The CSA Centre: 2024 in review
The Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre)
We are the CSA Centre and we want children to be able to live free from the threat and harm of sexual abuse.
In this article, our Director Ian Dean looks back at the past 12 months to see how our work can continue to improve our understanding of child sexual abuse.?
Firstly, a very Happy New Year from the whole CSA Centre team.?In this bonus edition of the newsletter, we're reflecting on a busy and productive year for the CSA Centre. We?published new, targeted research and practice guidance, developed innovative online tools and led collaborations with local partnerships up and down the country?to improve understanding and responses to child sexual abuse - helping to ensure that?victims and survivors are heard and prioritised by decision makers.
Looking ahead to 2025, we remain acutely aware that victims, survivors, and the professionals supporting them continue to face significant challenges. Responding to child sexual abuse, as ever, demands?continuous learning, adaptation, and unwavering dedication, and I hope that the work of the CSA Centre will continue to help professionals in their efforts to support all those affected.
Through our work with partnerships, organisations and professionals across all agencies, we're committed to strengthening professional knowledge, skill?and confidence in identifying and responding to child sexual abuse in 2025. We have plenty more work planned for the year ahead - so watch this space.
For now, let's?look back on the CSA Centre's key work?from 2024 - all designed to help you in your vital work to?protect and support children and families.
Ian Dean - Director, CSA Centre
This is an extended version of our monthly CSA Centre newsletter. For regular updates about our latest research, practice resources, training and opportunities, sign up today
“I wanted?them all?to notice" - Our crucial work with the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel
"With this review, we aim to break this silence and drive whole-system change that empowers practitioners to identify and respond to concerns of child sexual abuse, putting the needs of children first, confident in the support of senior leaders at local and national level" National review into child sexual abuse within the family environment
It seems fitting to begin with the powerful review of child sexual abuse in the family environment, which we were commissioned to undertake for the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. The review focuses on the experiences of 193 children who were sexually abused by family members, and highlighted just how little training and support professionals receive in this vital area of practice – and, sadly, the impact that this all too often has on the help and protection that children and families receive.
The review presented ten recommendations to government and national bodies, aimed at driving systemic change in the way that agencies work together to identify and respond to sexual abuse. But importantly, it also made clear that local safeguarding children partnerships don’t need to wait for government action in order to start driving those improvements locally, and made several recommendations that partnerships can act on now. The report also highlighted a range of useful tools, guidance and resources to help, including the CSA Centre’s own Child Sexual Abuse Response Pathway.?
We hope this report provides an impetus for real and lasting change. It’s a difficult read, but an incredibly important one – and crucially, it has as much to say about solutions as it does about challenges. Please try and make the time for it if you can.
Support Matters - Our landmark report, and our new directory of support services
Going back 12 months, we started the year with?the release of our landmark?Support Matters research, the most comprehensive study to-date of the current landscape of service provision in response to child sexual abuse in England & Wales.
The report was a sobering reminder of just how little support is available to meet the needs of victims and survivors of child sexual abuse, finding just 468 support services to support children and adults despite an estimated 500,000 children suffering some form of child sexual abuse every year across England and Wales. But it also highlighted the fantastic work that so many of these services are doing despite ongoing challenges around funding and capacity, and the huge difference that timely support can make to victims and survivors.
The research identified six priorities for policymakers, funders and commissioners to sustain, support and expand provision, and we’re currently undertaking a repeat of this survey to understand how the picture has changed since the publication of this report.
The important findings were highlighted by?BBC News, who spoke to?service providers, a victim/survivor, their family and Barnardo’s to get their reflections.
We’ve also now developed and launched a new directory of support services in England and Wales, containing the details of over 350 support services and bringing services together into one easy to navigate list.
Users can search using a postcode, or by clicking on their region on the map. Each support service listed has the necessary details so that users can get in touch quickly, whether that be through website, helpline number and email address. For many of the support services listed, we also show the sort of support they offer including in-person one-to-one therapy and counselling, helplines and online chats.
Data Insights Hub - Instant access to local and national data on child sexual abuse
In October we released the Data Insights Hub - our innovate new tool for professionals and decision makers, setting out the likely prevalence of child sexual abuse in your local area and the extent to which services are identifying and responding to it.
Using interactive maps and charts,?the Data Insights Hub displays helpful data collated by our team, bringing together findings from our 2024?Trends in official data and Support Matters reports and setting them in a local context for the first time. The Hub contains ten years’ worth of data, allowing users to track trends over time, and also enables comparison with statistical neighbours.
领英推荐
If you haven't already used it, open the Data Insights Hub from our?website and?build an understanding of identified and recorded child sexual abuse in your local area today.
Engaging with professionals across the country
Our team crossed the length and breadth of the country in 2024 to?share?our latest research, guidance, and practice insights on child sexual abuse. As ever, each event gave?fantastic opportunities to?hear the reflections of?professionals and decision makers?across the?sector.
