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”.

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. 

Our interview with June Thoburn is part of a series of profiles of key figures who have shaped social work over the past five decades, to mark Community Care’s 50th anniversary. Previous interviewees include Eileen Munro and Herbert Laming.

It is difficult to choose one moment from Professor June Thoburn’s career to explore. There are simply too many.

Since qualifying in the 1960s and then moving into academia, she has carried out extensive research, in the UK and overseas, about child protection, family support, adoption and services for children placed away from home.

Crucially, she has contributed to reforms that allowed parents to attend child protection conferences and been part of the advisory groups on both the Children Act 1989 and the Adoption and Children Act 2002, conducting government-commissioned research that informed the latter.

But despite the various topics available to broach, our conversation kept circling back to power.

Her interest in the subject began in the 1970s, while researching her book ‘Captive Clients’, which examined children in care returning home ‘on trial’. She was able to witness first-hand how the fear of practitioners’ power influenced parents’ behaviour – and honesty.

A loss of discretion in social work practice

During interviews with parents, Thoburn noticed that, while many held their social workers in high regard, they were often driven to lie out of fear.

In one example, a mother with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) was struggling following the return of her child, resulting in the child sometimes being physically reprimanded.

“She was obsessed with cleanliness and couldn’t control herself,” says Thoburn. “As a researcher, I asked, ‘Are you hitting him?’. She said, ‘Yes, sometimes. But I wouldn’t tell [my social worker].’.”

Yet while the practitioner was aware of the parent’s difficulties, and would have reported it had the situation escalated, she was able to help the family with discretion.

“That was about power. [The social worker] did not feel that her job was on the line and […] that she’d better report it.”

Thoburn has seen that discretion dissipate over the past few decades. An emerging climate of fear in social work has pressured practitioners to report incidents where a more delicate approach may have better supported the child’s safety and the family’s wellbeing, she says.

‘Serious concerns’ about mandatory reporting of abuse

A recent example of this trend, Thoburn says, is the government’s plan to require staff working with children to inform social care or the police of any incident of child sexual abuse (CSA) they witness or have disclosed to them, with a failure to do potentially leading to the person being barred from such work.

While some campaigners see the government’s plan as toothless, Thoburn, a leading opponent of so-called mandatory reporting, argues that it underestimates the complexity of CSA cases and that its introduction would damage the trust between social workers and families.

Photo: Golib Tolibov/Adobe Stock

“I have serious concerns that it will profoundly affect children’s services,” she says of the plan, which is based on a recommendation from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

Her concern lies with the loss of trust that could follow. She offers an example of someone disclosing an incident of abuse without wanting their social worker to report it, but the practitioner feeling pressured to inform the police instead of discussing how to proceed with the person they’re supporting.

Thoburn believes that for a child or parent to trust a social worker, they need to know that “they can retain some level of control over their own information”.

“The social worker, with team leader support, has to be able to use their discretion if they are to win the trust of children.”

Under the government’s plans, staff or volunteers under the duty to report would have a discretion to delay reporting in the best interests of the child.

However, because of the upcoming general election, the plan has been dropped and it will be up to the new government to decide whether to introduce it.

A social worker’s power

June Thoburn received the award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Social Work’ at the 2016 Social Worker of the Year Awards, presented by Richard Kemp (L) of Liverpool Council and James Rook (R) of Sanctuary Social Care.
Photo: Matt Grayson

For Thoburn, everything comes back to understanding the power imbalance between practitioners and families.

In another example from ‘Captive Clients’, one prospective adoptive parent told her, “If the social worker says jump, I jump”. The fear of the social worker’s power to remove children was present in all families she spoke with.

“I don’t think enough is made about how social workers use their power,” she says now.

“Yes, you need technique, but power and relationships are the two central parts of social work and have always been there.”

That power extends beyond taking children into care. It’s also about the ability to provide or refuse a service.

“When you get a referral and a decision is taken on whether this is or isn’t a child in need, that’s huge power,” she says.

