Achievements

 Living free from the threat and harm of sexual abuse.

In the space of just over eight years, we have published a wealth of publications – resources, research and guides – trained professionals across all disciplines – online, in-person and through our eLearning course, and helped inform and shape policy, including in the Wales Action Plan and ‘Tackling Child Sexual Abuse’ strategy for England.

The story in numbers

External evaluation findings

The CSA Centre’s latest independent evaluation was undertaken by the Way Ahead Team Ltd, covering our activity between April 2023 and October 2024, and concluded that:

The period covered by the evaluation has been a busy and productive period for the CSA Centre, during which time they have focused on increasing and disseminating a wide range of high-quality resources and working in various ways to support practitioners to use them to improve practice.

 

The CSA Centre has built a strong and skilled workforce who work in a highly collaborative way. They have a robust infrastructure in place which enables them to respond in an agile way to any issues that emerge in relation to child sexual abuse.

 

They are seen as a major player nationally in advising on all issues related to child sexual abuse and in addressing the complex interface between child sexual abuse, child sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation.

Key findings included:

• The CSA Centre has a comprehensive and impressive range of evidence-informed resources freely available through its website. The resources are presented clearly using infographics to make the maximum impact on practice, and were considered highly accessible and comprehensible, using language and graphics that professionals understand.
• The CSA Centre provided training to an estimated 7,500 practitioners between April 2023 and September 2024, and many interviewees across many professional groups described how their own knowledge, skills and confidence had improved as a result of their engagement with the CSA Centre. Those who had commissioned training for their organisation had found it highly effective in raising the confidence and knowledge of practitioners, enabling them to confront complex and sensitive issues in their practice.
• The CSA Centre have built upon their previous approach of providing research and data to focus on giving clear practice advice for frontline staff and resources to support commissioners as well as work to influence policy makers. They are leading the field in their approach to the use of Theory of Change in sexual violence by working with national and local agencies or projects to define outcomes clearly and collaboratively at the outset.
• The CSA Centre has become increasingly well recognised for its expertise in all matters concerning child sexual abuse and is seen as the ‘go to’ source of evidence-informed best practice advice and the national centre of expertise in the field. Its advice is sought on a regular basis, sometimes informally, by colleagues in central and local government organisations – they have advised and influenced a wide range of professional bodies and international organisations during this evaluation period.

Previous evaluation findings

An external evaluation by Research in Practice and the University of Bedfordshire covered the first 3 years of the CSA Centre – from 2017 to 2020. This evaluation described the CSA Centre as a hub of balanced, independent, and trusted evidence related to child sexual abuse, representing a range of expertise from academia and practice.

Key findings included:

• The CSA Centre directly contributed to a cultural shift in the understanding of child sexual abuse, helping to ensure that child sexual exploitation (CSE) is recognised as a form of sexual abuse and does not eclipse the issue of child sexual abuse more broadly
• Made a significant contribution to understanding of the scale of child sexual abuse through a programme of work including analysis of available data, collating statistics from multiple sources, commissioning new research, developing frameworks and tools to support improved data collection, and  engaging with key stakeholders
• Generated a large body of publications including practice tools, effectiveness studies, and key messages from research, distilling evidence into a concise format.
• Practice Improvement Advisors (PIAs) have been able to engage a large number of professionals, and been both the champions of evidence generated by the CSA Centre, as well as being able to relay evidence from their specific areas of practice into outputs.