Guide helps children’s workers respond to sibling sexual abuse

Yet, despite the likelihood that most child protection professionals will encounter it during their career, there remains little dedicated training or guidance to help build consistently effective practice.

Our latest report Sibling Sexual Abuse: A Knowledge and Practice Overview aims to fill this gap and help professionals understand the issues and challenges raised by sibling sexual abuse. This is particularly important following the introduction of another period of “stay at home” lockdown instructions, with the potentially heightened risk that children will experience abuse within the home environment and increased isolation from other trusted adults and professionals (see below).

This overview report stresses the need to assess and respond to cases holistically, considering the whole family: both in identifying patterns of behaviour to the abuse, and in strategies for healing. When sibling sexual abuse occurs, parents can often feel torn between the child that has harmed and the child who has been harmed, so our support should focus on the whole family unit. Family-based interventions help affirm to the harmed child that the abuse was not their fault, but can also help the child that harmed to manage their behaviour more effectively. Likewise, they allow us to support parents and carers in promoting emotional, physical and sexual safety in the home, and increase our awareness of the needs of any further children and siblings at home.