“If you say, ‘I’m not going to accommodate this child’, that child and its family lose access [to a whole range of services]. I see social work basically as a very benign and important service. But with access to a social worker comes this intervention in your life. So, it’s so central to understand the social work relationship.”

More than 40 years after Captive Clients was published, practice is more focused on intervention than forging relationships, says Thoburn.

Part of the problem, she says, lies with the term ‘intervention’ itself, which is a “short-term technique” that goes against the long-term, relationship-based model that should dictate social work.

“You take a five-year-old into care and [they] will need a relationship with a social worker for the next 20-odd years. In this notion of intervention, you go in, do something, and get out, rather than find a way of [supporting and] being alongside that person.”

Parents in child protection conferences

Thoburn has a long history of promoting parental and children’s rights within social care.

In the late 1980s, she led an influential piece of research which led to parents having the right to attend child protection conferences.

Despite initially being a “tiny piece of research” conducted in Hackney, its results coincided with the 1988 Cleveland Inquiry report. This examined the circumstances behind 121 children from the area being removed from their families the previous year because of suspected child sexual abuse, on the evidence of paediatricians. Most of the children were subsequently returned, and the inquiry was critical of the way practitioners had treated parents.

One of the inquiry’s recommendations was that councils should inform parents about child protection case conferences and invite them to attend, other than in exceptional circumstances. Previously, there was no entitlement for parents to attend, despite the risk that child protection action could lead to proceedings to take their children into care.

When the government decided to trial the reform, Thoburn’s research received funding to expand, eventually leading to statutory guidance requiring parents to be invited to participate.

The changes shook up how these meetings were conducted – they started being “properly recorded and bringing in trained, impartial social workers to chair”, Thoburn says.

“One of the key aspects of our research was that the chair was neutral and would meet the parent beforehand to explain what was going on. Before that, the chair of those meetings was the team leader, who was hardly impartial.”

This research set the tone for the rest of Thoburn’s career, as she has continued to fight for parents’ and children’s voices to be heard and included in decision making.

‘The law has improved, but practise hasn’t’

However, decades later, she says that while the rights of people involved with social services have improved, practice has not.

“There’s less flexibility in the nature of the service that’s offered. [It’s] taking away the discretion to consult with the parents and say, ‘What do you think’s going to help you?’.”

Thoburn recalls supporting a young mother with early stages of Parkinson’s disease. She had prioritised asking the mother what kind of service she sought – help with practical things, like money, or a more in-depth, relationship-based service that would also look into her mental state.

“She opted for the practical things. We worked together for a long time as she did have a lot of needs, but equally, I didn’t do the more psychologically-based counselling because she didn’t want to delve into that. And I went to that person’s wedding,” says Thoburn.

“I could have referred her to a mental health service. But [it was important] to have that conversation of, ‘What sort of service do you want from me?’.”

This is a rarity nowadays, she says, largely due to constraints brought about by high and complex caseloads, a lack of time, workforce and funding, and cases being passed from practitioner to practitioner.

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The impact of fast-track courses

Part of it, she notes, is also new generations of social workers becoming more comfortable with following a set list of techniques, rather than reflecting on suitable approaches to use.

“Scaling questions, motivational interviewing – it’s important to know about these new models. But this is where casework comes in and where you decide whether this particular intervention works,” says Thoburn.

“For example, where does an intervention fit with the notion of poverty? You don’t go in and say, ‘Well the service we offer is 10 sessions of parenting training’, when you know the kid is just refusing to eat from the food bank.”

She attributes this, in part, to the growing number of practitioners being trained through fast-track courses that see them qualifying in just over a year.

“These fast-tracks emphasise technique, rather than reflection,” says Thoburn, who used to teach on university social work programmes “There isn’t a lot of time to really think about the ethics.”

There are two fast-track schemes geared towards training children’s social workers – Step Up to Social Work and Frontline – and Thoburn appears to have in mind the model used by the latter, which is, broadly, replicated by mental health scheme Think Ahead.

Under this, trainees enter an intensive five-week course before transitioning to a year of learning through employment, where they are managed and supervised by experienced practitioners.

They undertake further study during their qualifying year and are then expected to complete a master’s in social work following qualification.

