Response to Home Office consultation on mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse

Sent 11 August 2023

Dear Sir or Madam,

As the regulator for social workers in England, we welcome the opportunity to comment on the Home Office’s (‘the Department’s’) proposed mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse. Social Work England is a specialist body (established through the Children and Social Work Act 2017) regulating social workers in their vital roles. We believe in the power of collaboration and share a common goal with those we regulate—to protect the public, enable positive change and ultimately improve people’s lives.

Feedback on the mandatory reporting duty of child sexual abuse

Since the call for evidence is largely aimed at people and organisations working directly with children, we are not providing answers directly to the questions provided by the Department. Instead, we are offering comments on the areas that may intersect with, or impact on, our role and work as a regulator.

We support the importance placed on tackling all forms of child sexual abuse and that action should be taken to prevent such abuse through robust policies and procedures. All social workers registered in England are expected to meet and uphold professional standards set by us. This includes but is not limited to, recognising risk indicators of abuse (standard 3.4) and responding quickly to dangerous situations to take protective action (standard 3.12). Our professional standards are supported by our professional standards guidance which provides more detail around the expected actions and behaviour of social workers.

In order to maintain social work registration in England social workers must adhere to our professional standards. They are the threshold standards necessary for safe and effective practice. Where a social worker is found to be in breach of these standards this can call into question their fitness to practise. If this is the case, we may investigate such breaches, and our investigations may lead to restrictions on a social worker’s ability to practise, or lead to their removal from the register of social workers.

As stated above, standard 3.4 of the professional standards requires that social workers will “recognise the risk indicators of different forms of abuse and neglect and their impact on people, their families and their support networks”. Failure to report known or suspected child sexual abuse would be considered a breach of the professional standards and therefore a fitness to practise concern. We therefore wait to hear more about the proposed consequences, should someone fail to report concerns outlined in the duty, such as expectations around professional sanctions.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) recommended who should be included as designated mandated reporters, which as we understand it would include any social workers working in a children and families setting. However, it does not consider how the duty may apply in a setting that contains designated mandated reporters from multiple professions. We would therefore encourage consideration of how the duty may apply in multi-disciplinary settings, whether the duty would apply to every professional, or would be delegated to one person.

As the regulator of all social workers in England, we also need to consider how the duty would apply to social workers in a range of settings where children will be present as part of the whole family approach. We would therefore query whether the designation of mandated reporters should include social workers in these settings. We would be happy to discuss this further.

We would also note that the social work sector is currently engaged in designing and delivering significant reform programmes, including the Department for Education’s Stable Homes, Built on Love implementation strategy. We therefore welcome ongoing discussions with and between relevant government departments to ensure the alignment of these strands of change and reform.

I hope the Department finds this feedback helpful.

Yours sincerely,

Philip Hallam
Executive Director, Regulation