New training to help adults spot child abuse
By Gemma Raw
The NSPCC’s Listen Up, Speak Up campaign aims to help non-professionals identify signs of child abuse and where to go for support.
From April 2021 to March 2022, NSPCC’s Helpline received 8,347calls from adults concerned about in-person sexual abuse – an increase of over 1,000 on the year before. The charity’s child protection specialists received around 27,000 contacts relating to physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect. However, it seems that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The NSPCC estimates that, every year, more than half a million children in the UK experience abuse or neglect.
Listen Up, Speak Up is a free online training resource designed to empower parents, carers and other adults to recognize the signs of child abuse and tell them where to go to get help and advice. The 10-minute module uses scenarios from everyday life to show people what to do if they think a child is at risk and needs help. It’s based on the acronym DOTS, which represents four key principles of child safeguarding:
Don’t ignore it
Observe the situation
Think: if not you, then who?
Speak up.
The campaign has been endorsed by former cycling superstar and Olympian Sir Bradley Wiggins, who recently revealed that he was groomed by his training coach when he was 13 years old. Having buried his experiences and struggled to cope, Sir Bradley believes that if someone had been able to see that he was suffering and had spoken out, he might have been able to get the help and support he needed much earlier.
“It’s a privilege to be supporting the launch of the NSPCC’s Listen Up, Speak Up campaign which will help ensure children across the UK are better protected from abuse and neglect unlike myself,” said Sir Bradley. “I believe it is every child’s right to live a life free of abuse and if more people know the signs to spot and how to speak up, this will mean more vulnerable children can get the help and support they need and deserve.”
Worrying trend
The number of child protection enquiries reached record levels in 2021-22, with a surge in referrals to children’s social care following the removal of COVID restrictions. According to the Department for Education’s annual children in need statistics, social workers carried out 10% more enquiries (217,800) under section 47 of the Children Act 1989 than in 2020-21, the first increase after three years of falling numbers and the highest total ever recorded. There was also a year-on-year increase in the number of children in need at the end of the year (up 4.1%) and assessments during 2021-22 (up 3.1%), with referrals up by 8.8% on 2020-21 to over 650,000.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has published an evidence-based guideline on how to recognise and respond to child abuse and neglect, aimed at professional practitioners, including those working in social care jobs. You can download it from the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) website here.
