Thread by @JonathanWest_

#IICSA @InquiryCSA produced its final report on October 20th. It ran to several hundred pages. It has already slipped out of the news before anyone has had a chance to properly read and digest it. But here is a thread about the twenty recommendations it makes.

While I'm deeply disappointed in the limp recommendation about mandatory reporting (about which I've previously tweeted), there are some good things in the report.

https://twitter.com/JonathanWest_/status/1583764972282482689?s=20&t=dc0Au-Fnh9EXa609ZyD-vw

Recommendation 1 is about data gathering. The inquiry has noticed that Britain is something of a data desert when it comes to information about child sex abuse. This hampers efforts to address it because we don’t know where and how bad the problem is.

We need solid data in order to find out where it is worst and so come up with measures to deal with it. So I wholeheartedly support this.

Recommendation 2 is about establishing Child Protection Authorities - one each for England and Wales. These are a good idea - the problem with them is that they don't go nearly far enough.

The first two parts are fine - improving practice in child protection and providing recommendations to government. We should want to see best practice spread around, and for government to have the benefit of expert advice.

It is the inspection powers which don’t go far enough. There are a number of aspects to this.

First, there are a large number of settings (e.g. places of worship, youth clubs ) whose safeguarding arrangements aren't monitored at all. The Inquiry proposes to give the PRAs power to inspect such settings at their discretion.

In effect, this is going almost certainly to consist of inspecting places where a problem has already been uncovered and there has already been a scandal. Places where a successful cover-up is ongoing are less likely to attract attention.

Second, the PRAs are not going to replace the duties of existing inspectorates Ofsted and ISI for inspecting the safeguarding arrangements in schools. The PRAs can at their discretion carry out additional inspections.

During the inquiry, Ofsted and ISI (Independent Schools Inspectorate) have been shown over and over again to be pretty incompetent at detecting problems with safeguarding. Not surprising as their primary emphasis and expertise is in educational standards

I suspect this parallel arrangement is going to lead to massive turf wars between the PRAs and other inspectorates, with settings complaining bitterly that they are being unfairly targeted for inspections by multiple agencies with conflicting requirements.

It's really disappointing that that the inquiry didn’t choose the simpler and I believe much more effective approach of assigning all safeguarding inspection duties to the PRAs who will be specialists in this field.

Third and last, it appears that the inspection function of the PRAs will not include any enforcement powers in the event of inadequate practice being discovered.

The inquiry seems to believe that a "name and shame" approach is sufficient, that the publicity of a bad report will of itself be sufficient to get a setting to pull its socks up.

This is embarrassingly naïve. There are several settings known to IICSA where bad publicity over an extended period has not had the desired effect of improving standards.

For instance, Ampleforth College, which IICSA reported on in 2018, has since failed an ISI inspection, been put on a Warning Notice by DfE and then failed four Ofsted inspections in succession, all on safeguarding.

Recommendation 3 is the establishment of a cabinet-level ministerial position for children, in both the UK and Welsh governments.

There are attractions to this, in that safeguarding has had insufficient attention at government level. But I have doubts as to its practicability.

The largest regulated activity is education. Is this new ministry going to assume responsibility for safeguarding in schools? How will that be funded, how will the new ministry work with the Department for Education? No specific suggestions are made.

How will the PRAs (under the Ministry for Children) work with Ofsted (reporting to DfE) while Ofsted retains its responsibility for inspecting safeguarding in schools? The whole thing just doesn’t look properly thought through.

Recommendation 4 is for regular public awareness campaigns about child sexual abuse. I'm always in favour of increasing awareness of abuse and how to reduce it, but we've seen such campaigns come and go without having much effect.

Recommendation 5 is about banning "pain compliance techniques" from use in custodial institutions where children are detailed. It's not my area of knowledge and expertise, but it seems something worthy of support.

It is a repeat of a recommendation already made by IICSA in its February 2019 report into abuse in custodial institutions. It's rather disappointing that over 3 years later it has not already been acted on and has had to be repeated.

Recommendation 6 is about giving the courts power to override powers of local authorities where the court is satisfied that a looked-after child is at risk of or experiencing harm, to match powers already available to override the rights of parents.

