This letter is the contribution from the highly motivated activists who coalesce around Mandate Now.  A further copy of the letter was sent to the CSA inquiry Secretariat on 11/2/15 following a meeting at the Home Office.

Please click to enlarge the image. The full letter is available here

Mandate Now attended a debate on the 21st November 2014 kindly hosted by the Loudoun Trust at the Portman Clinic in London. The invitation and the subject of the debate feature below:

Speaking for the proposition, surprisingly, was the NSPCC. It was an odd choice given the charity’s sustained hostility to Mandatory Reporting until just a few months before the debate when, as a  result of increasing public pressure over reporting failures in ‘Regulated Activities’, it released a porous proposal for mandatory reporting in August 2014. (more…)

Ian Dale discusses with Harriet Harman QC – Shadow Deputy Prime Minister, issues relating to the #CSAinquiry following a call from a listener who rightly wanted to see the inquiry statutory from the start.  Following Harman’s easy criticisms of the HO’s performance to date, Dale then asked if Labour would support the general principle of an SI. Harman says she thought there would be cross-party support for such a move.

Dale then asked ‘would you back a statutory inquiry or a Royal Commission?’ Harman hesitates and  aligns Labour firmly behind the Government’s position.

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The Home Office appears to be acting on little it discusses with ‘survivor’ groups about core issues. MandateNow wholeheartedly supports an inquiry, but finds it increasingly difficult to support this one. We are keen to see it work. Important matters drawn to the attention of the Home Secretary have demonstrably not been addressed in the statement issued by the Panel. If the Home Office chooses to delegate these contentious issues to the new Chair, on an ‘arms length’ basis, then significant further damage could occur to the process.  The Department seems keen to teflon itself from further criticism over its management of the inquiry by simply not managing it any further. Doing nothing and ‘ploughing on regardless’ could deliver significant disengagement within the very people who are meant to be at the centre of it. The views of survivors appear to have influenced nothing about the way the inquiry is conducted.  (more…)

These two pieces of research by Dr Ben Matthews provide important insights into Mandatory Reporting of child abuse. The first stems from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses into Child Abuse  which was established on 13th Jan 2013 and initiates research programmes from evidence and data generated from the inquiry. The inquiry is in stark contrast to the #CSAInquiry commissioned by the Home Office which can only be desribed as a Blue Peter ‘sticky back plastic’ affair which serves to indicate the unacceptable laissez-faire approach that successive Governments have taken towards the protection of children and vulnerable adults.

 Mandatory reporting laws for child sexual abuse in Australia: A legislative history

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