For the first time, we hosted three full day Roadshow events to meet multi-agency?professionals from across?Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, Gloucestershire and Teesside. At each event, we presented?professional insights?and victim?and survivor?experiences?to help?drive change in identifying and responding to child sexual abuse using our range of research and resources. We were delighted by the positive feedback each Roadshow?received, and look?forward to continuing to engage with each area, and new ones, in 2025.
New knowledge review - Child sexual abuse of African, Asian and Caribbean heritage children
Together with?SEEN, we?published the first overview of research in relation to the sexual abuse of African, Asian and Caribbean heritage children. The review explores the nature of this?abuse, its impacts, the barriers that prevent children talking about it, and how concerns about it are identified and responded to, both within communities and by services.
This?review, undertaken by the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University, brings into stark focus the need for further research to inform and drive improvements. Not just in prevention but also in the identification of and response to sexual abuse of children from African, Asian and Caribbean backgrounds.
Essential practice reflections and guidance
The CSA Centre blog again provided space for the team to inform and guide practice in 2024.?This year, my colleagues?revisited the impact of 1980s Cleveland child sexual abuse scandal, and how it must inform how professionals respond to child sexual abuse today, and?explored?what we know about artificially generated child sexual abuse material?to see?how professionals can use their existing skills to respond to this kind of?abuse in practice.
Sticking to the practice theme, in October we released the Using supervision and team meetings to improve responses to child sexual abuse guide.?It's?designed to help professionals, especially social workers, have discussions about child sexual abuse within their teams, reflect on the experiences of children and families they are working with, and explore how the evidence might inform and develop their practice moving forward.
Training and?development with the CSA Centre
"I have learnt so much about all aspects of abuse and I know I will be a better social worker for it. Whatever area of social work I go into there will probably be people who have been sexually abused, which is why they are having contact with services. This knowledge will help me to understand and assist service users better." - Social work student
I'm proud that out team has trained over xxxx professionals in 2024 alone, quite apart from the many hundreds of professionals who joined us at conferences, events and our three multi-agency Roadshows. Since our training programme began, the CSA Centre has built a reputation for delivering effective, popular?courses for all those working with children and families.
If you have remaining budget this financial year, or are planning for the year ahead, why not invest in your team's?training and development with one of our engaging and great value courses. Please do?get in touch?and we’ll be happy to discuss options, and check the link below to find out why you should consider training with the CSA Centre.
Looking ahead to 2025
Keep an eye out early in the new year for a new resource aimed at supporting effective funding and commissioning of child sexual abuse services, explaining why these services are so important and what it takes to fund and commission them well. We’ll also be publishing a new overview of the key things that everyone should know about child sexual abuse, bringing our evidence and practice insights together into a very high level, practical overview that will be easily accessible to anyone with an interest in this area of work. Our next annual review of the current trends in service data on child sexual abuse will also be published in the new year, analysing the latest information from local authorities, police forces, health services and others to provide valuable insights into the ways in which services are identifying and responding to concerns. And we’re currently midway through the analysis of our latest survey of support services for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse, which we’ll use as the basis for an updated edition of our Support Matters report in 2025, assessing the current state of the sector and identifying the changes that have taken place since our previous survey.
Our policy work will also continue, and we’re looking forward to working closely with partners from across the sector to ensure that sexual abuse is high on the agenda of legislators, policy makers and strategic leads in the year ahead. And of course, we’re particularly keen to see how the government responds to the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s recommendations from I Wanted Them All to Notice, which has such potential to make a real and tangible difference to the response to child sexual abuse in the family environment.
And we will, of course, continue to work closely with local safeguarding partnerships across England and Wales to disseminate our latest evidence and practice resources, to better understand and address ongoing issues and to learn from areas of good and emerging practice. With such a wealth of practical tools, resources, training and guidance now at hand, we’ll continue to focus on more fully embedding this learning into practice, and we’d love to hear from local partnerships who’d be interested in working with us on this.
For news on all this and more (and there’ll certainly be more!) throughout the year, our monthly newsletter is the place to be – you can sign up for free at https://www.csacentre.org.uk/newsletter/.
For now, I’d like to take the opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year, and we’ll look forward to working with many of you in the year and years to come.
Independent consultant
1 个月Great review of a very productive year. Thanks CSA Centre
Executive Leader| Board Director MAICD
1 个月Congratulations The Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre) & Anna Glinski an extraordinary year of work, cultivating connections and collaborations. Your publications and practice tools are accessible, useful and are no doubt making a significant impact. Thankyou for your generosity in sharing your resources and learnings so widely, it is appreciated.
SEO | PhD Researcher in AI for Education & Digital Rights
1 个月What an impactful year for the CSA Centre! The combination of research, practice guidance, and innovative tools highlights your commitment to equipping professionals with the resources they need to tackle such a critical issue.?? Ian Dean's reflection sounds like a must-read—it's always inspiring to see how collaborative efforts and evidence-based practices are driving change. How can professionals or organizations access them to enhance their work? Kudos to your team for making such a difference in 2024!