MRC Webinar - Children and young people’s experiences of disclosing child sexual abuse: Implications for a mandatory reporting system
This webinar is managed by our partner, MRC
Description
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) made a central recommendation that the government should implement a mandatory reporting duty (Recommendation 13). Despite mandatory reporting being a feature of many international jurisdictions, and we are on a clear trajectory to adopt such a system in England and Wales, there remains virtually no published peer review or grey literature based on research with children and young people exploring their views on and experiences of such a system (McTavish et al., 2019).
In the absence of an evidence base on this, Dr. Allnock will share findings of a review of the literature from research undertaken with children and young people about their experiences of disclosing sexual abuse and what the findings might imply about the design of a mandatory reporting system..This will include a reflection on whether it is possible to see any particular commonalities or differences in experience between children disclosing/reporting CSA in jurisdictions with and without mandatory reporting systems.
Dr. Debbie Allnock is an Associate Professor at the Safer Young Lives Research Centre, University of Bedfordshire. She is also seconded to the Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme (the VKPP) as Head of Research and Review. Debbie has nearly 25 years’ experience of working within the child protection and safeguarding sector across the third sector, academia and policing. She has particular expertise in children’s experiences of disclosing CSA which was the focus of her PhD, and regularly publishes, consults and trains in the field of child sexual abuse.