The Association of Child Protection Professionals: 3 months’ free membership

I have had a lot of discussions recently with professionals worried about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and consequent lockdown on children. It seems there are some real risks presented by the increased stresses and the enforced social isolation. Meanwhile, social workers, health professionals, police officers and teachers are all working really hard to try and support vulnerable children and families in really challenging circumstances.

So it is exciting that the Association of Child Protection Professionals is now offering 3 months’ free membership. By joining the Association you will be part of a network of practitioners and academics working to protect children and prevent the damaging effects of child abuse and neglect.

Over the years that I’ve been working in child protection, I’ve found the support of the Association to be really invaluable. And right now, they are delivering a great programme of podcasts, special interest groups, regular news and updates. And free access to the journal, Child Abuse Review, including a forthcoming special issue on abusive head trauma with a virtual conference on the 5th August.

Membership is open to practitioners and academics from all agencies and the voluntary sector, both in the UK and internationally.

If you are working in any way with vulnerable children and families, I’d really encourage you to take advantage of this.

Click here to find out more

March 21, 2019

Child protection: challenging our beliefs

The awful events in Christchurch, New Zealand recently have highlighted, once again, how an individual’s belief systems (in that context, those of ‘white supremacy’) can have devastating effects on others’ lives; but also (as seen in the response of individuals, communities, and political and religious leaders) how they have the power to bring healing, reconciliation and change. What is equally clear is that those beliefs do not arise out of the blue, but for all of us reflect a complex web of family, societal and cultural influences.

Challenging Belief Systems and Professional Perspectives to Protect Children from Harm

Our first issue of Child Abuse Review for 2019 picks up on issues of how our beliefs (whether as parents, professionals, or as a society) impact on the safety and well-being of children and can both help or hinder our efforts to keep children safe.

We start the issue with a review and two original research papers that tackle uncomfortable issues around faith and beliefs, and their potential for harm. Between them, they highlight again how, while keeping our focus on the well-being of the child, a deeper understanding of an individual’s belief systems (even where these may differ considerably from our own) could help us in our efforts to protect children from harm.

In a deeply disturbing conceptual review, Julie Taylor and colleagues explore the vulnerability of children with albinism in sub‐Saharan Africa. As well as their inherent vulnerability as children and the impairments caused by their albinism, the authors point out how these children

‘may face a society that demonises, marginalises, stigmatises and discriminates against [them], especially in rural areas where myths abound and traditional healers are very powerful’.

The very visible difference in appearance of these children may lead to them being rejected or ostracised as their albinism may be perceived by their family and society as somehow cursed. Even more disturbingly, though, are beliefs that their body parts may somehow bring good fortune, so they may be abused, mutilated and killed to obtain such ‘good luck’ charms. This presents a very complex and concerning situation which we in the West may find difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend – one in which deep‐seated beliefs, differences in culture and society, and other socio‐economic factors all interact to create situations of vulnerability and risk.

The beliefs and abuses documented in Taylor and colleagues’ review may seem a world away from the contexts within which most of us are practising. However, even in the UK, children have been harmed and killed in situations in which beliefs in witchcraft or spirit possession have played a part. What may be far more common, though, even less well recognised, and potentially harder to address are less extreme situations of abuse and neglect linked to faith or belief. This forms the subject of an original research paper by Lisa Oakley and colleagues from the National Working Group on Child Abuse Linked to Faith or Belief and the Victoria Climbié Foundation. As Oakley and colleagues point out, such cases are not limited to extreme beliefs in witchcraft or spirit possession, but include cases of medical neglect and excessive physical punishment. Within this context, the increased focus on safeguarding within faith communities is to be welcomed. Nevertheless, in their survey, the authors identified a lack of confidence among practitioners, community groups and faith groups in how to recognise and respond to cases of child abuse linked to faith or belief.

Building on an earlier National Action Plan, Oakley and colleagues identify a need for much more research in this area, along with greater dialogue between statutory and voluntary agencies and faith communities, increased faith literacy training for frontline practitioners and the adoption of a broader definition of child abuse linked to faith and belief.

