I wanted them all to notice

Just like the children who have been ignored by the system, this important Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s report has been ignored by the Secretary of State for Education

What’s been said?

The government says that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is about safeguarding. However, it seems to have deliberately ignored the recommendations of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel [CSPR].

Each year in England and Wales 500,000 children suffer from Child Sexual Abuse [CSA] and this report, published last November, finds that “organisations, professionals and government have too often denied and deflected attention from the realities of child sexual abuse” (page 2)

“This report describes very shocking things about the lives, distress and pain of children who had horrific abuse perpetrated on them… What is even more disturbing is that safeguarding agencies were unable to listen, hear and protect these children” (p.2)

“We have witnessed a worrying evaporation of the skills and knowledge that professionals (leaders and practitioners) must have to work confidently and sensitively in this complex area of practice” (p.3)

“In over a third of the reviews, the people who harmed children…were known to pose a risk of sexual harm. The risk of harm was known (and often over many years) but ignored, denied or deflected” (p.3)

“We were also particularly concerned about some of the family court’s decisions described in reviews… it appeared that courts had at times failed to understand the risks they knew about…” (p.13)

“This review has revealed a system in which children are all too often ignored or disbelieved” (p.15)

“which has left a continuing, dominating and false belief that the children at the centre of the [Cleveland] Inquiry were not sexually abused,” (p.32)

“Despite research evidence indicating that children rarely make false allegations and are not easily ‘led’… practitioners, including most influentially the judiciary in family courts, are urged to beware of the ‘lessons’ of Cleveland…” (p.33)

Why does it matter?

Entitled “I Wanted Them All To Notice,” the CSPR’s report was published on 26 November 2024 and mentions several times that the government should use its “Wellbeing Bill” to make improvements based on its findings. It also underlines the urgency of a full government response across all departments.

The Department for Education wrote the questions for the report, so they must have been aware of it from an early stage. Yet three weeks later, when the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill had its First Reading in the House of Commons on 17 December, there was no mention of this report, nor of any of its recommendations.

On 8 January this year, when the Bill had its Second Reading in the House of Commons, an amendment was proposed and voted on to include a National Inquiry into “Grooming Gangs.” MPs voted against this, but still there was no mention of this report.

Only after the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill had left the House of Commons on 18 March did Bridget Phillipson make a response to the CSPR report, which had asked, explicitly and repeatedly, for its findings to be included.

Nearly a month later on 16 April, Phillipson finally sent a brief letter to Annie Hudson, Chair of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. Six of the Panel’s ten recommendations are mentioned briefly, a seventh she says will be responded to by the Ministry for Justice (though to date no response has been published) and the final three are not even acknowledged.

Of the six recommendations to which Bridget Phillipson does allude, sadly none correspond to the findings in the report itself. She instead references that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will introduce MACPTs [Multi-agency Child Protection Teams], the Single Unique Identifier and changing the data sharing thresholds. However, none of these measures are recommended in the report, and could be seen as the very ‘deflecting’ that it describes.

Instead, the report recommends better training across all safeguarding partners to follow the existing Working Together framework and to provide significant changes in understandings across the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service [CAFCASS], Family Courts, Police, Schools and Children’s Services. The letter suggests the government may apply some of this to Children’s Services only, although it lacks specificity, and offers no legislation or funding to show commitment to this aim, whilst writing a blank cheque for measures not recommended.

Bridget Phillipson refers to the CSA Action Plan, which she promises will ‘drive change.’ Currently however, this plan remains unpublished. Far from being a vehicle for change, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill seems to have become the exact deflection and distraction from the real issues that the report finds to have been a problem for successive governments.

This government did, under pressure from the opposition, publish a response to another report, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse [IICSA], on 8 April, similarly after the end of the House of Commons stages of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Sadly though, the commitment to the findings of the CSPR report is not strong; again many are ignored, the ones suggested are not those recommended, but it’s all rather immaterial as the level of commitment offered amounts to nothing stronger than “the scope and pace of this work will depend on future funding decisions” – a far cry from the strong cross-government commitment enshrined in legislation which the report had hoped for and that it had explicitly named the Bill as being the appropriate vehicle for.

What can I do?

The government, and Bridget Phillipson in particular, have repeatedly told us that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is about ‘Safeguarding.’ However, it seems that they deliberately ignored this very significant safeguarding report in the drafting of their Bill, and chose not to engage with it at all until after the opportunity for additional House of Commons amendments had passed. The response then focused on measures already written into the Bill that did not correspond to the recommendations of the report. The key recommendations in the report were ignored, and no funding was allocated for any improvements.

The Bill therefore focuses on sharing of children’s data rather than restraining criminals; on ‘finding’ victims rather than ensuring that those already known to services are believed and protected; and ironically will gather very detailed information on all children, without consent, with no legislation in place to prevent such detailed information, including potentially a child’s daily whereabouts, being shared with the very people known to have abused them.

This Bill will not protect children. If it were intended to, it would listen to the recommendations of such reports and fund services appropriately. Instead, it will remove children’s data privacy for ever and leave their data open to leaks and to being shared with known abusers, meanwhile doing nothing to prosecute those guilty of crimes such as child abuse, for which the current rate of prosecution is below 1 per cent of instances.

If we do nothing…

Time is very short to change this outcome and ask the government to do better for our children. Please write to those suggested below, and any other relevant people that you can think of, please post on social media and raise awareness, because if we don’t, this Bill will likely be written into law before the end of the year. You can find a list of official ministerial email addresses on this page, though you could also write to your MP and ask them to pass on your concerns to the relevant ministers, as that will guarantee you a response from one of the ministers in the departments concerned.