Publications & Resources

This report sets out the findings from a scoping review of existing literature to explore the existing literature on the use of disruption measures by police forces in relation to child sexual abuse, and the effectiveness of those measures.

This small-scale exploratory study considers the extent to which all forms of child sexual abuse feature in the work of professionals working within a complex safeguarding team. The findings highlight the complexities of language used around child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation and the challenges professions face in addressing concerns of child sexual abuse – especially without verbal disclosure - while endeavouring to build and maintain relationships of trust with young people.

Our 2021 report bringing together the latest evidence from surveys and official agency records to set out what is and is not known about the scale and nature of child sexual abuse in England and Wales.

A small scale study produced for the CSA Centre by the Race Equality Foundation (REF) to explore the perspectives of professionals working with children from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds who have experienced child sexual abuse. The research consisted of interviews with 16 professionals working in the voluntary sector and across local authorities.

This briefing summarises the key findings from the Responding to child sexual abuse: Learning from children’s services in Wales full report, and outlines the CSA Centre’s recommendations for changes to local and national policy and practice in response.

This report sets out to build a better understanding of the scale of child sexual abuse encountered by local authority children’s services in Wales, and to explore how child sexual abuse is identified, recorded and responded to. It was commissioned and co-funded by the CSA Centre and the Welsh Government, and forms part of the actions listed in 2019’s Welsh Government National Action Plan: Preventing and Responding to Child Sexual Abuse.

This report presents a new typology of child sexual abuse offending. The new typology of child sexual abuse focuses on the context of offending and drawing out types that reflect different patterns of offending, rather than by focusing on the characteristics of the perpetrator or the victim. The focus of this typology is on offending by adults (18 and over).

A rapid review of the empirical studies describing typologies of child sexual abuse offending and how they were developed. This review focuses on methodology, and it seeks to identify common limitations of earlier studies and typologies, and how these might be addressed. The findings from the rapid review, outlined here, are used to inform the CSA Centre work to develop a new typology.

The results of the CSA Centre's survey with the aim of building an understanding of the current research landscape related to child sexual abuse and exploitation. The survey was first conducted in 2018 and was repeated in mid-2019, and the findings from both surveys are presented in this report. They provide an insight into the types and forms of research currently being undertaken within the field of child sexual abuse, and the presence of any gaps.

This briefing paper brings together key findings from a suite of three studies carried out as part of our ‘Understanding Effectiveness’ programme of research, which built on our previous work in order to, improve understanding of the effectiveness of services responding to child sexual abuse, and suggest how the CSA Centre can further contribute to this.