Part of this broader definition could include the issues of clerical institutional child abuse and the interaction of belief systems, power and control within the church. The harm caused by such institutional abuse is now well recognised, although there is still a long way to go in terms of how the church and society respond to harms caused in the past and safeguard against similar abuse happening now. In our next research paper, Jeff Moore and colleagues look at the experiences of 102 Irish survivors of clerical institutional child abuse and factors that have helped with their resilience. There may be much wider lessons here for how we support young people who have experienced abuse of all kinds (and perhaps particularly those who have experienced abuse linked to faith or belief) in building resilience and coping with the trauma that they have experienced.

Working with vulnerable families

Our next two research papers by Jessica Wagner and colleagues (Intergenerational transmission of domestic violence) and Karen Hanson and colleagues (Family-based recovery) address practitioner issues in working with two common situations of family vulnerability: domestic violence and substance misuse. Both, interestingly, address some of the underlying belief systems that we, as practitioners, may hold – in the words of Jessica Wagner and colleagues:

‘Preconceived ideas can lead to prejudice and consequently to discrimination; practitioners’ preconceived ideas may, even unconsciously, affect their thinking, their assessment and finally the service that they may ‘gate keep’ or offer.’ (p. 40)

Both these papers challenge us to reflect on our own beliefs and perspectives as we work with vulnerable children and families. As with the earlier papers on faith and beliefs and our final CPD paper on mothers who have their children removed, they highlight that we all – practitioners, researchers and the families who we work with – hold belief systems and perspectives that can influence how we work together to ensure the safety and well-being of children.

All the papers in this first issue of the year for Child Abuse Review are freely available to read or download. Do click on the links below to browse the issue or to read my editorial or any of the papers.

Child Abuse Review Volume 28, Issue 1

Peter Sidebotham. Challenging Belief Systems and Professional Perspectives to Protect Children from Harm

Celean Camp, Wendy Thorogood. The Association of Child Protection Professionals: Moving Forward with a New Identity

Julie Taylor, Caroline Bradbury-Jones, Patricia Lund. Witchcraft‐related Abuse and Murder of Children with Albinism in Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Conceptual Review

Lisa Oakley, Kathryn Kinmond, Justin Humphreys, Mor Dioum. Safeguarding Children who are Exposed to Abuse Linked to Faith or Belief

Jessica Wagner, Steph Jones, Anna Tsaroucha, Holly Cumbers. Intergenerational Transmission of Domestic Violence: Practitioners’ Perceptions and Experiences of Working with Adult Victims and Perpetrators in the UK

Jeff Moore, Marie Flynn, Mark Morgan. Social Ecological Resilience and Mental Wellbeing of Irish Emigrant Survivors of Clerical Institutional Childhood Abuse

Karen Hanson, Elizabeth Duryea, Mary Painter, Jeffrey Vanderploeg, Dale Saul. Family‐Based Recovery: An Innovative Collaboration between Community Mental Health Agencies and Child Protective Services to Treat Families Impacted by Parental Substance Use

Wendy Marsh, Jan Leamon. Babies Removed at Birth: What Professionals Can Learn From ‘Women Like Me’

Book Reviews

Effective Family Support: Responding to What Parents Tell Us by Cheryl Burgess, Ruth McDonald and Sandra Sweeten, Dunedin Academic Press, Edinburgh, 2018.

Scars Across Humanity: Understanding and Overcoming Violence Against Women by Elaine Storkey, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 2015.

June 29, 2018

Child Abuse Review: Rising to new heights with our 2017 Impact Factor

I’m not usually one to boast, but as a co-editor of Child Abuse Review I’m feeling really pleased with the latest news from the journal.

2017 Thomson Reuters Journal Impact Factor

The 2017 Thomson Reuters Journal Impact Factors were released this week, and I’m really proud to report that our impact factor for Child Abuse Review has shot up from 1.543 to 2.253!

This is particularly encouraging as we had set our target, in our 2014-19 business plan to increase it to 1.2 by 2017.

The result places the journal 4th out of 42 social work journals and 9th out of 46 in family studies.

Publishing high quality research that has an impact on practice

While journal impact factors have their limitations, I think this is a recognition of the fact that we are managing to publish really important, high-quality research in child protection, and that this research does have an impact on practice.

