During the week commencing 7th November, the Labour Party submitted its proposals to the Government Consultation titled : Reporting and acting on child abuse and neglect. In the 2015 Labour manifesto it said :
Here is our review of it. Our observations are indented in italics between the body of Labour’s submission. (more…)
Child sexual abuse in football has certainly stirred interest in the absence of law to report known and suspected abuse. It seems likely to be because of the sheer numbers of adults now contacting the various helplines following Andy Woodward’s disclosure on Victoria Live. The scale seems to have galvanised the public.
As a result Mandate Now has been invited to comment on mandatory reporting. For balance the BBC invited the leading Conservative party advocate against it, the former Children’s Minister, Tim Loughton (2010 – 2012), a role from which he was sacked.
The first was on Friday 2/12/16 on the 10pm R4 programme The World Tonight
This was followed and 8am contribution on Saturday 2/12/16 to R5Live with Eleanor Oldroyd
Importantly in his final contribution Mr Loughton to the piece, he uses substantiation as measure of ‘failure’ of Mandatory Reporting in New South Wales. He is mistaken once more.
This misuse of ‘substantiations’ as a measure of success peppers the Home Office consultation. We can expect no better, the Government appears panicked it might have to do something about the dysfunctional child protection framework it stewards. Here is research that supports our assertions about its misuse of substantiations :
This research into reports of all forms of abuse and neglect taken as a whole, and their outcomes, has resulted in conclusions that the substantiation outcome is “a distinction without a difference” (Hussey et al., 2005), that it is “time to leave substantiation behind” (Kohl et al.,2009), and that “substantiation is a flawed measure of child maltreatment. . .policy and practice related to substantiation are due for a fresh appraisal” (Cross & Casanueva, 2009).
On 3/12/16 MN contributed to the Majiid Nawaz programme on LBC. As you will hear Majiid like so many in this country, including two Department for Education Ministers to my personal knowledge, was unaware of the non existence of law to report abuse. Goodness the website got busy after this contribution.
The public disclosure by Andy Woodward of child sexual abuse perpetrated on him by Barry Bennell when Andy was an 11 year old junior at Crewe Alexandra has had a dramatic effect on the public thinking and football. The exclusive story in The Guardian ‘It was the softer weaker boys he targeted‘ on the 16th November, combined with Andy’s appearance on VictoriaLIVE the following day could improve safeguarding for the better. Abuse in football, and sport generally, has finally emerged into the daylight. Mandate Now and others contributed to the programme on this important day. (more…)
Mandate Now review comments are italicised.
Conclusion
The submission appears to have more to do with the relationship the NSPCC has with Government than it does with the effective protection of children by Regulated Activities. Its support for the Government’s preferred option of ‘Duty to Act,’ which relabels the status quo with the prime objective of keeping any increase in referrals to a minimum, indicates the charity’s strapline ‘every childhood is worth fighting for’ is in doubt.
Within our submission we have reviewed the two Government proposals. Neither provide a framework on which reliable child protection can be delivered by those employed in Regulated Activities. Government is promoting positions close to the status quo that prompted the Home Secretary, now Prime Minister, to initiate the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Lessons are not being learned.
The consultation closed at noon on 13th October 2016.
Updated 17.3.17
Option 3 Conclusion : Mandate Now rejects the proposal.
The proposal requires no one to report anything because there is no legal mandate to report. No one is protected if they do report a concern because the report remains discretionary since the required action under the duty is unspecified. If they don’t act in a way they should have acted, and with the benefit of hindsight and possibly years later, the failure to act ‘could’ be criminalised. (more…)
Conclusion : Mandate Now rejects the Government’s option 2 proposal in the consultation which was issued on 21/7/16
There are three curious things about the consultation proposal for mandatory reporting. (more…)
An article appeared in the Observer on 4/09/16. The headline captures the thoughts of Baroness Walmsley whose amendment 43 in the Serious Crimes Bill secured the consultation.
Click on image to expand
The full article on line is here or in .pdf format here.
Government delayed the start of the consultation by 631 days and then launched on the last day of parliament just as schools, the largest Regulated Activity, went on holiday. Furthermore the end of the consultation will be distracted by the political conference season just before the consultation closes on 13th October.
Child protection has not been liked by Government of any hue.
The Victims Survivors Consultative Panel seems to have evolved into a cadre of IICSA spokespeople who comment not on the glacial progress of the inquiry, the reasons for loss of another chair, the appointment of a replacement at breakneck speed who is unversed in law despite the inquiry being statutory, nor the exceptionally poor inquiry communications , but on issues they neither know nor understand because they fall outside VSCP Terms of Reference. Furthermore this Panel has yet to produce a report informing us what it has done in the last year. Despite these concerns, three VSCP members in full well briefed ‘on message’ cheerleader mode, undertook a gushathon of media engagements on multiple platforms following Justice Goddard’s resignation. The trio bore a striking resemblance to three hubcaps arriving in the car park in advance of the ditched charabanc from which they’d become momentarily detached.
The IICSA Comms trio are now seemingly the official spokespeople for the inquiry, yet this is not included in the Panel’s terms of reference : (more…)
Professor Ben Mathews is a researcher in the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. He has led some of the largest studies ever undertaken into mandatory reporting laws for child sexual abuse.
In the UK, 18% of girls and 5% of boys experience contact sexual abuse (one in eight children), and the figures are even higher for all kinds of sexual abuse. The mean age of onset is 9-10. Most children unlucky enough to suffer sexual abuse are unable to tell anyone, because they are terrified of the abuser’s power, have been threatened, feel ashamed, depend on the abuser, or are too young to understand it. The abuse often continues, the children endure horrific experiences and suffer long-lasting health, behavioural and social problems, and society suffers enormous socio-economic costs. Offenders get away with it and can continue offending. We see this repeatedly with prolific individuals and gangs: Rotherham, Rochdale, Savile, Oxford, Operation Yewtree. But it’s not just high profile casesthat matter: many offenders are family members and other acquaintances.
What should society do to better identify cases at an early stage, interrupt the abuse, help the child, and identify the offenders? We should do what the scientific evidence tells us will get the best result. We should put the child at the centre of our debate. And we should do what an advanced liberal democracy in the 21st century that cares about its children would do.
To identify more cases at an early stage, the UK Parliament is considering whether to introduce mandatory reporting laws for child sexual abuse in England and Wales. As a social scientist who has conducted multiple long-term studies of this topic, my conclusion is that a UK mandatory reporting law will be very successful in responding to child sexual abuse and identifying cases that otherwise would not come to light. Ireland must agree, since in November 2015 it passed reporting laws for child sexual abuse. In fact, dozens of nations have them, ranging from Canada, Australia and the USA, to Sweden and Saudi Arabia.
These laws are often misunderstood, which produces erroneous conclusions. The truth is that the best evidence indicates they are probably the best public policy innovation we have to help identify cases of child sexual abuse. Based on historical experience, hard data and international insights, here are the top 10 things policymakers, professionals, and the public need to know.
This girl, and thousands of other children like her, needs someone to help bring her experience to the attention of a protective agency. That can best happen through a mandatory reporting law, properly supported by good reporter education and a well-supported system.