommended that victims and survivors of CSA be given a guarantee of specialist therapeutic support.

In relation to this, the Home Office said it would “work on ambitious proposals for improving the therapeutic support offer”, setting out details in the forthcoming spending review, which will set government expenditure limits from 2026-29.

It also pledged to double annual funding this year for national services supporting adult survivors of CSA.

There will be no criminal sanction for failing to report child sexual abuse (CSA) under the government’s plan to introduce mandatory reporting, despite home secretary Yvette Cooper appearing to have said previously that there would be.

Instead, the government has said that those under a duty to report “may be referred to their professional regulator (where applicable) or the Disclosure and Barring Service [DBS], who will consider their suitability to continue working in regulated activity with children”.

It will also introduce an offence of of preventing or deterring a person from complying with their duty to report CSA.

The proposals, included in the Crime and Policing Bill, are broadly similar to those put forward by the previous Conservative government before it lost power last year.

Response to CSA inquiry recommendation

Both sets of proposals are responses to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s (IICSA) recommendation to require anyone carrying out a regulated activity – those which a person barred by the DBS are prohibited from doing – or in a position of trust with children to report cases of CSA.

However, both the Conservative and Labour proposals differ from IICSA’s in two key respects:

• There would be no requirement to report CSA in cases where recognised indicators of abuse were present. Instead, the duty would only apply where a person had witnessed CSA or a perpetrator or victim had disclosed it to them, which the inquiry found or implied were relatively rare.
• There would be no criminal sanction for anyone who did not report cases of witnessed or disclosed abuse. In relation to this, IICSA said that a failure by those in a position of trust over children to pass on information about CSA to the police or local authorities was “inexcusable” and “the sanction for such an omission should be commensurate”.

Cooper comments interpreted as heralding criminal sanction

The absence of an offence comes despite Cooper having said, on announcing that Labour would take forward mandatory reporting, that there would be “professional and criminal sanctions to fail to report or cover up child sexual abuse”.

This was taken as meaning that failing to report CSA, if you were under a duty to do so, would be criminalised.

For example, the House of Commons Library, which provides neutral briefings on parliamentary issues, drew a contrast between the Conservative and Labour approaches in a report on the issue, published in January this year.

“On 6 January 2025, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced the government would “make it mandatory to report abuse” through measures in the Crime and Policing Bill, to be introduced to Parliament in the spring,” it said.

“She added that failing to report child sexual abuse would be “an offence, with professional and criminal sanctions”. This is different from the previous government’s proposals for mandatory reporting, under which failing to report would not have been an offence.”

No offence of failing to report CSA

However, when the Crime and Policing Bill was published at the end of February, there was no such offence included.

The bill is now being scrutinised by a committee of MPs, who considered the issue last week, when Labour MP Matt Bishop raised the absence of an offence with crime and policing minister Diana Johnson.

In response, Johnson pointed to the fact that those subject to the duty would include volunteers and taxi drivers taking children to school, as well as professionals such as social workers and teachers.

She said IICSA’s recommendations “were not about criminalising those individuals”, which the government did not believe would be “appropriate”.

“What we were very clear about – again, I think that [IICSA] made this point – is that if anybody tries to interfere with or stop that reporting, that is the criminal offence,” she added. “That is the bit that we think is important to have in the bill.”

Pressure group Mandate Now was heavily critical of both the absence of a criminal sanction and the fact that the duty to report applied only to witnessed or disclosed abuse, given research indicating such cases were rare.

‘Never acceptable to turn blind eye to abuse’

For the NSPCC, head of policy Anna Edmundson said: “It is never acceptable for adults to turn a blind eye to child sexual abuse and essential they act immediately if they have any concerns that children or young people may be experiencing it.”

She said that the “responsibility to report must be underpinned by adequate training”, so professionals and volunteers can “spot the potential signs and indicators of child sexual abuse and respond with confidence”.

“There should be consequences for failing to act in line with clearly established duties to report – including a range of professional and other disciplinary sanctions,” she added.

Legislation ‘a step in the right direction’

Lucy Duckworth, policy advisor at The Survivors Trust, said the legislation, though not going as far as the charity would have liked, was a “fantastic step in the right direction”, in the context of a longstanding campaign to introduce mandatory reporting.

She said criminal sanctions for failure to report would not be effective because “people wouldn’t believe it would happen”.

“The criminal justice system is not fit for purpose,” she added. “What people are concerned about is their reputations. If that position of trust is threatened if people fail to report and you could lose your job, [that will have an impact].”

Duckworth said that though the trust – a membership body for specialist rape and sexual abuse services – would have liked to have seen a duty to report CSA when there were recognised signs of abuse, the Home Office’s view was that “we don’t have a culture where we understand what indicators of abuse look like”.