This was also reflected in the 2018 Wiley prizes for the best papers published in Child Abuse Review, which were announced at the BASPCAN congress in April:

First Prize – Beyond the Physical Incident Model: How Children Living with Domestic Violence are Harmed By and Resist Regimes of Coercive Control by Emma Katz (Liverpool Hope University) – Published in Volume 25 Issue 1 (2016)

Second Prize – The Prevalence of Child Maltreatment across the Globe: Review of a Series of Meta‐Analyses by Marije Stoltenborgh, Marian J. Bakermans‐Kranenburg, Lenneke R.A. Alink and Marinus H. van IJzendoorn (Leiden University) – Published in Volume 24 Issue 1 (2015)

Third Prize – Risk and Protective Factors for Physical and Emotional Abuse Victimisation amongst Vulnerable Children in South Africa by Franziska Meinck (University of Oxford), Lucie D. Cluver (University of Oxford, and University of Cape Town), Mark E. Boyes (University of Oxford), Lodrick D. Ndhlovu (Tintswalo Hospital) – Published in Volume 24 Issue 3 (2015).

All three of these papers are freely available online for the next year, as are all our editorials and many other papers, so do take a look.

All this could only have been achieved through the hard work of our editorial team, Diane Heath, our editorial manager, the publishing team at Wiley, and, of course, our authors, reviewers and readers. Thank you all.

February 8, 2018

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.’

Michael Preston-Shoot

You can access my editorial and all the papers in this issue by clicking on the links below:

Child Abuse Review Volume 27, Issue 1

Editorial

Addressing the Disconnects in Child Protection Practice (pages 5–10)

Peter Sidebotham

Reviews

What is Really Wrong with Serious Case Reviews? (pages 11–23)

Michael Preston-Shoot

‘This is Not Just About History…’ Addressing the Disconnect in Historic (Non-Recent) Child Abuse Investigations (pages 24–29)

Jo Aldridge

Original Articles

Reporting Child Sexual Abuse within Religious Settings: Challenges and Future Directions (pages 30–41)

Craig A. Harper and Colin Perkins

Contextual Risk, Individualised Responses: An Assessment of Safeguarding Responses to Nine Cases of Peer-on-Peer Abuse (pages 42–57)

Carlene Firmin

Peer Exploitation: Findings from a Romanian National Representative Sample of Children Living in Long-Term Residential Centres (pages 58–71)

Adrian V. Rus, Ecaterina Stativa, Max E. Butterfield, Jacquelyn S. Pennings, Sheri R. Parris, Gabriel Burcea and Reggies Wenyika

Assessing Capacity to Change in High-Risk Pregnant Women: A Pilot Study(pages 72–84)

Paul H. Harnett, Jane Barlow, Chris Coe, Caroline Newbold and Sharon Dawe

Training Update

Neglect Toolkit: Guidance for Practitioners by Northamptonshire Safeguarding Children Board, 2016.

Wendy Hill

Book Review

Tackling Child Neglect: Research, Policy and Evidence-Based Practice Edited by Ruth Gardner

Claire Monk

September 21, 2017

All you need is love (plus a good evidence base, a healthy dose of scepticism, and patience and perseverance in working with families!)

All you need is love?

Our latest issue of Child Abuse Review, now available online, explores some of the dilemmas in working with violent fathers and their families. Positive affirmation and support is a central part of such work, but is it really all that is needed? Can violent men really change?

In our first paper for this issue Timothy Broady and colleagues report on an evaluation of a men’s domestic violence intervention programme, using a qualitative analysis of interviews with 21 participants (Broady et al., 2017). Perhaps the most striking finding of this research was the universal expression, by these fathers, of love for their children, and how that was ‘motivating them to stop using violence and to develop positive relationships with all family members’. Broady and his colleagues suggest that ‘the frustrations reported at not having contact with their children emerged as a particularly powerful experience that could be harnessed to encourage men to acknowledge the severity of their behaviour and to find alternative ways of relating to family members.’

It is not sufficient to put all the responsibility for keeping their children safe on mothers who themselves are victims of the violence and controlling behaviour perpetrated by their partners. If we are going to bring about any meaningful change in families affected by domestic violence, the perpetrators of that violence need to take responsibility for their attitudes and behaviours, and to take genuine steps towards changing not just the violent behaviours themselves, but also the deeper attitudes of power and control which underlie those behaviours.

Picking up on these findings, it seems imperative that intervention programmes seek to understand and work with what motivates violent perpetrators to change. If their love for their children can help motivate change, that must surely be a good thing. However, it is essential that practitioners, while showing compassion and a supportive attitude to their clients, are not naïve about the challenges involved. Change does not happen overnight, and the manipulative, controlling attitudes of many perpetrators of domestic violence mean that a degree of scepticism is important, along with patience and perseverance in working with these men.

