Child Sexual Abuse Protocols - An Evaluation

Mike Collingridge

This article was first published in Rural Society 3 (2). Rural Society is published by the Centre for Rural Social Research, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia.

This article is ©copyright, the author and the Centre for Rural Social Research. This text may be downloaded for personal use, or stored electronically, as long as no charge is made for access. The text may not be altered in any way and all hard copy or electronic versions MUST carry this header

Child Sexual Abuse Protocols - An Evaluation

Introduction

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is not a new social problem, but there has been an increasing desire to understand its etiology and prevalence and to develop strategies for preventation and intervention. In NSW, primary responsibility for intervention in cases of child abuse (including sexual abuse) rests with the Department of Community Services. The police also have a central role in the detection and investigation of cases and in the prosecution of alleged abusers. Other significant players include Sexual Assault Services (part of the State Department of Health) and the Department of School Education.

Speaking the same language (by Mike Collingridge and Lew Wilson) has been recently published by the Centre for Rural Social Research. It is an evaluation of Child Sexual Assault Protocols currently in operation in NSW, focusing primarily on the way local agencies in a New South Wales country town applied and operated child sexual assault protocols.

The evaluation was concerned with two main issues:

  • the practices of workers in the different agencies and the extent to which they varied from the protocols

  • the usefulness of the protocols as guides to practice, particularly in relation to inter-agency relations and case management

We wanted to find out the extent to which agencies and their workers were speaking the same language when dealing with cases of child sexual abuse. In this paper, I look briefly at some of the findings from our local study and argue that current NSW CSA protocols are inadequate on a number of grounds.

Problems with the multi-professional response

It is widely accepted in Australia and overseas that working with sexually abused children requires a multi- professional response and close cooperation amongst professionals and agencies: protocols ostensibly provide the framework within which such a response may be managed. While there is a growing body of Australian literature on child abuse generally, and child sexual abuse in particular, it is rare to find any discussion about such interprofessional and interorganisational issues.

An Australian social worker, Bruce Lord, has recently examined British experience of the multiprofessional approach and has identified a number of potential problems (Lord, 1992). He bases his conclusion on a number of studies:

  • Hallett and Stevenson (1980) revealed how conflict between different professionals affected the degree of cooperation achieved

  • Corby and Mills (1986) revealed widely differing perceptions of risk including a tendency to steer high risk cases away from case conferences

  • Higginson (1990) in a study of multi-professional case conferences noted that in half the cases observed, serious risk to the child was minimised, or minor risk was exaggerated. In the other half of the cases observed, the right decision was taken but for the wrong reasons.

Such interest in the multi-professional response has undoubtedly been stimulated by the intense public scrutiny of British social services over the last twenty years, largely as a consequence of a perceived failure to adequately protect children.

Speaking the same language

While carefully drafted or highly structured agency protocols do not necessarily lead to good intervention or even protect children from inappropriate intervention, they ought at least to provide a comprehensive framework for investigation, assessment and decision making by and between agencies. They should also offer some measure of protection for workers by ensuring, through proper systems of planning and management, that cases do not get out of control or result in children 'falling through the gaps' between agencies.

Speaking the same language focussed on an aspect of the multiprofessional approach. It revealed that many of the issues and problems identified in overseas research are relevant to the NSW experience. It concluded that current protocols offer a weak framework on which to best meet the interests of children or even to ensure cases are properly managed.

The study involved an evaluation of departmental protocols currently used in NSW, together with a two stage interview and questionnaire involving key workers in the Department of Community Services, the Police and Sexual Assault Services. A sample of teachers was randomly selected from state and non- government high, primary and pre-schools.

Each worker was given a structured interview based around three composite scenarios developed from real cases. The scenarios comprised a very serious, current CSA; a serious, but not current case; and a relatively less serious case. The questions were designed to elicit responses in relation to:

  • judging the seriousness of the case
  • assessing the trauma suffered by the child
  • how their agency would expect them to act
  • how they would act
  • the appropriateness of such intervention.

The findings revealed some interesting variations, mainly between agencies rather than within them. Most workers had accurate perceptions about the relative seriousness of CSA as well as the possible serious consequences for the child of agency intervention. A significant group of workers seemed to lack such perception. It was clear that some workers felt that any sexual contact would have considerable emotional effects on the child and little consideration was given to the possibility that the child could be more disturbed by the intervention than the incident itself.

