Access free support and training, designed to help local areas provide the best care they can to children who have experienced sexual abuse
The coronavirus pandemic has made it harder for some children who have experienced sexual abuse to access the help and support they need. With support from the Home Office, through the Child Sexual Abuse Support Services Transformation Fund, we’ve launched an exciting new initiative that will give ten local authority areas in England and Wales access to a package of support and training that will assist them to expand the services they provide to children.
Local safeguarding partners can apply to join the programme for free. The NSPCC will first help them to undertake an audit of their local response to child sexual abuse (CSA) from a multi-agency perspective. This work will help partners to understand how, collectively, they can do even more to support young people.
Following the audit, local safeguarding partners will be offered a CSA awareness building training session to help embed best practice within the local area, and develop their understanding of CSA and the impact it has on children.
In addition to this, we will offer free advanced training to agencies within six of the selected local authority areas to support them to provide our holistic CSA therapeutic recovery service, Letting the Future In. The service makes use of creative outlets and play-therapy to help children express feelings they can’t put into words. Agencies will be supported in their adoption of the service through the provision of implementation guidance and tools.
A case study of Letting the Future In, highlighting the programme’s success in supporting a child with learning disabilities recover from CSA, was featured in the Home Office’s new Tackling Child Sexual Abuse Strategy.1 The strategy sets out the UK Government’s plans for preventing and responding to child sexual abuse in all forms. The strategy is based on three objectives, the third of which is to safeguard and support children and young people who have experienced child sexual abuse.