Frontline says its curriculum “develops reflective practitioners, who are able to demonstrate a deep and systematic value and ethical base underpinning all social work practice and academic activities”.

However, Thoburn believes that that the immediate shift from study to employment setting undermines their learning journey.

“There’s not a lot of time to contemplate whether they like how [things are done] in this authority. Whereas, when you have placements, the student can say, ‘I like what they do here, but I’m not so sure about that’, and discuss that with their tutor or other students in different placements.

“There is a difference between being a trainee and being a student.”

Yet Thoburn admits that having the financial stability that fast-track programmes offer can be attractive – especially with so many university social work students struggling due to inadequate bursaries.

It is something she hopes will be addressed by the new government.

‘There’s an elephant in the room for the new government’   

Image: 5second

This is likely to be a Labour administration, with the party currently 20 percentage points ahead of the Conservatives in the polls, with less than two weeks to go until the 4 July election.

The party has so far announced that it would introduce fair pay for adult social care workers, but has made no funding commitments to either children’s or adults’ social care, let alone social work education.

“I think if there’s an elephant in the room for the next government, and it’s lack of proper funding for local authorities,” says Thoburn, who is secretary of the Labour Social Work Group, for practitioners who are members of the party.

Like others, she’d like to see a national recruitment campaign for social workers, better bursaries and, ideally, a minister with responsibility for both children’s and adult social care, to bridge the gap between services.

The positives in UK social work

However, while the country mulls over the myriad issues that face social care, Thoburn points out that not enough credit is given to the permanence the sector secures for children.

The UK’s children social care system has managed to redefine and provide permanence for children in ways that other countries Thoburn has researched in – including America and Canada – have not, she says.

“[We] decided that [permanence] is more than adoption. You can place a 15-year-old with a foster family and it might be that it will put down roots and that will be their family for life. It’s not just about babies,” she says.

“Research has shown that children need stability, love, relationships and we really emphasise that [in practice]. If only the resources, particularly the social workers, were available.”

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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.”

Safeguarding leaders have launched a national review into child sexual abuse within the family due to a “concerning number” of such cases.

The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel said the inquiry would examine how practitioners and agencies could improve how they identified, assessed and responded to CSA within the family.

The panel, whose role is to oversee and draw national lessons from serious cases, has commissioned the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre) to lead on the review.

‘Concerning number of CSA cases’

Annie Hudson, chair, Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel

“We have seen a concerning number of safeguarding cases featuring this type of abuse,” wrote panel chair Annie Hudson to education secretary Gillian Keegan last month, in a letter announcing the review.

“The review will address how multi-agency local and national safeguarding practice can improve to reflect better the evidence on how to protect and respond to children experiencing this specific type of harm.”

The review, which the panel expects to report on by summer 2024, will have two strands.

The inquiry’s two strands

Strand A will examine how practitioners can identify and address hidden abuse, including where perpetrators are employing coercive control or deception.

It will also look at how social workers and others can assess situations based on evidence, such as the child’s voice or changes in behaviour, rather than by assuming too much from non-abusing parents about their ability to keep the child safe.

Strand B will probe challenges and barriers to practitioners recognising and responding to indicators of CSA; appraising relevant contextual information about families, and hearing the child’s voice without relying on verbal disclosure.

Building professional confidence

It will also explore triggers for practitioners suspecting and then reporting CSA and what can be done to build professional confidence in this area.

The review will draw upon, among other things, engagement with children’s services practitioners, safeguarding partners and young people and families.

The panel is responsible for overseeing cases where a child dies or is seriously harmed following suspected, or known, abuse or neglect, which councils must report to it.

‘Substantial underreporting of CSA’

Though the panel has seen a concerning number of CSA cases recently, experts have argued that there is substantial underreporting.

The number of children’s social care assessments in England that identified CSA as a concern rose by 15% in England in 2021-22, to 33,990, the highest level since this information started being published in 2015. A similar level was recorded in 2022-23.

However, the CSA Centre said this was well short of the 500,000 children it estimated fell victim to sexual abuse each year, in a report earlier this year.

