The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse was formed in November 2018 to highlight the needs of victims and survivors across the country and to give a voice to their concerns in Parliament. Sarah Champion, MP for Rotherham, is Chair of the group. The Secretariat is the Survivors Trust, of which NAPAC is a member.
The APPG published its first report ‘Achieving quality information and support for survivors’ on 7 May 2019. The APPG has explored survivors’ experience of accessing support services and the criminal justice system.
The findings were gathered in four ways:
• Survivor evidence session in Parliament
• Sector professional evidence session in Parliament
• Online survey of survivors with 365 respondents
• Written evidence submitted to the APPG
Key Recommendations
1. The Home Office should commission and publish research on the economic and social costs of child sexual abuse.
2. The upcoming Spending Review for 2020-2023 should create a discrete, cross-departmental strategic fund to transform Government response to child sexual abuse. This should fund core services to meet demand and recognise the value of the specialist voluntary sector.
3. NHS England should collect data on Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) expenditure on long-term therapeutic care for survivors, and consider ringfenced funding as a way to ensure CCGs commission specialist voluntary sector services to meet demand.
4. Government departments should issue guidance to frontline professionals on how to respond in a trauma-informed way, developed in collaboration with specialist sexual violence and abuse voluntary sector umbrella agencies.
5. The Government should fund a nationwide public health campaign to raise awareness of the issues around childhood sexual abuse, highlight the potential impact on survivors, tackle social myths and stereotypes about sexual abuse and direct survivors and professionals to sources of support and information.