As with so much of our safeguarding practice, we need to hold on to the hope that children’s lives can be better. We need to maintain high expectations of parents in their care of their children; provide them with the support that will enable them to meet those high expectations; and keep our focus on the child, so that we are prepared to challenge and act when those expectations are not met.

Balancing support and scrutiny

The difficulties in achieving a balance between support and scrutiny are brought into a different perspective in a paper by Louise Caffrey (2017), specifically in the context of volunteers working in supported child contact centres. Caffrey’s research is an excellent example of how systems methodology can help get beneath the surface of individual behaviours to understand the context, values, and organisational systems which may underlie those behaviours. Pertinently, she found that while the volunteers were aware that child safety and protection were everyone’s business, and were knowledgeable about their responsibilities to refer child protection concerns and how to do so, there were other emphases that could ‘stand in tension with their safeguarding commitments’. In particular, she found that workers emphasised a need to provide a welcoming service, to be non-judgemental, and to be neutral. Indeed, practices such as listening in on conversations, recording observations, or finding out about the background case histories, which were felt to jeopardise the aim of creating a welcoming environment, or that could be perceived as biased or judgemental, were actively avoided or viewed negatively by these workers.

‘You have to dance, not wrestle’

That was how one midwife described how she approached addressing child protection concerns with vulnerable pregnant women in a study from New South Wales by Louise Everitt, Caroline Homer and Jennifer Fenwick (Everitt et al., 2016). In a qualitative interview study, the authors identified four core themes that reflected some of the complexities of working with women and their unborn babies. Central to all of these was the dilemma caused by a partnership model of care, when potential child protection concerns are identified. The statutory power carried by community services could be seen as daunting by these midwives, and a potential threat to their relationship with their clients. Indeed, what comes across strongly in reading this report, is the emphasis these midwives place on maintaining a relationship with the mothers with whom they are working, and to do everything possible to support these mothers and enable them to take their babies home and care for them safely. One key aspect of this was the emphasis on being open and honest with these mothers, not going behind their backs, but providing them with support to try and change. Once again, this study highlights just how challenging such work can be, requiring perseverance, time and energy to achieve a good outcome.

Along with these studies of working with parents, other papers in this issue explore the impact of neglect and abuse on young people’s resilience and psychosocial adaptation, including a paper from Extremadura in Spain reporting on young people placed in residential care because of neglect (Moreno-Manso et al., 2017), and one from Jeff Moore, Christine Thornton and Mary Hughes (2017) reporting on a study with 22 Irish emigrant survivors of institutional abuse. In contrast, Duncan Helm (2017) reports on a thought-provoking ethnographic study of a social work team in Scotland. Helm identified high levels of case knowledge, along with exploration, curiosity and hypothesis generation, without the need to necessarily identify solutions. Practitioners were able to share knowledge and resources that supported critical thinking. However, He also identified an absence of challenging dialogue and dialectic debate. Helm’s findings emphasise the importance of both physical and emotional ‘secure space’ for practitioners, but highlights the need to promote ‘working team cultures which facilitate challenging yet supportive dialogue as an aid to sense-making’.

Love, challenge, patience and perseverance

Despite John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s assertion, in 1967, that ‘all you need is love’, the research reported in this issue of Child Abuse Review suggest that this is not the whole picture. ‘Love’, expressed in these papers as affection, empathy, compassion and support, for parents, children and young people, and colleagues, is a crucial component of safeguarding practice. Love of their children may indeed be a strong motivator for violent fathers, or vulnerable mothers, but expressions of love, by themselves, do not guarantee a child’s safety, and need to be accompanied by genuine and sustained changes in attitudes and behaviours that clearly promote the child’s needs. For practitioners, empathy and support towards the parents with whom they are working need to be balanced with professional curiosity and challenge, and attitudes of patience and perseverance in working with these families.

For those affected by abuse or neglect, compassion and understanding is clearly needed from those to whom they turn for support; that compassion and understanding needs to be grounded in empowering approaches of sharing control and helping the individual to build resilience.