Such variation was more noticeable in response to the relatively less serious scenario, which was outlined as follows:

Jane is the Director of a Before and After School Child Care Centre conducted at the local Primary School. Cathy, who is six years old and who attends after school, complained to Jane about the behaviour of Jimmy, an eight year old boy at the same school. While Cathy was climbing on the monkey bars in the school playground, Jimmy put his hand under her dress, pulled at her pants and touched her bottom. Jane is aware of a previous similar incident observed by one of the parent helpers, again involving Jimmy and Cathy

A majority of teachers took the view that while the boy's behaviour was unacceptable, it did not constitute a notifiable sexual assault. A typical response was that the matter could be dealt with comfortably as an 'in- house' disciplinary matter, a pragmatic solution that we suspect has its basis in teachers' everyday experience and knowledge of normal (though not necessarily acceptable) childhood behaviour and psycho- social and emotional development. Workers in some other agencies wanted to invoke the full panoply of interventions, including police interviews and medical examination.

When presented with the scenario illustrating a more serious and current case of CSA, the responses to questions about seriousness, trauma and intervention were largely consistent. An interesting pattern emerged: the more serious the case, the more likely the duty to notify was forgotten or relegated to a low priority, particularly if there was an opportunity to act directly and immediately. Conversely, in the relatively less serious and the serious but not current cases notification was often the first priority.

Differences in the way in which agencies interpret their role and decide how to act is partly due to weaknesses in the protocols. A major weakness identified was that the protocols allow too much scope for independent action by individual agencies. The protocols are predominantly crisis orientated and do not address the medium to long term objectives of intervention. Protocols thus encourage agency capture - the exercise of rights of possession over that part of the case which falls within an agency's domain, particularly an agency of first contact.

Agency capture is part of a wider problem that is now recognised as systems abuse. This occurs when intervention becomes an end in itself. This self-validating response is often coupled with adherence to mono-causal explanations and mono-professional solutions. Workers may fail to recognise the impact their interventions can have on the child victim, whose psycho-social needs may be ignored. The child becomes doubly victimised - initially through the assault, then by 'the system'.

Systems abuse is usually preceded by system capture. If intervention in itself is regarded as necessary, being seen to do something becomes more important than what might be achieved. This typically occurs where workers think something ought to be done, but without certainty as to what. If case management is unfocussed, a child or family may be brought into the system only to be subjected to a range of inappropriate interventions. Another possible outcome is system paralysis where, having captured a client the agency is capable of doing nothing at all.

This latter tendency was reflected in worker's responses to the serious, but not current, scenario. This scenario involved a teenage boy who had been sexually abused by his father some six years earlier. Though there was no evidence of immediate danger to the teenager, many workers thought there ought to be urgent intervention. However, it was by no means clear what form such intervention should take. No one agency was prepared to take responsibility for providing support for the victim though it was thought somebody should. This was a rather disturbing finding. Many agencies expressed doubts about their competence to deal with older male victims revealing a significant gap in service provision for victims, especially in country regions where counselling services are thinly spread and poorly resourced.

Conclusions and recommendations

In our evaluation we made a number of recommendations in relation to:

  • improved communication between agencies
  • formulation of agreed definitions and evaluative criteria for the assessment of risk
  • development of frameworks for decision making and management
  • formal recognition of who has overall responsibility for cases - something that is not reflected in any of the protocols we examined.

We made these recommendations without any certainty that local agencies would implement them, due to the division of responsibility for CSA between the Police and the Departments of Community Services and Health. Existing protocols are agency-centred and do not embrace a multi-professional response. They describe and secure an agency's role within a framework that they alone define and are used as a formal mechanism for claiming a stake in CSA cases. Inter-agency relations are thus expressed in terms of 'discussion', 'consultation' or 'information' because this does not require agencies to cede autonomy in the manner required for true interprofessional cooperation.

In our study we found no major, overt evidence of conflict or even mishandling of cases by local agencies. We suspect this may be due more to good luck than good management. It was clear that good informal relations had been developed between agencies and workers within them that allowed them to negotiate their way through the complexities of CSA cases and to dampen down difficulties.

We would have been suprised had we found complete agreement about CSA and its etiology, or about philosophies of intervention and case management. Nevertheless, as Hallett and Stevenson observe, the trick is not to get agencies and their workers to think alike, but to act together (1980:27). Our study showed that in many cases agencies and their workers were not speaking the same langauge.

References

Corby, B. and C. Mills (1986) Child abuse: risks and resources British Journal of Social Work 16

Hallett, C. and G. Stevenson (1980) Child abuse: aspects of interprofessional cooperation London: Allen and Unwin

Higginson, S. (1990) Under the influence Social Work Today 22(10)

Lord, B. (1992) Case conferences and decision making in child protection in G. Calvert et al (eds) The practice of child protection: Australian approaches Sydney: Hale and Ironmonger

Wilson, L. and M. Collingridge (1992) Speaking the same langauge: an evaluation of child sexual assault protocols Wagga Wagga: Centre for Rural Social Research

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