Child sexual abuse could have been prevented, finds review

I welcome this comprehensive report from the Safeguarding Children’s Board and accept the recommendations it makes for safeguarding practices. We recognise that there is learning for us and other agencies. The council has already started making the changes suggested for us.

Protecting young people from harm is the priority for the council and one of the most crucial roles that councils perform. We have 25,000 pupils at school in the district and school safeguarding policies and procedures are very important to us. The interests of young people are at the centre of everything we do. We work closely with schools to ensure we have plans which are robust and regularly reviewed. This review will help us further improve them.

In working closely with schools the Local Authority’s role is to both support them in improving and on occasions to challenge their performance with regards to safeguarding. We are committed to continually improving the safeguarding of all West Berkshire children wherever they are educated. We will work closely with all schools and through the LSCB to ensure this. I am very grateful to the West Berkshire Safeguarding Children’s Board for this review and together we will ensure the recommendations continue to be implemented without delay.”

We welcome the findings of the Serious Case Review. We have created an action plan in response to the findings in the report and have already begun to implement the recommendations.

The Diocese of Oxford takes safeguarding extremely seriously and we are investing more resource in training, following new national guidelines.

Any case like this [case of Reverend Peter Jarvis] is a matter of sorrow and regret for the Church of England. We recognise that the suffering of survivors of sexual abuse is profound and long lasting.

The Church of England will not tolerate abusive behaviour in its clergy or anyone else for whom we have pastoral responsibility. We take allegations of abuse extremely seriously and always work with the statutory authorities to ensure abusers are brought to justice and that pastoral care is offered to those directly affected.”

Anyone reading this report will be troubled to learn that agencies missed opportunities to protect some young people from harm.

We really value the learning in this report and have been implementing changes as we identify opportunities for improvement. Safeguarding practices develop over time and are unrecognisable from those in place when the first offences were committed in the 1980s. However, we know that there are always ways to improve further.

We have already taken steps to improve how we work and this includes an immediate review of all the agencies’ safeguarding practices, a move to three-yearly DBS checks, more training and a refreshed toolkit for schools to conduct their own reviews.

We already have robust safeguarding practices in place and this report will help us strengthen them further still.”

The purpose of a Serious Case Review is to help keep children safe from harm by strengthening what is already done well and identifying areas of weakness which need to be improved in the future. As a result of this review I have found that there are a number of areas around the recruitment, training and knowledge of staff which I believe will help keep our children safer in the future.

My recommendations are focused around some key themes; raising awareness amongst staff of safe recruitment policies, making sure whistle-blowing procedures are in place and their use is reviewed to ensure they are effective, making sure that staff are vigilant in spotting potential signs of harm and feel empowered to report it. Organisations have already started implementing these recommendations and I wish them success as they continue this over the coming weeks and months.

Now that my review is complete I would like to thank all the individuals and organisations who wrote reports, shared records and had conversations with me. In particular, I would like to thank the courageous members of the public who heard my appeal and called me to provide information. It cannot have been easy for them but by sharing information and suggestions they made a valuable contribution to this report.”

In West Berkshire it’s not often that we need a Serious Case Review but on this occasion it was absolutely right that we look at how we might learn from this. We fully accept the conclusions of the report and will continue our work implementing the recommendations as quickly as we can.

Many of the recommendations included in the report were identified at an early stage and activity has been taking place since then to quickly implement changes. All the organisations involved share a commitment to improve working practices and we will continue to work together to ensure that the safety of our young people remain at the heart of everything we do.

The West Berkshire Safeguarding Children Board will robustly monitor the actions taken by the individual agencies in responding to these recommendations.”