Child Abuse Review Issue 26:5

All You Need is Love (Plus a Good Evidence Base, a Healthy Dose of Scepticism, and Patience and Perseverance in Working with Families!) (pages 323–327)

Peter Sidebotham

‘I Miss My Little One A Lot’: How Father Love Motivates Change in Men Who Have Used Violence (pages 328–338)

Timothy R. Broady, Rebecca Gray, Irene Gaffney and Pamela Lewis

The Importance of Perceived Organisational Goals: A Systems Thinking Approach to Understanding Child Safeguarding in the Context of Domestic Abuse (pages 339–350)

Louise Caffrey

Working with Vulnerable Pregnant Women Who Are At Risk of Having their Babies Removed by the Child Protection Agency in New South Wales, Australia (pages 351–363)

Louise Everitt, Caroline Homer and Jennifer Fenwick

Psychosocial Adaptation of Young Victims of Physical Neglect (pages 364–374)

Juan Manuel Moreno-Manso, Mª Elena García-Baamonde, Eloísa Guerrero-Barona, Macarena Blázquez-Alonso, José Manuel Pozueco-Romero and Mª José Godoy-Merin

On the Road to Resilience: The Help-Seeking Experiences of Irish Emigrant Survivors of Institutional Abuse (pages 375–387)

Jeff Moore, Christine Thornton and Mary Hughes

Can I Have A Word? Social Worker Interaction and Sense-Making (pages 388–398)

Duncan Helm

June 23, 2017

Making an Impact: Child Abuse Review

2016 Journal Impact Factors

The 2016 journal Impact Factor results were released on Wednesday and we were really pleased to find that the Impact Factor for Child Abuse Review has increased from 0.941 to 1.543. This is fantastic news and it exceeds our strategic goal which was 1.2 by 2017.

The journal now ranks 19/43 in Family Studies and 9/42 in Social Work.

We are really proud of the progress we have been able to make with the journal. Ultimately, that comes down to the quality of the papers that are submitted, the hard work of the editorial and publishing teams, and the support of all our readers, reviewers, editorial board, and Diane our tireless manager.

Inspiring Research

Looking back over the past couple of years, we have been able to publish some extremely important research which is clearly having an impact, not just on journal metrics, but on policy and practice in the UK and around the world. Highlights for me have been

Emma Katz – Beyond the Physical Incident Model: How Children Living with Domestic Violence are Harmed By and Resist Regimes of Coercive Control;
Mary Hughes and Jill Cossar – The Relationship between Maternal Childhood Emotional Abuse/Neglect and Parenting Outcomes: A Systematic Review;
Brigid Daniel – Why have we made neglect so complicated? Taking a fresh look at noticing and helping the neglected child
Daniel Wartenweiler and Roseann Mansukhani – Participatory Action Research with Filipino Street Youth: Their voice and action against corporal punishment
Julie Taylor et al. – Disabled Children and the Child Protection System: A Cause for Concern; and
Marije Stoltenborgh et al. – The Prevalence of Child Maltreatment across the Globe: Review of a Series of Meta-Analyses.

However there are so many more of relevance to academics and practitioners alike. Many of our papers are freely available online through our virtual issues, so do take a look at the journal website and be inspired!

June 10, 2017June 10, 2017

Sorry I did not attend my appointment

‘Sorry I did not attend my appointment but I can’t see over the steering wheel yet’

Sorry I did not attend my appointment

An excellent little animation video by Safeguarding Nottingham brings to life the dangers in applying adult-based DNA (Did Not Attend) policies to children. While a competent adult can choose whether or not to attend an appointment, for children this is not the case.

A simple adjustment to using the term ‘Was Not Brought’ can help shift our thinking and behaviour in relation to children’s health care.

This was one of the messages in our recent triennial review of Serious Case Reviews (http://seriouscasereviews.rip.org.uk/) and is flagged up again in the latest issue of Child Abuse Review

Was Not Brought – Take Note! Think Child! Take Action!

The impact of children not being brought for appointments is explored in a paper by Jenny Harris and colleagues on missed dental appointments. This paper is just one of a number of original articles covering research, clinical audit, safeguarding practice and interventions, including an evaluation of a parenting programme for adolescent mothers; a Healthy Eating Active Living programme for young people living in residential out of home care; a systematic review of the use of digital technologies to prevent violence against children; and a report on the differences between accidental and abusive ano-genital injuries.

All of these papers provide different snippets of evidence to help practitioners in working effectively to safeguard children, while keeping a focus on the child at the centre.

