Addressing the Disconnects in Child Protection Practice

Our latest issue of Child Abuse Review has been published and is freely available online. It is packed with thought-provoking articles that look at some of the disconnects in our thinking and practice around protecting children.

I am particularly inspired by Jo Aldridge’s paper, ‘This is not just about history…’ Jo, herself a survivor of childhood abuse, reflects on the process and progress of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), a long-running public inquiry investigating the extent to which public bodies and other non-state institutions in England and Wales have taken seriously their responsibility to protect children from sexual abuse (https://www.iicsa.org.uk). Her paper provides a pertinent and meaningful critique of the process being undertaken by this inquiry – a critique that has implications for all those involved in responding to and learning from historical child abuse, but also because it has important lessons for all who are involved in safeguarding children in the present.

If we are to work effectively with children and young people, we need to listen carefully to those children and young people, and to the adults they grow up to become. The voices of survivors are an essential part of our reflection, learning and improvement.

Jo will be speaking at the BASPCAN International Congress in April – along with many other survivors and survivors’ organisations. That, too, promises to be a really worthwhile time of learning, reflection and dialogue. There is still time to register, so do take a look at the website for the full programme and further details.

www.baspcan.org.uk/congress-2018/

Our current issue of Child Abuse Review includes papers on reporting child sexual abuse within religious settings, on the Parents under Pressure support programme, and on peer-on-peer abuse and exploitation in the UK and Romania, and a challenging critique by Michael Preston-Shoot of the recent Wood review into children’s safeguarding systems in England. I encourage you to have a browse and to reflect on some of the disconnects these papers highlight.

‘…just as safeguarding children involves a practice which is inherently social and relational, full of complexity, uncertainty, dilemmas, tensions and complicated truths, so too is the practice of reviewing cases and understanding how to go on better than before.’