Developing your strategic response to child sexual abuse

Join us for our free webinar to learn about the CSA Centre’s upcoming resource: Developing your strategic response to child sexual abuse: A guide for safeguarding children partnerships. 

Survey data suggests that child sexual abuse is just as common as other forms of childhood harm including emotional and physical abuse, but it is much less likely to be identified by safeguarding professionals. Sadly, this is prevalent in all parts of the country, and it is estimated that 1 in 10 children will experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 16 in England and Wales. 

All safeguarding children partnerships have a leadership role to play in developing responses to child sexual abuse, so that all children and young people receive the protection and support they need, wherever they live. In 2024, the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s review into child sexual abuse within the family environment recommended that all safeguarding partnerships should “develop a local action plan to respond to its recommendations as it affects local multi-agency practice,” to help overcome local strategic challenges in identifying and responding to this abuse. 

To help, the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre) is set to publish a new guide, Developing your strategic response to child sexual abuse: A guide for safeguarding children partnerships. It enables partnerships to develop an effective, evidence-based strategy which covers the each part of their response to child sexual abuse. 

About the webinar

To mark the upcoming publication of this important new practice resource, we are hosting a free webinar designed for professionals from local and regional safeguarding children’s partnerships to find out how you can use the Developing your strategic response to child sexual abuse guide in your own work.

Presented by the guide’s author, Dr Natasha Sabin, the webinar explains what the new guide can help partnerships do, how the guide can help you understand your partnership’s local and regional context, the key components of an effective response to child sexual abuse, and how to put your strategy into practice.

About the upcoming resource

The Developing your strategic response to child sexual abuse guide is designed for all those working with local and regional safeguarding children partnerships. It offers practical advice on how partnerships can overcome the strategic challenges of responding to child sexual abuse in their area, develop a new strategy or monitor, review and improve their existing strategy.

The guide covers each level of partnership’s response to all forms of child sexual abuse, in every context in which it happens – from top-level governance and accountability, to an effective action plan that professionals everywhere, in each agency, can easily follow. 

By using this guide, partnerships can start to build a shared vision of their response to child sexual abuse, and each agency can confidently take ownership of their strategy, understand the role they play in the overall response, and know where accountability sits. The practice guide will be available to download for free here soon after publication.

About the presenter

Dr Natasha Sabin is a Practice Improvement Advisor with a lead for Health at the Centre of Expertise on child sexual abuse and the author of our upcoming Developing your strategic response to child sexual abuse guide. Natasha is a Forensic Psychologist with professional expertise in child sexual abuse. She has held roles within Youth Justice Services, secure custodial environments, and community settings and is currently a visiting lecturer at the University of Birmingham. During her time at the CSA Centre, Natasha has co-authored a number of other practice resources including Communicating with children A guide for those working with children who have or may have been sexually abused, Managing risk and trauma after online sexual offending, and Using supervision and team meetings to improve responses to child sexual abuse.