The number of children on protection plans for child sexual abuse in England has hit a 30-year low, experts have warned.

An “alarming decrease” in the identification of CSA by safeguarding practitioners has left no or very few children on child protection plans in the majority of areas, said the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre).

The findings came in a CSA Centre analysis of data on child sexual abuse for 2023-24, which also flagged up a fall in the number of cases in which sexual abuse or exploitation was identified following a child in need assessment.

The analysis was based on the DfE’s 2023-24 children in need census, which identified year-on-year decreases in the numbers of assessments of children, children in need and children on child protection plans.

Declining number of CSA cases

However, the centre said that the number of cases involving CSA had fallen more steeply than average.

While the total number of child in need assessments recording any concerns fell by 0.4% from 2022-23 to 2023-24, the number identifying CSA fell by 8%, from 33,760 to 30,970, the lowest level since the pandemic year of 2020-21.

There was also an 8% year-on-year drop in the number of assessments that recorded child sexual exploitation (CSE) as a concern, with the 13,860 recorded being the lowest number since 2014-15.

Lowest number of plans for sexual abuse in 30 years

Just 2,160 children were placed on child protection plans for sexual abuse in 2023-24, the lowest number during the 30 years in which this data has been published. The 5.8% fall in the number of such plans from 2022-23 to 2023-24.= compares with a 2.8% drop in the overall number of child protection plans.

The centre also found that seven councils placed no children on plans under the primary category of sexual abuse, while 42 placed a “very low” proportion” on such plans (less than 0.2 per 1,000 children in the area).

In a further 54 councils, the data was suppressed because they had between one and five children placed on a plan for sexual abuse in their area during the year. As a result, 103 councils – two-thirds of the total – had no or very few children placed on child protection plans for CSA, said the centre.

The number of children placed on plans for sexual abuse was equivalent to just 7% of the children whose initial assessments recorded CSA or CSE as concerns in 2023-24. This was similar to the equivalent proportion for physical abuse (6%) but much lower than those of emotional abuse (24%) or neglect (37%).

The number of cases falls far short of the CSA Centre’s estimate – based on a prevalence study published in 2011 – that 500,000 children in England and Wales are sexually abused each year.

Lack of practitioner skill, knowledge and confidence

The findings follow the CSA Centre’s study of intrafamilial CSA for the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, published last year, which found practitioners were frequently not identifying abuse due to a lack of skills, knowledge and confidence.

A consistent theme from cases analysed and discussions with practitioners was an over-reliance on children verbally reporting abuse.

Practitioners reported being told in training that they needed to wait for children to approach them to disclose abuse, rather than proactively talking to them when they had concerns. They were also deterred from speaking to children by an “overriding fear of interfering with any possible future criminal investigation”.

This approach ran contrary to research indicating the multiple barriers children faced in disclosing CSA. Some children in the reviews reported waiting for someone to ask them in order to be able to disclose.

Ministers due to response to CSA inquiry

The CSA Centre’s latest report comes with the government due to publish its plan for implementing the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which reported in 2022.

Ministers have already agreed to implement the inquiry’s headline recommendation – requiring those in positions of trust with children to report cases of CSA that are disclosed to them, or that they witness, or face criminal sanctions.

CSA director Ian Dean said its latest report, and those preceding it, “[underlined] the need for system-wide change in how sexually abused children are identified, responded to and protected by all statutory safeguarding agencies”.

“We need to build a system where professionals have strong leadership, clear guidance, and proper support to identify abuse early and prevent further harm,” he added.

Story updated 2 April 2025

Professionals and others in positions of trust in relation to children will face a duty to report child sexual abuse (CSA).

Home secretary Yvette Cooper announced yesterday that the government would be reviving the mandatory reporting policy, dropped by its Conservative predecessors on the eve of the 2024 election.

The idea was one of the key recommendations from the 2022 final report of the seven-year Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), and was designed to address historic under-reporting of CSA by practitioners and others in a position of trust over children.

Watered down mandatory reporting plans

Though accepted by the Conservatives, the previous government watered down IICSA’s recommendations in two key respects:

• There would be no requirement to report CSA in cases where recognised indicators of abuse were present. Instead, the duty would only apply where a person had observed CSA or a perpetrator or victim had disclosed it, which the inquiry found or implied were relatively rare.
• There would be no criminal sanction for anyone who did not report cases of witnessed or disclosed abuse. Instead, they would be referred to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) to be potentially barred from working with children, with professionals referred to regulators for further sanctions.

Charities and campaigners criticised the Conservative proposals for lacking teeth.