Authoritative practice… is dependent on a careful analysis of current best evidence, high-quality research to promote and extend our evidence base, and practitioners who retain a focus on the child, recognising and responding to vulnerability in a supportive but challenging manner.

You can access the editorial for free, along with the table of contents and all the research papers (subscription or BASPCAN membership only) at the journal website.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/car.v26.3/issuetoc

Child Abuse Review Issue 26:3

Table of Contents

Was Not Brought – Take Note! Think Child! Take Action!

Jane V. Appleton and Peter Sidebotham
Clinical Audit of Children’s Missed Dental Appointments in a City-Wide Salaried Community Dental Service in Relation to Guidance on When to Suspect Child Maltreatment

Jennifer C. Harris, Lauren M. Firth and Barbara L. Chadwick

An Adolescent Parents’ Programme to Reduce Child Abuse

Margaret T. McHugh, Alexandra Kvernland and Vincent J. Palusci

The Healthy Eating, Active Living (HEAL) Study: Outcomes, Lessons Learnt and Future Recommendations

Rachael Cox, Helen Skouteris, Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, et al.

From Innovation to Transcreation: Adapting Digital Technologies to Address Violence against Children

Carmen Cronin, Suruchi Sood and Dawn Thomas

A Comparison of Accidental and Abusive Ano-Genital Injury in Children

Neil McIntosh and Jacqueline Y. Q. Mok

March 29, 2017

Working with the Victims and Perpetrators of Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation

Working with the victims and perpetrators of child sexual abuse and exploitation: The latest issue of Child Abuse Review

Working with the victims and perpetrators of child sexual abuse and exploitation is one of the most challenging fields of child protection practice. The nature of some of these cases is such that it challenges our beliefs in the inherent goodness of our fellow human beings and can leave us, as practitioners, feeling emotionally drained and bruised. In the words of a participant in one of the research studies reported in this issue of Child Abuse Review, ‘It’s horrible stuff that you are hearing day in and day out’ (Ahern et al., 2017, p. 133).

These cases are often complex and their investigation can be protracted. There is a difficult balance to be achieved between the forensic requirements of robust evidence gathering, the therapeutic aspects of caring for the victims, and the public interests of ensuring justice, rehabilitating offenders and preventing reoffending.

So how can we best support professionals working in this complex field? What tools and techniques are available to them and how best can they use these?

The papers in this issue of Child Abuse Review address some of these topics.

Understanding offenders’ belief systems

In an accompanying editorial, I explore some of these questions, starting with a discussion paper by Jamie Walton and colleagues looking at the properties of the Sex with Children Scale. This led me to deepen my own understanding in relation to the Implicit Theories hypothesis as an attempt to understand the underlying belief systems of perpetrators of child sexual abuse.

Ward and colleagues postulated that such offenders may hold one or more ‘implicit theories’ about themselves, other people and their surrounding environments, and it is these inherent belief systems which allow them to sexually abuse children. They proposed five implicit theories that child sexual offenders may hold: children as sexual beings; the nature of harm; the world as dangerous; entitlement; and uncontrollability (Ward and Keenan, 1999).

Responding to the child victims of sexual abuse

Two papers in this issue consider the child victims of sexual abuse and how we can assess, support and respond to their needs, including an evaluation of joint investigative interview training in Scotland, and a comparison of the information obtained from young people in a direct research interview with that available as a result of the child protection assessment.

A number of important conclusions can be drawn from this research: first, that we owe it to children and young people to include their voices in research about and for them; second, that much useful data can be obtained through the careful and ethical use of routinely collected information, such as case assessments; and third, that routinely collected information cannot replace the depth and breadth of data obtained through well-designed qualitative or quantitative research projects. In seeking to promote evidence-informed research, therefore, we need to explore both avenues and to do so in a way that respects and empowers children and young people.

Supporting practitioners working with child sexual exploitation

Working with child sexual abuse and exploitation is challenging to the practitioners in this field. Their responses are explored in research by Elizabeth Ahern and colleagues.

One of the striking findings of this research was the tendency for practitioners to report withholding their own emotional responses during the interviews for the sake of the young people. However, as the authors point out, many young people want practitioners to be human and interact with them. Such emotional distancing could have a negative impact both on the young people themselves and their ability or willingness to engage with the interview, and also on the wellbeing of the professionals involved.

You can read the full editorial online for free at the journal website:

Editorial: Working with the victims and perpetrators of child sexual abuse and exploitation