On the face of it, this seems a sensible bit of tidying up of the Children Act 1989. It's outside my main area of knowledge, so I'll just say that there is probably a lot of detail that needs to be looked into to make this work effectively.

I hope others with more experience of the operation of Family Courts and related areas will be able to provide more informed comment on this recommendation.

Recommendation 7 proposes a registration scheme for care staff in children's homes "charged with setting and maintaining standards of training, conduct and continuing professional development, and with the power to enforce these through fitness to practise procedures".

The report notes "While Ofsted will assess the fitness of a person to manage a children’s home, it is not a workforce regulator. …

… It may deregister a children’s home, but it does not have any disciplinary function by which to regulate registered managers and hold them to professional standards of competence and conduct."

I have doubts as to Ofsted's fitness to carry out such assessments, so having a specialist body for the purpose may be a good idea. Much will depend on the regulations that are defined, the enforcement powers given to the new body, and its willingness to use them.

Again, this is not really my area, so I hope to hear comment from those with more knowledge on this point.

Recommendation 8 is along the same lines, in that it proposes a similar registration scheme for staff in care roles in young offender institutions and secure training centres.

IICSA in its interim report in 2019 highlighted concerns that the workforce in custodial institutions is unregulated.

The report somewhat tartly notes that 3 years later "the Inquiry was informed that the Ministry of Justice was considering the review and would subsequently publish a response to this recommendation. No timescale for the response has been provided."

This highlights a major problem that this inquiry has in common with all public inquires. It can propose measures but it cannot enforce its will on government. Fewer than half of all public inquiry recommendations are acted on by the government of the day.

Recommendation 9 urges better use of the barred list. There are currently limitations on who can run an enhanced DBS check including the barred list.

The proposal is to enable "any person engaging an individual to work or volunteer with children on a frequent basis to check whether or not they have been barred by the Disclosure and Barring Service from working with children."

This seems sensible enough, though with the proviso that DBS and the barred list is only as good as the data fed into it. I'll come to this shortly.

There's perhaps a concern that this "enables" people to obtain checks on employees or volunteers engaged to work with children, but doesn't require them. If the post is sufficiently sensitive, perhaps this should be a requirement rather than an option.

Recommendation 10 talks about " Improving compliance with the statutory duty to notify the Disclosure and Barring Service". The inquiry heard numerous examples of institutions who did not comply with this statutory duty.

They recommend the relevant inspectorates always include DBS compliance in their inspections - that's good.

They also recommend that "the National Police Chiefs’ Council works with relevant regulators and inspectorates to ensure that there are clear arrangements in place to refer breaches of the duty to refer to the police for criminal investigation"

This is hugely important, that there is actually a mechanism in place to prosecute failures to disclose. As far as I know, to date there has never been a prosecution in England & Wales for failure to make a DBS referral, probably because such arrangements don't exist at present.

If this can be made to work, it will make a significant difference and I support it wholeheartedly.

Recommendation 11 is to do with extending DBS and barred list checks to make them available for checking residents of England & Wales working with organisations outside the UK, where the work would be a regulated activity in the UK.

This isn’t particularly my area of knowledge, but it seems quite plausible that abusers might try to evade checks by seeking jobs for instance in international schools abroad, so this seems a sensible closing of a loophole.

Recommendation 12 looks at the availability of child abuse material online, recommending that it be mandatory for "all regulated providers of search services and user-to-user services to pre-screen for known child sexual abuse material".

This again is outside the my area of knowledge and expertise. A few thoughts occur though. I'm not certain that the term "regulated providers of search services" is defined in law.

The ICO website seems to have a number of related definitions, but none of them quite match. ico.org.uk/for-organisati…

Also, would companies which provide services within the UK but are not based on UK be counted as "regulated providers"?

Overall, I suspect that a huge amount of detail will need to go into the legal drafting, the implementation and enforcement of this in order to make it work. It should be done, but it might not be simple.

Also, because the technology of the web is developing at such a frighteningly fast pace, any measures put in place will need to be monitored for continuing effectiveness and revised as needed in light of changes in the technological landscape.