Pledge to introduce criminal sanction

In a statement to the House of Commons yesterday, Cooper said that the Crime and Policing Bill would make it “an offence with professional and criminal sanctions to fail to report or cover up child sexual abuse”.

However, when the Crime and Policing Bill was published in February 2025, it did not include a sanction for failing to comply with the duty to report; instead, there was only a duty for preventing or deterring a person with complying with their duty to report.*

In its report, IICSA said these included sexualised or sexually harmful behaviour, physical signs of abuse or consequences of sexual abuse such as pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. While proposing that mandatory reporting should apply when indicators were present, it said failure to report should not be met by a criminal sanction, because of the complexity of identifying these factors.

Political row over CSE

The home secretary’s statement came in the wake of a huge political row over the government’s response to child sexual exploitation (CSE) by organised gangs.

This followed the government’s decision to reject a request from Oldham Council to set up a public inquiry into CSE in the borough to address gaps the authority had identified in a 2022 review into the issue.

In a letter to the authority, sent in October 2024, safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said it was for the authority itself to commission a fresh inquiry, citing the positive impact of previous local reviews, in Rotherham and Telford.

When news of the letter became public last week, X owner Elon Musk posted that Phillips – who had a long career in tackling violence against women and girls before becoming an MP – should be imprisoned for the decision, while the Conservatives also criticised the decision to reject Oldham’s request.

Prime minister Keir Starmer attacked Musk’s intervention – though without naming him – and defended Phillips in a statement yesterday (source: politics.co.uk). Meanwhile, Cooper called on MPs to respect the historic cross-party consensus on tackling CSE and showing respect for victims and survivors, while rejecting online misinformation.

Other pledges on tackling abuse and exploitation

Alongside her announcement on mandatory reporting, she also pledged to:

• Create a new performance framework, with data collection requirements, for the police concerning CSA and CSE. This responds to IICSA’s recommendation to introduce a core data set for the issue, to tackle what it found was a lack of reliable data, particularly in relation to CSE. The inquiry said the data set should include information on the characteristics of victims and alleged perpetrators of CSA/CSE, including age, sex and ethnicity, the factors that make children more vulnerable to abuse or exploitation and the settings in which abuse or exploitation occur.
• Legislate to make grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences, a recommendation from IICSA’s 2022 report on CSE by organised networks.
• Set up a victims and survivors panel to work with the government on implementing reforms to CSA and CSE.

*The story has been amended following the publication of the Crime and Policing Bill to make clear that there will be no criminal sanction for failing to comply with the duty to report child sexual abuse. 

Agencies are not equipped to protect children from sexual abuse within the family, safeguarding leaders have found.

Children are too often ignored or disbelieved by practitioners who lack the knowledge, skills and confidence to combat infrafamilial child sexual abuse, according to an analysis of serious cases involving 193 children and 177 perpetrators.

As a result, they are frequently not being identified by practitioners, nor are they receiving the response needed for their ongoing safety and recovery, reported the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel.

The panel, which oversees and draws national lessons from serious cases, urged the government to produce a national action plan to drive up the quality of practice, including through improved training and supervision.

‘Robust strategy needed’

“The systemic issues identified in this report are longstanding,” said panel chair Annie Hudson.

Annie Hudson, chair, Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel

“It is vital therefore that government integrates the findings from this review into their reform programme and provides strong leadership to deliver a robust strategy to address [the] stark reality of child sexual abuse in the family environment.”

The review was carried out for the panel by the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (the CSA Centre), the Home Office-funded body that seeks to improve the understanding of, and response to, this form of harm.

What the review involved

The CSA Centre analysed 136 reviews of serious cases submitted to the panel from from June 2018 to November 2023. These involved 193 children who had been sexually abused by a family member.

The centre also held online discussions with 107 practitioners and managers who had been involved in 10 of the cases,  interviewed two children who had been abused and five people who had sexually abused a child.

In addition, they reviewed recent research and practice guidance on intrafamilial CSA and consulted other experts by experience and practitioners from agencies including children’s social care, the police and health.

Over-reliance on children reporting abuse

A consistent theme from cases analysed and discussions with practitioners was an over-reliance on children verbally reporting abuse.

Practitioners reported being told in training that they needed to wait for children to approach them to disclose abuse, rather than proactively talking to them when they had concerns.

They were also deterred from speaking to children by an “overriding fear of interfering with any possible future criminal investigation”.

This approach ran contrary to research indicating the multiple barriers children faced in disclosing CSA. Some children in the reviews reported waiting for someone to ask them in order to be able to disclose.

Not believing children

Despite these barriers, there was evidence that children had told someone about the abuse – sometimes on multiple occasions – in 72% of the reviews analysed.