Also, there has been a 15.2% drop, from 2018-19 to 2022-23, in the number of child protection plans in England for which CSA was the initial category of abuse.

And in its final report, issued last year, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) concluded that there was systemic under-identification of CSA.

Mandatory reporting

As a result, it said, professionals and others working with children should be mandated to inform the police or children’s social care of cases of abuse they had witnessed, observed the recognised signs of or had disclosed to them.

Failure to report disclosed or witnessed cases would be a criminal offence.

But while the government has agreed to implement so-called mandatory reporting, its proposed way forward falls short of what IICSA proposed.

Not only has the Home Office rejected the idea of a criminal offence for failure to report, it has also not taken forward the proposal to require reporting when a practitioner observed recognised signs of CSA.

And while the inquiry said the introduction of mandatory reporting in other countries had led to a significant rise in the number of children identified as in need of protection, the Home Office assessed that this would not happen with its plan.

The government is not expecting a significant rise in social care referrals from introducing a duty on professionals to report child sexual abuse.

Its assessment came as it issued a consultative proposals to introduce mandatory reporting of CSA, which fall short of those put forward by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), in its final report, published last year.

The Home Office’s proposed duty would require those carrying out regulated activities with children to report CSA to the police or children’s social care, where they have personally witnessed it or it has been disclosed to them by the perpetrator or victim. Regulated activities include all unsupervised work or volunteering with children or work for specific establishments that gives the person the opportunity to have contact with children.

Failure to report would result in referral to the Disclosure and Barring Service, which could result in the person being barred from carrying out regulated activities. Professionally regulated staff, such as social workers, would also be subject to sanctions from their regulator body.

IICSA proposed the introduction of mandatory reporting to combat what it saw as systemic under-identification of CSA.

No requirement to report recognised indicators of CSA

The Home Office accepted the recommendation in April this year, subsequently carried out a “call for evidence” on the topic and last week followed this up with consultative proposals.

However, these differ in significant respects from those put forward by IICSA.

Firstly, while IICSA proposed that mandatory reporting should also apply in cases where the practitioner or volunteer observes “recognised indicators” of CSA, as well as when they witness it or it is disclosed to them, the Home Office has rejected this.

It said that this would have involved “subjective assessment of indicators”, and that it had received “strong feedback” that “recognising child sexual abuse is likely to be difficult for those without formal training or who see children infrequently”.

Criminal offence for failure to report rejected

Secondly, while IICSA said that a failure to report cases of witnessed or disclosed CSA should be a criminal offence, the Home Office has also rejected this, saying respondents to the call for evidence were split on the idea.

The government department said it was “not our intention for the duty to inappropriately criminalise those working with children, often in challenging circumstances”.

It added that “non-criminal sanctions might provide more proportionate penalties which take account of the different levels of responsibility and experience applicable to the wide range of people who undertake regulated activities in relation to children, including volunteers”.

However, it has proposed introducing an offence for anyone who deliberately obstructs an individual from carrying out the mandatory reporting duty, for example, through destroying or concealing evidence or coercion.

“More must be done to address the identification and underreporting of child sexual abuse, and we see the introduction of this duty as an important step in improving awareness and reporting cultures,” the Home Office said.

Mandatory reporting ‘will lead to significant rises in abuse cases’

In its final report, the inquiry said that evidence from other countries showed that the introduction of mandatory reporting led to a significant increase in the number of children identified as in need of protection, and that this figure was higher in jurisdictions with mandatory reporting than those without it.

While CSA referral rates to local authorities are not recorded in England and Wales, the inquiry said the evidence suggested they were small. In 2022-23, CSA perpetrated by an adult was identified as a risk factor following 18,810 children in need assessments (3.7% of the total), with CSA perpetrated by children found in 13,100 cases (2.6%) and child sexual exploitation in 15,020 (3%), latest Department for Education figures show.

IICSA accepted that the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance states that anyone with concerns about a child’s welfare “should make a referral to local authority children’s social care”, doing so immediately in cases of suspected significant harm, such as child sexual abuse.

