Child sexual abuse audit

Summary of findings

Overall, half of the auditors rated their agency’s involvement as good or outstanding. These cases evidenced procedures being followed, good information sharing and good multi-agency input. It was suggested in one case that more could have been done to capture the voice of the child.

One auditor rated their agency’s involvement as inadequate, this was due to the agency not being informed about the concerns for the child. The remaining 42% rated their involvement as requires improvement. Of these cases, the main reason given for this rating was a lack of multi-agency working, and the auditor for a GP commented that they had limited information from Children’s Social Care about CSA concerns. The other reasons included a delay to the strategy meeting, a lack of management decision, the assessment not being thorough and limited support being provided to the child.

Recommendations

The following recommendations have been made in response to the findings from the audit:

1. Assurance to be provided to the LSCP that strategy meetings regarding concerns of child sexual abuse include representatives from Health;

2. Assurance to be provided to the LSCP that the discussion and plan following a strategy discussion/ meeting is shared with all relevant agencies, regardless of whether they were in attendance at the meeting or not;

3. Children’s Social Care to provide assurance on the effective use of genograms;

4. The LSCP to promote use of the LSCP multi-agency CSA protocol.

A multi-agency audit was undertaken to seek assurance that statutory safeguarding responsibilities are effective for children who have experienced, or are at risk of experiencing, child sexual abuse in the family environment. The audit evaluated the multi-agency referral and assessment pathway, the quality of case work including assessments and care planning, and the service provision for children and families.

As well as involvement from agencies in Sutton, The Havens, a specialist centre in London for people who have experienced sexual abuse, contributed to the audit.

The recommendations to come from this audit are the following:

• Service improvements - each agency to take forward the areas of improvements that relate to their areas of practice;

• Training – each agency to make child sexual abuse training mandatory for their staff;

• Strategy discussions – to seek further assurance that strategy discussion involve the relevant agencies in particular relevant health providers;

• Recording – to seek further assurance that concerns, suspicions and risk is recorded accurately and responded to as required under London child protection procedures;

• CSA Multi-agency protocol – to roll it out and embed it in training to ensure that all staff are aware of CSA pathways, and where to find information and how to manage a disclosure through the multi-agency strategy planning and wider safeguarding process.