Social workers struggling to keep pace with online abuse

By The Press Association26th November 2014News EnglandChild Abuse, News England, Sexual Abuse, Social Work

Overburdened social workers are struggling to keep pace with emerging types of child sex abuse like sexting and revenge porn, a new report says.

The research commissioned by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) examined social workers’ confidence, access to training and morale at six local authorities across England.

The University of Coventry-led study found social workers felt more confident confronting sexual abuse within families, which still represents the majority of cases.

But Jon Brown, NSPCC lead for tackling sexual abuse, said child protection workers were grappling with an increasingly wide range of sex abuse in which children are targeted online – often, disturbingly, by fellow children.

“Peer-to-peer abusive behaviour, or sexually coercive behaviour that manifests in the form of sexting and coercive behaviour online – we’ve seen a significant increase in that,” he said.

“Typically, it’s online-based and involves the use of social networks.

“As far as we can see, some of the messages that boys and girls are getting through popular culture, through the music industry and music videos, advertising and of course easy access to online pornography as well … all of those factors we think have combined to cause some degree of confusion among boys and girls about what consent means, sharing of imagery and expectations within relationships.”

If a young girl shares sexually explicit selfies with a boyfriend, for instance, those images can easily end up being shared more widely online.

“Then of course it can immediately become a more pressing child protection concern because then they can fall into the hands of adults with ulterior motives,” Mr Brown added.

He said social workers and frontline workers like teachers often struggled to recognise and respond to these ‘peer-to-peer’ abuse cases, and there was a need for up-to-date training in this area.

The report also suggested children suffering sexual abuse may not be getting crucial long-term support as social workers struggle with mounting caseloads and a child protection system geared towards securing criminal convictions – sometimes at the expense of a child’s wellbeing.

“I actually got to the point the other day when I said to my daughter, ‘I might have to take you into care because at least I’d have to see you then’,” one social worker told researchers.

“Because it’s just constant, and I had a go at my manager when she said you need to go out and deal with this home alone. I went, ‘I don’t know where my own children are. I don’t know who’s picked them up. I’m dealing with a home alone and I haven’t seen my own’.”

Another social worker said he felt he was “winging it a lot of the time” because he did not feel prepared to deal with the emotions of victims, while one focus group spoke of a child who had disclosed significant sexual abuse and had been waiting for six months with no support.

Mr Brown said there was a risk overworked or under-prepared social workers could pick up on more obvious signs of physical neglect, but fail to see more subtle signs of sexual abuse.

“Some of the other forms of child abuse and neglect can sometimes be more in-your-face. A bruise on a child’s face … can be identified more quickly than some of the more, perhaps, equivocal signs in relation to possible child sex abuse and sexual exploitation,” he said.

“By not having an understanding through training, those warning signs can be missed.”