However, the review found “many situations where children had directly told practitioners they were being sexually abused and were not believed”.

Photo posed by model (credit: Erika Richard/Adobe Stock)

When some children later retracted their disclosures, practitioners often took this as evidence the abuse had not happened, without exploring whether this was down to fear, shame, embarrassment or intimidation. As a result, children were left at greater risk of further harm.

Lack of consideration of disability and race

Practitioners also did not sufficiently consider children’s needs in relation to their race, ethnicity and culture, said the report. This included not identifying signs that a forced marriage was being planned for 14-year-old black African child from a Muslim family, who was subsequently raped by the adult cousin she was married to.

In another case, a boy of mixed white and Asian heritage was subjected to adultification bias by practitioners, who treated him as being older than his age and blamed for his behaviour.

Few of the reviews concerning disabled children provided evidence that their impairments had been taken into account.

Those who were non-verbal or pre-verbal were left without any response to their abuse because of the reliance on verbal disclosure, while practitioners did not pursue signs of possible CSA in children with learning disabilities because of potential communication barriers.

In other cases, practitioners attributed children’s distressed behaviour to their condition, for example, autism or ADHD, rather than considering CSA.

Not identifying signs of CSA

More broadly, professionals lacked understanding of the signs that might indicate a child was being abused, including harmful sexual behaviour or other sexualised behaviour, distress, seeking emergency contraception or sexually transmitted infections.

“We saw many situations where practitioners would seek other explanations for symptoms and behaviours in children that could indicate possible sexual abuse without seeking to establish a wider picture of the child and their family circumstances or build a picture of concern about child sexual abuse,” the report said.

Inadequate risk assessment of perpetrators

A third of cases involved a family member with a history of sexual offending or who was known to present a risk of sexual harm.

However, in some cases, they moved into homes with young children without a risk assessment or an effective safeguarding response being put in place.

Adults convicted of sexual offences against other adults were not perceived as a risk to children, while those whose offending was less recent were particularly unlikely to be identified.

Social work assessments criticised 

The report also criticised the quality of child and family assessments, which “did not sufficiently analyse signs and indicators of
child sexual abuse, despite this often being the impetus for them taking place”.

Photo: Krasimira Nevenova/Fotolia

It said it was “particularly striking” that those who knew the children best were often not invited to contribute, or practitioners’ views were disregarded when these differed from those of the assessing social worker.

Assessments often did not focus on the adult about whom there was concerns, even when the child had reported CSA, while the report said there was little use of genograms or other such tools to consider children’s relationships with extended family.

Where other forms of abuse had been reported along with CSA, as was the case with most reviews, practitioners tended to focus on them, “with the concerns of sexual abuse becoming lost from sight”.

Concerns over evidence thresholds

Practitioners also felt that the criminal justice standard of proof (beyond reasonable doubt), rather than the safeguarding threshold (the balance of probabilities), was needed to take action in a case.

As a result, referrals were either not made or were rejected on the basis that they did not meet the threshold for action, and investigations which resulted in no further police action led to all agencies ceasing their involvement.

This meant that not only was support not provided to the child, but further signs of abuse were then missed, for example, through councils rejecting further CSA referrals about the child.

Police and child protection enquiries ‘completely separate’

Poor joint working between the police and children’s social care was another issue highlighted by the review, which found that, in some cases, criminal investigations and child protection enquiries “happened completely separately”, with a lack of clarity about what information should be shared.

At times, the police acted on concerns before discussing these with children’s social care or holding a strategy discussion, which then undermined the assessment of risk

Lack of training, guidance and supervision

The panel’s report attributed the practice failings it identified to a lack of effective training, guidance and supervision for practitioners.

It noted particular training gaps in relation to identifying signs of CSA, understanding of grooming, child development, working with disabled children, assessing sexual risk.

It also found “a lack of robust supervision and managerial oversight” left practitioners “lacking confidence in organisational support to take action”.

On the back of its report, the panel said the government “must signal in the strongest possible way their commitment to make
sure that necessary improvements are secured and provide assurance that
this will be fully translated into concrete actions to make a tangible difference
to children’s lives

Recommendations for government

The panel’s key recommendation is for the government to produce a national plan to “secure the necessary practice improvements identified in this report”.

