Barriers for professionals to reporting abuse and neglect

This briefing shares experiences of adults working or volunteering with young people where they faced barriers to reporting abuse and neglect. This is drawn from contacts to the NSPCC Helpline and the Whistleblowing Advice Line in 2022/23.

Even when an organisation has child safeguarding processes in place, staff and volunteers can still face barriers in effectively raising concerns or taking action to protect a child’s safety and wellbeing. By better understanding barriers to reporting we can consider how they could be removed.

The briefing identified gaps in knowledge and confidence for some professionals including:

• feeling like they have insufficient evidence or details
• believing they needed to wait for permission to report concerns
• facing unfamiliar safeguarding scenarios.

There were also fears around sharing concerns:

• worries about disrupting or breaking up families
• fears for personal safety and the safety of others
• potential job insecurity.

And some professionals described issues with organisational responses:

• lack of safeguarding processes
• dismissive responses
• concealing abuse.