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

Sent 29 November 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 professional regulator (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 consultation 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 proposal areas that may intersect with, or impact on, our role and work as a regulator.
Our comments here build upon the feedback we provided as part of our response to the call for evidence in August, and we would encourage referring back to that response in addition to this one.

Who the duty should apply to

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) recommended who should be included as designated mandated reporters of child sexual abuse. We understand that this would include any social worker who works in a children and families setting. It would therefore be helpful for ‘social worker’ to be included in the list of roles the duty will apply to. It should be noted that as social work is a single profession, the duty would apply to all social workers regardless of whether their main role is to work with children.

The duty working in practice

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.

Our professional standards are the threshold 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 would welcome guidance on how the duty may apply in a setting that contains designated mandated reporters from multiple professions and how the duty may apply in multi-disciplinary settings, whether the duty would apply to every professional, or would be delegated to one person.

We would also welcome clarification as to whether the professional sanctions by the appropriate regulating body would be a specific legal duty. Should this be the case, this potentially could negatively impact our existing fitness to practise process outlined above.

Further to our comments above, please note that, unlike the health regulators, inclusion on a DBS barred list is a specific ground of impairment for social workers. We would ask this be taken into consideration when reviewing the consequences of failing to report.

I hope the Department finds this feedback helpful.

Yours sincerely,

Colum Conway
Chief Executive