But the inquiry stressed that this did “not impose a legislative requirement on those working with children to report child sexual abuse”, only setting an expectation that could be departed from in “exceptional circumstances”.

Government not expecting large referral rise

However, in an impact assessment on its proposals, the Home Office said that, while it expected there would be an increase in referrals to children’s social care due to the introduction of mandatory reporting, it did not expect this to be large, because of the existing requirement in Working Together.

The impact assessment modelled a 1%, 2% and 3% rise in the number of annual CSA referrals to children’s social care, with different estimates over the proportion of new referrals that were “precautionary”, where CSA was not then identified.

Based on this, its central estimate was that its proposal would result in an additional 575 children being assessed as having experienced CSA in the first year of its introduction, an average of just under four per local authority.

The Home Office consultation runs until 30 November 2023.

To respond, complete this online questionnaire.

Children will not get the protection they deserve from the government’s response to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), its chair has warned.

Alexis Jay said she was “deeply disappointed” that the government had not accepted the inquiry’s recommendations in full, following ministers’ response, issued last week.

Her comments, in a joint statement with an expert panel representing survivors, were echoed by The Survivors Trust (TST), the umbrella body for specialist sexual abuse services. It said ministers had shown “no real commitment to enact any of the 20 recommendations needed for system reform to protect our children today”.

Home secretary Suella Braverman said that the government had “accepted the need to act on all but one of the inquiry’s [20] recommendations”, demonstrating how seriously it took IICSA’s findings, in her foreword to the response.

Government response to CSA recommendations

However, in several cases, the government effectively rejected the inquiry’s specific recommendation, claiming the essence of the proposal would be met by existing systems, planned reforms or potential future changes.

For example, it said it would not create a Child Protection Authority to be a centre of expertise for agencies and government and to fill gaps in existing inspection systems in England, as IICSA had recommended.

This was on the basis that many of its proposed functions already existed in statutory or non-statutory bodies, such as the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, which reviews learning from serious child protection cases.

However, the inquiry found “a lack of focus and rigour in the responses of a wide range of settings and institutions” to CSA, indicating that the multiplicity of organisations involved in monitoring child protection was problematic.

And while the government said it would consider widening the panel’s remit to, it said it saw it taking on just “some of the additional protections described in the inquiry’s final report”.

Financial redress scheme for survivors

With other recommendations, the government pledged to review or consult on arrangements with a view to potentially implementing IICSA’s proposals or similar, but with no timescale.

This was the case with its response to the inquiry’s proposal for a single financial redress scheme, lasting five years, for victims of institutional child sexual abuse or exploitation. The government said it would introduce a redress scheme following “extensive engagement” on the nature of the scheme, though without setting a timeframe for this.

As we reported last month, the government has accepted IICSA’s headline recommendation, to introduce mandatory reporting of CSA in England, but has not committed to implementing the inquiry’s model for doing so.

This would involve requiring staff working with children, or those in a position of trust over them, to report CSA to the relevant council or police force whenever they received a disclosure from a victim or perpetrator, witnessed abuse or observed recognised indicators of the crime. It would be a criminal offence for them not to report abuse that they witnessed or received a disclosure about.

Mandatory reporting call for evidence

As it pledged last month, the government has launched a call for evidence on mandatory reporting, running until 14 August 2023, which will be a prelude to a public consultation on specific proposals due later this year.

In this, the government questioned aspects of the inquiry’s recommendation, saying that the introduction of criminal sanctions for a failure to report “may not be proportionate, for example, if existing offences could already be applied to address breaches of the duty”.

During its seven-year lifespan, the inquiry undertook 15 investigations, produced 52 reports, took written evidence from almost 1,000 people, heard oral evidence from more than 700 people over 325 public hearing days and received contributions from over 6,200 victims and survivors through its Truth Project.

This is what had informed the 20 recommendations, said Jay and the Victims and Survivors Consultative Panel (VSCP), whose members, collectively, have over 100 years’ experience providing specialist support to CSA victims.

Inquiry chair ‘deeply disappointed’

“These recommendations were a carefully considered set of measures, designed to complement each other to provide a comprehensive world-class framework for the protection of children,” their statement read.

