Supporting victims & survivors
Child sexual abuse can have lifelong, lasting impacts on victims, survivors and their families. This research looks at the vital role professional support can play in limiting this impact.
Exploring ways to support victims and survivors of child sexual abuse
Providing effective support to those at risk of or affected by child sexual abuse is an essential part intervention and recovery. This research builds our evidence base on the effectiveness and availability of help for victims, survivors and their families, to inform professionals about what responses work best to lessen what can have lifelong impacts.
Improving responses to the sexual abuse of Black, Asian and minority ethnic children
Child sexual abuse is prevalent in all communities in England and Wales, regardless of social class, faith or ethnic group. Despite this, sexual abuse of children from a range of different groups is less likely to be identified and responded to, including children from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.
We commissioned 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, to asked them about; the needs of the children, the extent to which these are being met and how professionals and services’ responses could be improved.
A note on language: The CSA Centre notes that the use of generic terminology when talking about ethnicity is contested, as it risks homogenising people’s experiences and masking inequalities between groups. Where appropriate, the new report uses the term ‘Black, Asian and minority ethnic’ to encompass all those communities – people from any ethnic background other than White British – whose experience we wanted to explore, but the research has aimed to be as specific as possible in identifying the experiences of different groups, and to avoid generalising.
Measuring your effectiveness
Effective monitoring and evaluation within a service can be key to support effective intervention and recovery services for children at risk of or affected by sexual abuse.
Our ‘Measuring your effectiveness’ work focuses on how to design and implement monitoring and evaluation within child sexual abuse services, and provides information on carrying out internal or external evaluation. This accessible step-by-step guidance, including worksheets, enables users to develop their own monitoring and evaluation systems.
As part of this work, we funded 17 providers of child sexual abuse services in England and Wales to improve their capacity to assess and evidence their services’ effectiveness. Find the guide and see the results of our evaluation fund below.
Effectiveness of services responding to child sexual abuse
Our 2019 effectiveness studies were developed to help us understand what services are available to children and young people who have been sexually abused. They aimed to improve our understanding of the effectiveness of services’ responses, and to see how the CSA Centre could focus its work to help them in the future.
As part of these studies, we produced a knowledge review which outlines the current landscape of service provision, identifies core elements of effective practice in the field, and considers the implications for the feasibility of multi-service evaluation. We then surveyed 50 organisations who provide specific support to children at risk of or have been sexually abused.