All of the adopted recommendations will need ongoing monitoring, but for anything to do with online activity, the reviews will need to be much more frequent because of the pace of online developments.

Recommendation 13 is about mandatory reporting, the key issue as far as I'm concerned, and is key to the campaigning work of @mandatenow. The wording of the recommendation needs to be examined closely because it can easily be misunderstood.

The start states that " places certain individuals – ‘mandated reporters’ – under a statutory duty to report child sexual abuse" in certain circumstances.

"These are where they:
- receive a disclosure of child sexual abuse from a child or perpetrator; or
- witness a child being sexually abused; or
- observe recognised indicators of child sexual abuse."

That looks like what @mandatenow has been asking for, especially the "observe recognised indicators of child sexual abuse" item which is quite sufficient for the "reasonable grounds for suspicion" which they have called for as the threshold for mandatory reporting.

Unfortunately, it's not quite as simple as that. At the end of the text panel, the recommendation states "It should be a criminal offence for mandated reporters to fail to report child sexual abuse".

"It then describes the circumstances under which this law would apply. It only lists the cases where the reporters
- are in receipt of a disclosure of child sexual abuse from a child or perpetrator; or
- witness a child being sexually abused."

The key measure of reporting when you "observe recognised indicators of child sexual abuse" is specifically excluded from the proposed definition of the criminal offence.

This is horribly misleading, to propose "a statutory duty" to report these recognised indicators of abuse but then to exclude them from the proposed statute. In simple terms, it's not mandatory without a law, whatever you try to call it.

The inquiry realises what it is doing. A few paragraphs after the recommendation, the report describes its reasoning. It is quite clear that the exclusion of "recognised indicators of abuse" from the criminal sanction is entirely deliberate.

The problem in my view is that they have completely missed the primary purpose of a mandatory law, which is to encourage correct behaviour by clearly describing it in law.

A clear description has two important psychological effects: to ensure everyone knows what is expected of them, and to offer protection from possible retribution to those who comply.

Examples of such retribution, threatened or actual, were heard by the inquiry.

But the inquiry has concentrated solely on the fact that it is "more complicated" to make a definite determination in the case of indications of abuse, and (by implication) would be harder to prosecute.

But bringing prosecutions is not the main purpose of a mandatory reporting law, any more than it was the main purpose of the law that made it mandatory to wear seatbelts.

The main purpose is to support those who do report, not punish those who don't.

To the best of my knowledge, the IICSA model of mandatory reporting is not adopted in any other jurisdiction. And there is a good reason for this - it is so limited as to be almost useless.

The first case that would attract a criminal sanction for failing to report is actually witnessing abuse. Child sex abuse is a private act, there are almost never any witnesses.

The second case is in two parts - disclosure by the abuser or disclosure by the child.

Even if abusers are deluded enough to believe their victims welcome their attentions and so morally speaking believe they are doing nothing wrong, they realise that they are committing an offence and will be punished if caught.

So abusers almost never brag about their abuse. This is also a situation that will hardly ever occur.

Then there is disclosure by a child. This does happen, but is also rare. Inquiry Chair Alexis Jay, in her press statement when publishing the report stated that "many victims only disclose their abuse after many years, the average time being 26 years" iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/…

If the *average* delay is 26 years then only a very small proportion of disclosures will be immediate and therefore of use in protecting either that child or any other possible victims from the abuser.

So this is another situation where IICSA is recommending the mandatory reporting of an event that hardly ever happens.

The event that does happen far more frequently, and at present all too often is *not* reported and needs to be, is to "observe recognised indicators of child sexual abuse". In effect, this is mandatory reporting in name only. It is next to useless.

In fact it is actively dangerous, because it will mislead politicians and public into believing that an effective measure is being proposed when it isn't, and so may delay by many years the moment when it is finally recognised that an effective measure is needed.

Recommendation 14 is the first to do with the justice system, that the government commission an inspection of compliance with the Victims' Code in relation to survivors of child sexual abuse.

"Evidence gathered by the inquiry suggests that the Victims’ Code is not being consistently applied and followed. The inquiry notes the large backlog of cases in the criminal courts.

""At the end of December 2021, there were 58,818 outstanding cases at the Crown Court, ..."

