Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls (credit: Home Office)
Loading …The government will create a national agency to provide oversight of child protection practice in England, the safeguarding minister has revealed.
The Child Protection Authority (CPA) will provide “national leadership and learning on child protection and safeguarding”, with work to establish it beginning this year, Jess Phillips told the House of Commons this week.
Creating a CPA in each of England and Wales was one of the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s (IICSA) final report, published in 2022.
Inquiry’s proposal for Child Protection Authority
IICSA said these should be independent statutory bodies that would be repositories of expertise on child protection and tasked with improving practice, advising governments on policy and, where necessary, inspecting institutions.
The inquiry said they would fill gaps in current arrangements by inspecting non-statutory or unregulated organisations where children spend time and multi-agency child protection arrangements.
However, the then Conservative government rejected the proposal – in relation to England – in 2023, on the grounds that many of its proposed functions were already being carried out by existing bodies. These included the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel (“the national panel”), which reviews learning from serious child protection cases.
Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel remit to be expanded
In her statement to the Commons, Phillips said the CPA would initially be set up within the national panel, with work starting immediately to expand the panel’s role.
This would involve giving the panel “the resources it needs to increase its analytical capacity and its capability to develop high-quality material for practitioners”, said an accompanying Home Office report on the government’s approach to IICSA’s recommendations.
Later this year, the government will consult on the make-up and remit of the CPA, including any aspects that would require legislation. The Home Office report did not commit itself to retaining the CPA within the national panel in future or setting it up as a separate body, meaning this may be consulted upon.
Phillips told the Commons that the consultation would “take time” and not involve “upending an entire system”.
Authority ‘must help make difference to children’
The panel welcomed the plan for it to “help create the foundations for a new Child Protection Authority across England” and said it was committed to working closely with the government on this.
Its chair, Annie Hudson, said: “The panel’s oversight and work to support learning from serious incidents where children have died or been seriously harmed, inside and outside their families, provides important insight about how children can be better safeguarded and protected from all forms of abuse.
“It is important that the powers and remit of a new Child Protection Authority will help make a difference to children.”
“We are committed to working closely with government and other stakeholders as plans develop and the detailed roadmap is progressed,” she added. “It is vital that all those who work with children participate in the forthcoming consultation so together we develop a child protection system that keeps children’s needs at the heart of all decision making.”
No inspection function for Child Protection Authority
While the department said that IICSA’s recommendations would be “core to the development of the consultation”, it ruled out giving the CPA any role in inspection.
This was to ensure that agencies were “transparent about failings” with the CPA to enable it to “provide expert advice on how to improve and change”, an approach that could be impeded by giving it inspection powers.
The Home Office also highlighted findings from IICSA and other organisations that inspectorates had “failed to identify abuse taking place in institutions”.
Joint inspection on CSA within families
In relation to inspection, it said it Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the police and probation inspectorates would carry out a joint targeted area inspection (JTAI) of agencies’ response to child sexual abuse in family settings in autumn 2025.
The Home Office also pledged to create a cross-government working group to look at improving single and joint inspection of child protection and post-inspection accountability arrangements, to ensure areas acted on recommendations.
IICSA also recommended that the government appoint a cabinet-level minister for children to provide a sharper focus across government on
issues affecting them.
The Home Office said the government would not be implementing this specific recommendation, with the education secretary – currently, Bridget Phillipson – remaining the cabinet minister responsible for children’s issues.
Cross-government child protection board
However, it said that a “keeping children safe” ministerial board, including all ministers with roles affecting children, would be set up to support cross-government working on safeguarding. Its role would include:
Plan for mandatory reporting of CSA
The government has already pledged to implement one of IICSA’s key recommendations, the introduction of mandatory reporting of CSA by those in position of trust over children where they have received a disclosure of, or witnessed, abuse.
This will be introduced through the Crime and Policing Bill. However, the government has departed from the inquiry’s recommendations in two key respects:
- There will be no criminal sanction for failing to report CSA in line with the duty. Instead, such a failure would constitute “relevant conduct” that would be liable to have the person being included on the Disclosure and Barring Service’s list of people barred from working with children.
- There will be no requirement to report CSA based on the reporter witnessing recognised signs of the abuse, such as sexually harmful behaviour, physical signs of abuse or consequences of sexual abuse, such as pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.
Specialist therapy for victims and survivors
IICSA also recommended that victims and survivors of CSA be given a guarantee of specialist therapeutic support.
In relation to this, the Home Office said it would “work on ambitious proposals for improving the therapeutic support offer”, setting out details in the forthcoming spending review, which will set government expenditure limits from 2026-29.
It also pledged to double annual funding this year for national services supporting adult survivors of CSA.