“We are deeply disappointed that the government has not accepted the full package of recommendations made in the final report. In some instances, the government has stated that a number of them will be subject to consultations, despite the extensive research and evidence-taking which the inquiry carried out over seven years.”

Speaking subsequently to BBC Woman’s Hour, Jay described several of the government’s responses to the inquiry’s proposals as “vague, unspecific and without a timeline” and said that they “frequently did not address the issues contained in the recommendations”.

Jay, a former social worker who also led the inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Rotherham that reported in 2014, urged ministers to “think again” and to “enact all of our recommendations in full without delay”.

? ‘I call on the government to think again’

Professor Alexis Jay, who chaired the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse for seven years, tells @BBCNuala that she feels ‘deep disappointment’ with the government response to the final report.

Listen on @bbcsounds

— BBC Woman’s Hour (@BBCWomansHour) May 24, 2023

Mandatory reporting ‘unnecessarily delayed’

The Survivors Trust (TST) said that the government’s response “lacked the detail and immediate action required to generate a much-needed culture change around how we as a society respond to child sexual abuse”.

On mandatory reporting, it said the call for evidence was “an unnecessary delay as there have been multiple consultations, as well as seven years of evidence gathering through IICSA that set out how to implement mandatory reporting effectively and safely”.

Mandate Now, a campaign for mandatory reporting, previously warned that IICSA’s own proposals would make little difference without a criminal sanction on not reporting recognised indicators of CSA

However, it said the government’s consultation appeared “intended to provide an excuse for the government to do less rather than more, to implement something which can be called “mandatory reporting” but which lacks the essential features to make it effective”.

Risk of overwhelming services – ADCS

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), meanwhile, said it was unconvinced of the case for mandatory reporting.

Currently, the evidence does not suggest this offers greater protections for children or improves their outcomes, however, it could have the unintended consequence of overwhelming local services requiring a pivot away from the provision of help and support to assessment and investigation,” said ADCS president John Pearce.

“We believe the most common reason people do not report abuse and neglect is because they don’t recognise it for what it is. We need to ensure all professionals, and communities, are aware of the signs of child abuse and how best to raise concerns with the appropriate agency.”

This theme was picked up by Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse, which welcomed the government’s response but highlighted the lack of focus on improving practitioners’ skills in tackling CSA.

‘Lack of focus on improving skills’

“Based on our conservative estimates, one in ten children will experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 16 in England and Wales,” said CSA Centre director Ian Dean.

“Yet core training for professionals working with children still routinely fails to cover identifying and responding to child sexual abuse, and action to address this was notably absent in today’s announcements. We need to ensure that all professionals with safeguarding roles – including social workers, teachers, police officers, GPs etc. are properly trained and supported to have the knowledge, skills and confidence to better protect children.”

Social workers and other children’s services staff and volunteers will be mandated to report child sexual abuse (CSA), Suella Braverman has pledged.

The home secretary said the government would introduce a mandatory reporting duty, subject to consultation, in response to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s final report, published last October.

This was one of IICSA’s central recommendations, which it said would combat systemic under-identification of CSA.

Pledge to address failings

Braverman did not commit the government to implementing IICSA’s specific proposal, instead saying it would issue a call for evidence shortly to start an “extensive consultation to ensure everyone’s views are represented ahead of implementing the new duty”.

She said: “The protection of children is a collective effort. Every adult must be supported to call out child sexual abuse without fear.

“That’s why I’m introducing a mandatory reporting duty and launching a call for evidence. We must address the failings identified by the Inquiry and take on board the views of the thousands of victims and survivors who contributed to it.”