Alongside this, it said that ministers should:

• Review and update initial training, early career and ongoing professional development and supervision, so practitioners can improve their identification and response to CSA. As part of this, it should make guidance and training available for staff in universal and specialist services, such as social work, about how and when to talk to children and families when CSA is suspected.
• Require safeguarding partners to audit and review local guidance and practice so a clear distinction is made between thresholds about significant harm to a child (balance of probabilities) and those influencing criminal investigations (beyond reasonable doubt). It should also stress that safeguarding decisions must be based on all indicators of sexual abuse and should not rely solely on verbal statements from children.
• Review the application of the child sex offender disclosure scheme – also known as Sarah’s Law – to ensure police proactively inform the person best placed to protect a child when someone in the family environment has a conviction for sexual offending or intelligence has been received that they pose a risk.
• Make sure that whenever information comes to light which indicates that someone in the family (adult or young person) has a previous allegation or conviction (spent or unspent) for any type of sexual offending, this leads to a multi-agency discussion, which involves an up-to-date assessment of risk.

Social care reforms ‘will address recommendations’

In response to the report, a Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said: “Any instance of child abuse is abhorrent, and this report importantly highlights the weaknesses in the system that have shielded abusers and left children at risk of harm.”

They said that the government’s children’s social care reforms, unveiled last week, would help address the panel’s recommendations.

“We will require every council to implement a joined-up approach to child protection, strengthen safeguards for home education and improve information sharing, to prevent children falling through the cracks,” the spokesperson added.

Recommendations for local safeguarding partners

The panel also made a number of recommendations for local safeguarding partners, including:

• Undertaking a multi-agency training needs assessment in relation to CSA and meeting identified training needs.
• Auditing multi-agency decision making in response to CSA.
• Ensuring that, following the conclusion of child protection and police investigations, multi-agency discussions are held to consider risk to children and how they will be protected and supported.
• Reviewing how people who present a risk of sexual harm and who have contact with children are assessed and managed, with consider the use of civil orders and other measures to effectively manage the risk.
• Take necessary steps to ensure that all practitioners (including foster carers) understand and are confident in talking directly to
  children, and families about CSA concerns, taking due account of ethnicity, language and disability.

Directors urge prevention focus

Giving the Association of Directors of Children’s Services’ response to the review, president Andy Smith said: “Prevention must be the ultimate goal to ensure that no child is subject to abuse. We need tackle this issue as a collective, with the full commitment of central and local government, all child protection agencies, voluntary organisations and the wider community.

“Directors and their local authorities are committed to working with our partners to ensure the right safeguards are in place to prevent child sexual abuse in all its forms so that all children are able to lead safe and happy childhoods.”

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Half of Rape Crisis centres are expecting to make cuts to services, despite growing demand from children’s social care.

That was among the findings of a Rape Crisis England & Wales (RCEW) survey carried out from May to June 2024, responded to by 34 of its 38 members.

Rape Crisis centres provide counselling, advocacy, peer support, helpline and other services to victims and survivors of sexual violence, chiefly women and girls.

Growing demand from children’s social care

RCEW said centres supported 88,000 victims/survivors in 2022-23, a quarter of them children, while it added that the number of referrals from children’s social care services was growing, along with demand from statutory mental health services and GPs.

However, 47% of centres were expecting a reduction in their core funding, with most of the rest saying that they did not know whether this would happen. As a result, a similar proportion were planning to reduce services.

Four in ten (41%) were expecting a reduction in counselling services, while 35% were anticipating a reduction or loss of independent sexual violence advocacy (ISVA) services.

Almost a third (30%) were concerned that their centres would close.

RCEW said the situation was the result of multiple funding sources from police and crime commissioners and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) coming to an end in March 2025, chief among them the rape and sexual abuse support fund (RASAF).

It also said that centres suffered from “a chronic lack of funding from NHS England”, despite high levels of demand from the NHS, while members also reported a lack of resource from councils.

Services ‘face closure’

“It’s vital that survivors of rape and sexual abuse can access independent, quality assured and specialist sexual violence and abuse services, like those provided by Rape Crisis centres, whenever and wherever they are needed,” said RCEW chief executive Ciara Bergman.

“Many people assume that such services will always be available, but without funding, many face closure.”

The new Labour government has committed to halve levels of violence against women and girls within the next decade.

Bergman urged ministers to continue funding for the RASAF to show its commitment to this objective and “to recognise the marginalisation and chronic underfunding of sexual violence and abuse services”.

If you are aged 16+, live in England and Wales and have been affected by rape, child sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment or any other form of sexual violence at any time in your life, you can contact RCEW’s helpline on 0808 500 2222 for free and 24/7. There are also helplines for Scotland (0808 801 0302) and Northern Ireland (0800 0246 991).

A planned new duty on staff working with children to report child sexual abuse (CSA) was dropped in last week’s pre-election rush to pass legislation.

The government’s Criminal Justice Bill fell in the so-called ‘wash-up’ period between prime minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to call an election last Wednesday (22 May) and the end of the parliamentary session last Friday.

