Last week, the government outlined its plans to tackle child sexual abuse and exploitation and set out a timeline to deliver several of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s (IICSA) recommendations. These recommendations were drawn up after the 7-year national inquiry saw over seven thousand survivors give testimony to the rape and sexual abuse they were subjected to as children.
Key updates
The Minister for Safeguarding (Jess Phillips MP) outlined just how profoundly institutions and individuals, particularly those in positions of power, have failed to protect children from rape and sexual abuse, and the still largely unrecognised scale and prevalence of this issue; indeed, the figure of 500,000 children who are sexually abused every year in England & Wales will only ever be an estimate, given the barriers to reporting that so many children continue to face.
The progress update set out some of the positions and key commitments that the government are making in order to set out in detail a response to each IICSA recommendation.
These are wide ranging but include:
- Developing child protection bodies and mechanisms, including establishing a new Child Protection Authority (CPA), and strengthening existing inspectorates such as Ofsted, HMIP and HMIC to better recognise cases of institutional child rape and sexual abuse.
- An update on the government’s approach to redress, compensation, and personal injuries claims.
- Upcoming legislation on Mandatory Reporting of child rape and sexual abuse.
- Therapeutic service provision for victims and survivors of child rape and sexual abuse.
We are extremely disappointed to see that the IICSA recommendation for a national redress scheme, and meaningful reforms to the criminal injuries compensation scheme, will not be taken forward, particularly as ‘cost’ has been cited as the rationale for this decision. The recognition and validation that redress and compensation schemes can provide to a great many survivors is immense; not least because they are a tangible representation of the incalculable harms inflicted on them by perpetrators who are rarely held to account for their crimes, or institutions for their failings.
Consultations
A range of consultations will be published later this year, including a clear programme and timetable of activity which will create the new Child Protection Authority. The government have also committed to developing specialist child sexual abuse and exploitation training for social workers, which we hope will be adequately resourced in order to facilitate it being developed in partnership with those who have specialist knowledge in this area, in-depth, meaningful, and necessarily transformative. This is important given the significant lack of identification and adequate response to child rape and sexual abuse by children’s social care agencies to date.
Provision of therapeutic services
Of particular interest to Rape Crisis England & Wales and our network, is IICSA recommendation 16, regarding the provision of specialist therapeutic services for survivors of child rape and sexual abuse. Our centres worked with 80,000 survivors of rape and sexual abuse last year, 1 in 5 of whom were children. We have recently published a report, 'A Real Safe Space', outlining the expertise that our centres have in delivering this service to children, young people and their families (including siblings).
The government have shared that the rationale for not taking forward the recommendation on redress is rooted in the financial challenge this would likely bring about, pivoting to a commitment to investing in therapeutic support for victims and survivors instead.
The Home Office states:
“In the current fiscal environment, this recommendation [on redress] is very difficult to take forward, and we believe that the first priority for investment should be to provide greater support and care - including therapeutic support - for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse.”
Additionally, the announcement contained a promise to “double” funds provided by Home Office for adult survivors of child rape and sexual abuse; Rape Crisis England & Wales have approached the Home Office for clarification as to the meaning of this in financial terms, but have yet to receive this. Whilst additional funding is undoubtedly urgently needed and will be welcomed, direct funding towards specialist Rape Crisis centres has historically been minimal and we are yet to receive further detail on the amounts or recipients of these monies.
As an estimated 50,000 survivors of child rape and sexual abuse wait for specialist care and support in the aftermath of sexual abuse across England and Wales (according to the Centre of Expertise On CSA), we hope that the upcoming Spending Review appropriately responds to the call survivors have been making for decades: universal access to free, specialist and trauma-informed sexual violence and abuse counselling and support when they need it, for as long as they need it.
Ways forward
We urge the government to ensure that substantial, long-term funding is allocated to quality assured, community-based and specialist sexual violence services such as Rape Crisis centres, who already provide expert care to children and young people to support them and transform their lives in the aftermath of rape and sexual abuse.
Rape Crisis centres have the trust and confidence of their local communities, they carry decades of combined expertise, and work flexibly with survivors according to their needs for the mid to long term. However, the current funding landscape is dire: our membership are chronically underfunded and 4 out of 5 Rape Crisis centres are currently expecting or experiencing a significant reduction or loss of services, with counselling – too often framed as a luxury when in fact it is a necessity – the most vulnerable to funding cuts, despite it having the highest demand.
We hope that government officials prioritise efficient and effective service provision in their considerations and future allocations, and urgently source, pool, and ringfence funds from all relevant and responsible departments to widen access to – and ensure the continued existence of - these life-saving and life-changing services.