Response awaited on call for expert child protection bodies

The government will publish the call for evidence alongside its full response to the inquiry, whose other recommendations included:

1. The creation of Child Protection Authorities (CPAs) for England and Wales, 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. It said this would fill gaps in current inspection arrangements by subjecting non-statutory or unregulated organisations where children spend time and multi-agency child protection arrangements to checks. It also said the CPAs should be able to direct existing inspectorates, such as Ofsted, to carry out checks in certain cases.
2. Introducing the regulation of care staff working in children’s homes in England and young offender institutions and secure training centres in England and Wales. After the inquiry recommended registration of children’s home staff in England by an independent body in 2018, the Department for Education commissioned a review of the issue, which was inconclusive, though it told the inquiry it would keep it under review. The inquiry said this response was inadequate, and that workforce regulation was necessary to better protect children in residential settings. The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care also recommended extending workforce regulation for children’s home staff, starting with managers, and the DfE is currently considering its recommendations and is due to report before the end of the year.
3. A single redress scheme for victims of CSA and child sexual exploitation (CSE) connected to institutions in England and Wales, which would run for five years.
4. Giving children in care, or others on their behalf, the right to apply to the family courts to rule on whether they are at experiencing, or are at risk of, significant harm, with the court able to make orders mandating or limiting the local authority’s exercise of its parental responsibility. This would apply both to children experiencing harm in their placement or those who experience abuse or exploitation as a result of an inappropriate placement or inadequate supervision.
5. A guarantee of specialist therapeutic support for child victims of sexual abuse.
6. A ban on the use of pain compliance techniques on children in custodial institutions.
7. The creation of a cabinet-level minister for children in the UK government.
8. Improvements in the availability of data on CSA through the creation of a single dataset covering England and Wales, including information on the characteristics of victims and alleged perpetrators, factors that make victims more vulnerable to CSA or CSE and the settings and contexts in which abuse occurs. The data should be published regularly and collated nationally, regionally and locally.

Sarah’s Law update 

Alongside its announcement on mandatory reporting, the government also unveiled measures designed to ease the process of disclosing information on child sex offenders to concerned members of the public.

Under the child sex offender’s disclosure scheme (CSODS), people can make an an application to have information disclosed about a person (subject) who has some form of contact with a named child or children (‘the right to ask’).

If the subject has convictions for sexual offences against children, poses a risk of causing harm to the child concerned, and disclosure is necessary to protect the child and is a proportionate response to manage that risk, there is a presumption that the police will disclose the information.

Known as Sarah’s Law, after eight-year-old Sarah Payne, who was murdered in 2000 by a convicted sex offender, the CSODS also allows the police to disclose without request where they find children are at risk (‘the right to know’).

Under the update to Sarah’s Law guidance, people will be able to make online applications and the timeframe for dealing with applications will be cut from 44 to 28 days.

The revised guidance also advises the police to consider making a ‘right to know’ disclosure under Sarah’s Law or the domestic violence disclosure scheme (DVDS), where relevant, where a person makes an application under the other scheme. The DVDS, otherwise known as Clare’s Law, works similarly to the CSODS, but in respect of disclosing information about past domestic abuse by a perpetrator.

Grooming gangs controversy

Alongside Braverman’s announcements on CSA, prime minister Rishi Sunak unveiled the creation of a “grooming gangs taskforce”, under which specialist police officers will be brought in to help forces investigate CSE cases, including through improved use of data.

This was mired in controversy, after Braverman, in an article for the Mail on Sunday, claimed that “almost all” perpetrators of CSE carried out by grooming gangs were British-Pakistani, that the victims were overwhelmingly white and the authorities had “often looked the other way”, due to fears of being labelled racist.

The latter point was echoed to some extent in Sunak’s announcement as he said that, “for too long political correctness has stopped us from weeding out vile criminals who prey on children and young women”.

However, a 2020 Home Office paper found that, while a number of high-profile CSE cases had been perpetrated by men of Pakistani heritage, the research literature showed “significant limitations to what can be said about links between ethnicity and this form of offending”.

“Research has found that group-based CSE offenders are most commonly White. Some studies suggest an over-representation of Black and Asian offenders relative to the demographics of national populations,” it said. “However, it is not possible to conclude that this is representative of all group-based CSE offending.”

On the back of Braverman’s remarks, NSPCC chief executive Peter Wanless said: “Sexual predators will target the most vulnerable and accessible children in society, and there must be a focus on more than just race so we do not create new blind spots that prevent victims from being identified.”