Ministers had planned to introduce an amendment into that bill to introduce so-called mandatory reporting of CSA, a key recommendation of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA)’s final report, published in October 2022.

But the fall of the bill means that it will be up to the incoming government to decide whether to introduce the measure.

A re-elected Conservative government would likely revive its planned measure, while Labour has previously said it has been supportive of a mandatory reporting law since 2014.

Watered down version of CSA inquiry proposals

However, the current government’s plans are a significantly watered-down version of what IICSA proposed in two key respects:

• There would be no requirement to report CSA in cases where recognised indicators of abuse were present. Instead, the duty would only apply where a person had observed CSA or a perpetrator or victim had disclosed it, which the inquiry found or implied were all relatively rare.
• There would be no criminal sanction for anyone who did not report cases of witnessed or disclosed abuse. Instead, they would be referred to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) to be potentially barred from working with children, with professionals referred to regulators for further sanctions.

Charities and campaigners have criticised the proposals for lacking teeth.

For example, the campaign group Mandate Now pointed out that there was no mechanism in the amendment put forward by the government to require a report to the DBS to be made where a person failed to report CSA when mandated to do so.

For this and other reasons, it described the proposals as “a waste of printer’s ink”.

A proposed requirement on people working with children to report child sexual abuse (CSA) to children’s social care or the police is “a waste of printer’s ink” and will fail the majority of victims.

That was the warning from campaigners after the government published amendments to its Criminal Justice Bill designed to bring in so-called mandatory reporting, a key recommendation from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA)’s final report in 2022.

Under the plans, people carrying out regulated activities with children – those which a person barred by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) are prohibited from doing – or in specified roles would have to report CSA that they witness or have disclosed to them by a victim or perpetrator.

Failure to do so would result in the person being referred to the DBS to be potentially barred from working with children or to professional regulators, the Home Office said, while it would also be a criminal offence to obstruct someone covered by mandatory reporting duty from carrying out their duty.

Deviation from inquiry proposals on mandatory reporting

IICSA proposed mandatory reporting as a key way of tackling what it described as the systemic under-identification of CSA in England and Wales, a recommendation that the Home Office accepted.

But when the department unveiled its plans for consultation last year, it was heavily criticised for watering down IICSA’s proposals, which themselves had been criticised as too weak by some campaigners.

This included dropping the inquiry’s proposals of criminal sanctions for a failure to report witnessed or disclosed abuse and a requirement on staff to report in cases where they had observed recognised indicators of CSA – though without failure to do so being an offence.

The Home Office confirmed last week that it was going ahead with mandatory reporting faced criticism for the perceived lack of teeth behind them.

Proposals ‘a waste of printer’s ink’

Mandate Now, which campaigns for a mandatory reporting law, described the proposals as “a waste or printer’s ink”.

It pointed out that there would be “no criminal or other sanction for failing to report”, as there appeared to be no requirement in the Criminal Justice Bill amendments on anyone else to refer the person to the DBS or to regulators if they failed to make a report.

This is in contrast to provisions in the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 requiring employers and employment agencies to refer people to the DBS if they have caused harm, or pose a risk of harm, to children or vulnerable adults.

Similar criticisms were made by Christian safeguarding charity Thirtyone:eight (formerly the Churches Child Protection Advisory Service), which said the lack of sanctions downgraded the duty to being “advisory”, rather than mandatory.

‘Loopholes’ in reporting requirements

Mandate Now also highlighted “loopholes” in the reporting duty. These would relieve people of their duty if they reasonably believed that another person had or was about to make the report; or would allow them to delay reporting for as long as they reasonably believed someone else would report on their behalf or that reporting was not in the best interests of the child.

It pointed out that a person tasked with reporting on another’s behalf would not be under the duty to report because they had received the information second-hand, which it said greatly increased the risk of a report not being made.

In its response to the consultation, the Home Office said the provision around delaying reporting in a child’s best interests was designed to prevent children from disengaging with services or not opening up about their experiences.

However, Mandate Now said having the discretion to delay reporting in cases of serious harm to a child was “entirely contrary to modern safeguarding practice”, which required immediate reporting to the police or children’s social care.

Duty ‘designed to achieve nothing’

Echoing previous concerns, Mandate Now also heavily criticised the scope of the duty to report, which would apply in cases where the person had witnessed the abuse, seen an image or video, or heard a recording indicating abuse, or received a disclosure from the child or perpetrator.

Mandate Now quoted IICSA’s final report as saying that CSA invariably happened in private, and that research indicated that the average time for a victim to disclose abuse was 26 years.

It added that disclosure by a perpetrator was “so rare that the IICSA report doesn’t mention any examples at all of it happening”.

