The Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse has launched two new guides for funders and commissioners on what comprehensive, holistic support should look like for adult survivors of child sexual abuse and parents and carers of sexually abused children.
Building on the CSA Centre’s publication Funding and commissioning child sexual abuse services, the evidence-based guides aim to ensure more coherent, joined-up and effective commissioning, supporting local areas to collaborate across geographical boundaries, recognise interlinked needs, and develop more sustainable, equitable funding models that stop families and survivors falling through gaps.
Developed closely with specialist services and with extensive input from adults with lived experience and non-abusing parents/carers, the guides centre survivor and parent voices throughout. They are grounded in evidence, rich with qualitative insight, and built on strong principles of accessibility, visibility, cultural responsiveness, and survivor-centred practice.
While ongoing developments in UK Government policy and legislation have stressed the importance of appropriate and holistic support for child victims of child sexual abuse at a time when specialist support services are diminishing, these guides now offer funders and commissioners opportunities to provide more tailored specialist support to two groups in equal need of more consistent, accessible support: adult survivors and non-abusing parents and carers.
Range of support needed
The guides provide practical tools to map current provision and identify local gaps, including an audit tool that helps funders understand what services exist and where unmet need is greatest. This supports more strategic commissioning and helps to avoid fragmented provision.
Both guides emphasise that adult survivors and parents and carers affected by child sexual abuse need access to a range of support at different times, including group work, one-to-one support, practical guidance, advocacy, and therapeutic help. A full spectrum of interventions is outlined to ensure service provision can meet diverse and changing needs, and commissioners are encouraged to fund a range of interventions that can be delivered by one provider or across multiple services.
The guides help funders and commissioners think through what it truly means to resource these services, bringing clarity about why child sexual abuse support often requires longer-term, flexible, and responsive to trauma, individual life circumstances, and wider systemic barriers.
The guides are also valuable for support services themselves, strengthening their ability to articulate need, demonstrate intended impact, and advocate for sustainable funding, ultimately helping to create more consistent, joined up and stable provision.
Listening to services and survivors
The guide for adult survivors has been developed in response to the Home Office’s Tackling Child Sexual Abuse: progress update, which called on the CSA Centre to create a framework of holistic, trauma-informed provision for adult victims and survivors of child sexual abuse.
Both guides draw on the expertise of specialist services that contributed to their development. Quotes and examples from research ensure that authentic survivor and parent and carer perspectives are foregrounded in every section.
For adult survivors, the framework highlights the urgent need to expand provision, given severe shortages, long waiting lists, and lack of clarity about what adult-focused interventions should include. It identifies the multiple forms of support adults may require across their lifetime and guides funders in designing services that are flexible, trauma-informed, and accessible to adults with diverse experiences and needs.
For parents and carers, the framework underscores that they require support in their own right distinct from their child’s needs given their pivotal role in helping a child who has been sexually abused recover. It sets out why parental support must be accessible, non-judgmental, flexible, and recognising the specific impacts that child sexual abuse has on parents and carers. It helps commissioners to understand the unique practical, emotional, and systemic challenges parents face after learning that their child has been sexually abused.
Download, read and share the next guides for funders and commissioners today.