",,, the entirety of which cannot be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic as there was already a backlog of 37,434 cases pre-pandemic resulting from cuts to budgets for the criminal justice system."

I think that the state of the criminal justice system is a national disgrace. Delays in bringing prosecutions compound the harm to victims by extending the duration of their re-traumatisation. I think that the inquiry should have spoken more strongly on this topic.

Recommendation 15 is to do with civil justice, and victims bringing claims against their abusers and their abusers' employers. It recommends an end to "limitation".

At present, child sex abuse victims must bring a case within three years of them turning 18. If they bring a case later, they must very often ask the court to exercise its discretion to allow their claims to proceed.

The inquiry heard evidence that very few victims and survivors of child sexual abuse bring claims before the expiration of the limitation period, for much the same reason as it takes them a long time to disclose their abuse at all.

The limitation period acts unfairly on child sex abuse claimants and the inquiry recommends its abolition in such cases, subject to protection of the right to a fair trial. It is for the defendant to show that a fair trial would not be possible

All this seems very sensible and worth supporting. Lawyers who represent abuse victims will be in a better position than me to analyse this thoroughly and say whether it goes far enough.

Recommendation 16 addresses therapeutic support for victims. It proposes "a national guarantee that child victims of sexual abuse will be offered specialist and accredited therapeutic support."

It recommends "sufficient supply of these services", that they are "fully funded" and with "no eligibility criteria … other than having been a victim of child sexual abuse".

Couldn’t agree more.

Recommendation 17 deals with access to records, and proposes a 75-year retention period for records relating to allegations or cases of child sexual abuse.

It suggests "clear and accessible procedures for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to access such records" and that a code of practice for this is managed by the Information Commissioner's Office.

All this is fine so far as it goes, but I notice that no proposal is made for making the retention period mandatory, nor for any kind of criminal sanction for destruction of records prior to the end of the retention period.

Others will be in a better position than me to judge whether this recommendation has sufficient teeth. I'm not an expert in data protection law and policy.

Recommendation 18 proposes reforms to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme, to extend to beyond just "violent crime" to include other forms of child sexual abuse

It also proposes to amend the rule automatically excluding from the scheme those with unspent convictions where these are likely to be linked to the circumstances of their sexual abuse.

And it proposes an increase in the time limits to claim. This all seems very reasonable and sensible, given what we know about the long-term psychological effects of abuse on victims.

Recommendation 19 proposes that the "government establishes a single redress scheme", a compensation scheme for victims. This is separate from the extension to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme.

The scheme woud be "funded by central and local government … with voluntary contributions sought from non-State institutions". It would run alongside current systems of financial redress.

Better systems of redress should be welcomed. The details of all this are well outside my area of knowledge, so I'll leave it to others to judge whether this recommendation would work and whether it goes far enough. I'm not in a position to tell.

Recommendation 20 deals with online matters, recommending more stringent age verification for online services and social media platforms. Clearly to be welcomed, though I suspect the detail may be difficult to sort out.

IICSA regards three of these recommendations as the centrepiece of its work: mandatory reporting (#13), the national redress scheme (#19), and the creation of the Child Protection Authorities (#2).

In respect of the national redress scheme, I don’t have sufficient knowledge to hold a particularly strong view.

But for the other two recommendations, I get the strong impression that IICSA has gone for recommendations which superficially look spectacular, but when examined closely do not have the power to make that much of a difference.

On mandatory reporting, the proposal is weak, excluding the most common initial evidence of abuse from the statutory duty to report. It does not follow any model of mandatory reporting in use anywhere else in the world.

The CPAs look to be toothless in that they neither replace existing failing inspectorates (such as Ofsted and ISI) nor have any enforcement powers in the event that their inspections uncover inadequate safeguarding practice.

Of IICSA's three key recommendations, two of them appear to be seriously underpowered and unlikely to make the transformative difference to safeguarding practice that is needed.

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity that has been wasted, seemingly through timidity.

If you have any differing views on any of the recommendations, then please offer them. If you have better knowledge on some of the subjects of them, then please share it. It's only by a public discussion of the inquiry's recommendations that government can be persuaded to act.