That was the reason IICSA proposed applying mandatory reporting to cases where a person observed recognised indicators of CSA, such as children displaying knowledge or interest in sexual acts inappropriate to their age, using unexpected sexual language or having sexual health conditions.

“The only events triggering the duty to report are ones that are extremely unlikely to occur,” Mandate Now added. “This is designed to achieve nothing.”

Most victims will be failed – charity

Thirtyone:eight made a similar point, saying the duty would consequently “fail the majority of children and young people experiencing child sexual abuse”

It also pointed out that most respondents to a Home Office call for evidence last year said the duty should apply to suspected abuse, based on recognised indicators, as well as known cases.

“Whilst government action on this is welcome, it is deeply concerning that the legislation proposed in this current form has so many flaws that will inhibit the effective safeguarding of children and young people. The various consultations on mandatory reporting have provided a wealth of expert evidence,” said Thirtyone:eight chief executive, Justin Humphreys.

“The task ahead is to enact legislation that reflects this to create a more robust set of safeguards.”

LGA supportive but says duty ‘not a silver bullet’

The Local Government Association said it supported the government amendments on mandatory reporting “as part of a holistic approach to improving the response to CSA”.

However, it added: “While it is a positive step forward, the duty must not be considered a silver bullet nor introduced in isolation.

“It must be supported by wider national action to ensure all professionals are trained to identify abuse, support victims to disclose abuse and ensure they receive the best possible support when they do.”

Exemptions for consensual sex and child  disclosures

In its response to the consultation, the Home Office confirmed that it was exempting from the duty cases of consensual sexual activity between children aged over 13, where the potential reporter was satisfied that a report would not be appropriate.

It also said it would exclude disclosures by children of harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) towards peers to avoid deterring them from seeking support and in acknowledgement of HSB being an indicator of having been a victim of CSA.

Duty ‘will ensure children are heard’

“The mandatory reporting duty will, first and foremost, be a safeguarding measure,” the Home Office said.

“It will ensure that the words of children and young people who are seeking help are heard. It sets high standards of conduct and provides reporters with clear instructions on how to act when they are made aware of child sexual abuse.”

It added: “The reporting duty itself is accompanied by tough, punitive measures for anyone who seeks to cover up abuse. An individual who seeks to obstruct a reporter from carrying out their duty to report will face the prospect of up to seven years imprisonment.”

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Staff and volunteers working with children will face a duty to report child sexual abuse they are aware of, the government announced yesterday.

Those who fail to fulfil the mandatory reporting duty face being referred to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) and potentially banned from working with children.

Also, it will be a criminal offence to intentionally block others from reporting CSA, punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Government mandatory reporting plan

The Home Office said that it would introduce mandatory reporting of CSA through amendments to the current Criminal Justice Bill.

The duty will apply to anyone carrying out regulated activities, which includes all unsupervised work or volunteering with children or work for specific establishments that gives the person the opportunity to have contact with children.

Though it has not provided the details of its plan yet, yesterday’s announcement made clear that the government would be, broadly, pursuing the model of mandatory reporting that it consulted on last year.

This falls short of the blueprint put forward by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in its final report, published in October 2022.

CSA inquiry proposals

IICSA proposed that staff and volunteers working with children should be mandated to report CSA that was disclosed to them by the victim or perpetrator; that they witnessed, or in cases where they observed “recognised indicators” of abuse.

However, in its consultation, the Home Office rejected adopting the third criterion, after receiving “strong feedback” that “recognising child sexual abuse is likely to be difficult for those without formal training or who see children infrequently”.

This position was reflected in its statement yesterday, which said that the duty to report would apply in cases where the worker or volunteer knew that a child is being sexually abused.

Failure to report will not be crime

IICSA also said that it should be a criminal offence not to report abuse in cases where the practitioner had witnessed CSA or had it disclosed to them.

However, the Home Office said that it wanted to avoid inappropriately criminalising people who work with children and opted, instead, for referral to the DBS, potentially leading to being barred, as its chosen sanction.

IICSA saw mandatory reporting as being a way of tackling “systemic under-identification of CSA”, with experience from other countries showing that the policy led to a significant increase in identification.

Under-identification of abuse

The Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre) has estimated that about 500,000 children are sexually abused in England each year, based on a 2009 prevalence survey by the NSPCC, updated for changes in population.

This dwarfs the 2,290 children were supported through child protection plans for CSA in England in 2022-23, the lowest level in 14 years, according to the CSA Centre.

At the time of last year’s consultation, the Home Office estimated that its proposed model for mandatory reporting would not lead to significant increases in referrals.

Concerns over services being overwhelmed

Despite this, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services raised concerns about the prospects of a significant spike in referrals overwhelming services in its response to the consultation, and also following yesterday’s announcement.

“A rushed, poorly scoped and under resourced policy could adversely affect the very children it seeks to protect if services become overwhelmed and support is not available for children when they need,” said president John Pearce.

“Similarly, it may impact on workforce recruitment and retention, which is extremely challenging across a number of key professions, destabilising vital public services that children and young people rely on.”

While accepting that mandatory reporting was now government policy, Pearce called for talks with the Home Office, Department for Education and Ministry of Justice on the effective implementation of the plan.

Mandatory reporting ‘must be matched with resource’

There was also a cautious response from a coalition of 64 charities, IICSA Changemakers, set up to bring about changes in the response to CSA in the light of the inquiry.

“Adults and authorities’ responses to children’s disclosures are critical in ensuring young victims get the action and support they need,” said Vicki Green, chief executive of coalition member the Marie Collins Foundation. “But mandatory reporting must be matched with sufficient resources and easier access to therapeutic support services.

“Likewise, a legal obligation to report must not contribute towards young victims and survivors being unable to safely discuss abuse. It is vital that young people have safe, confidential spaces to discuss their experiences and talk to a trusted adult.”

Meanwhile, a former member of IICSA’s victims and survivors consultative panel (VSCP), set up to ensure victims’ experiences informed its work, stressed that mandatory reporting was just one of 20 recommendations from the inquiry.

Chris Tuck said: “It is part of a package of measures that need to be implemented in order to better protect children from child sexual abuse and exploitation. I personally welcome mandatory reporting but it needs teeth and sanctions in order to be successful.”

An estimated 55,000 people are waiting for child sexual abuse support services in England and Wales, with average waits of six months, experts have warned.

The Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre) found that just half of services were able to meet demand for services including one-to-one therapy or counselling, group-based interventions, helplines or advocacy for child or adult victims/survivors and family members.

A similar proportion delivered services to just 100 people each in 2021-22, with the centre estimating that there were between 10,000 and 20,000 victims/survivors per service in each of the regions of England and Wales.

Postcode lottery and significant service gaps

Alongside a postcode lottery in provision, the centre identified significant gaps in support for specific groups, including people from ethnic minority backgrounds, boys and men and victims/survivors of intra-familial or online abuse.

It also found that the majority of providers were struggling financially, with two-thirds not fully confident that they could sustain their existing service provision into the next financial year, often because of short-term contracts.

Services – most of whom were charities – also faced challenges recruiting and retaining staff because of the skills required and their difficulties in offering competitive salaries. More than half were using volunteers to fill roles such as befriending, administrative or technical support, and service promotion.

The centre’s findings were published in a report last week, Support Matters: The landscape of child sexual abuse support services in England and Wales, which it said was the most comprehensive picture of provision ever compiled.

It carried out a mapping exercise in 2022-23, identifying 468 specialist services for victims/survivors and their families in England and Wales, and then interviewed representatives from 168 of these, on which its findings were based.

‘Unacceptable’ lack of support

CSA Centre director Ian Dean warned that the research revealed a “huge” and “growing” gap between provision and need and said it was “unacceptable” that some survivors were waiting years to access services that could make a difference to their lives.

“Research and testimonies have consistently shown the vital role that timely support can play in reducing the short and long-term impacts of child sexual abuse, and the huge difference that services make to the lives of victims and survivors,” he said.

On the back of the research, the CSA Centre called for the UK and Welsh governments, councils and other commissioners to:

1. Ensure sufficient funding for services to maintain their current provision and provide timely support, including by offering long-term, unrestricted funding to ensure financial stability for providers.
2. Provide additional funding to enable services to expand to meet the needs of existing and new users.
3. Provide further funding to help services develop their infrastructure, for example improving data collection and analysis systems.
4. Resource services to train and upskill their staff and boost training for non-specialist staff in statutory services.
5. Commission research into specific groups’ support needs and access to services, such as those of boys, physically disabled children and people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
6. Improve commissioners’ expertise in funding CSA services.

Independent inquiry findings

The centre’s findings echo those of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), whose 2022 final report found “considerable unmet need for all forms of support services”, driven by a postcode lottery in provision, a lack of specialist support and tight eligibility criteria.

It called for the UK and Welsh governments to provide a national guarantee that child victims are offered specialist and accredited therapeutic support.

In April 2023, the Welsh Government accepted the recommendation in principle, but said it needed to “consider, with partners, the options for commissioning and delivering this support”.

The following month, the UK government said it accepted there was “more we can do to ensure that those who have suffered get access to the provision they need to help them recover and rebuild their lives”.

It said it was “committed to making sure these services are available to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse” in England, and that it would “elicit views on the future of therapeutic support, including possible systemic changes to provision”.