Our 2019-20 Annual Report: why our work is more important than ever

We’ve just published our Annual Report with the highlights of the past year and our plans for the future. Even though the last year hasn’t been what many of us would have wanted, it’s meant that our services are needed more than ever.

Since 1992, The Lucy Faithfull Foundation has been working to prevent child sexual abuse by helping the public and professionals know how to play their part in keeping children safe. Lockdown restrictions have brought an increased risk of sexual abuse to some children because they’re spending less time with adults who can protect them, and more time with those who might harm them offline and online.

That’s why our confidential Stop It Now! helpline, professional training, assessments and interventions, self-help websites and other services have plans to reach more of the people who need us in the year ahead.

Read our Annual Report for the full details, but here are some highlights of our impact in an unprecedented year.

We keep children safe by:

Providing free and confidential advice through our Stop It Now! helpline, enabling callers to take positive, preventative actions to protect children. This year:

• This year: we helped nearly 6,000 people (up 11%) who made more than 10,600 calls and emails to the helpline (up 21%).
• 97% of callers agreed one or more actions to take to protect a child and 92% of repeat callers said they had taken their actions.
• The future: we have recently launched a live chat function on our website to help reach even more people.

Helping people achieve positive change and offence-free living.

• This year: we worked with nearly 200 men who have offended online, to prevent re-offending, as well as with nearly 200 family members. We also worked with 68 young people who got into trouble online.
• The future: we will continue to pilot and develop different styles of delivering our programmes, and launch online self-help resources for young people concerned about their own or someone else’s online behaviour.

Equipping professionals with knowledge and tools to better protect children.

• This year: we provided 72 training events to more than 920 professionals in social services, education, police, the NHS and other sectors, and 421 people attended our public education sessions. 96% of participants would recommend us to their colleagues.
• The future: we will pilot remote delivery of our training events via a secure video-conferencing platform.

Working in Scotland.

• This year: we launched a new website Upstream, funded by the Scottish government, for parents and others looking for advice about child sexual abuse and its prevention – a month after launch, the site had visits from 1700 users.
• The future: we’ll be reporting on our ROSA project, which for three years worked with young people who’d got into trouble online.

Working in Wales.

• This year: we worked with hundreds of parents, carers, families and frontline workers, so that they have the tools to protect children.
• The future: we will expand our early intervention work to reach at-risk families how and when they need our help.

We are extremely grateful for the continued support from our supporters, which allows us to continue our work to keep children safe. Since Covid-19 restrictions were introduced and children spend more time unsupervised at home and online, the demand for our services has increased and our mission to prevent child sexual abuse is more important than ever.

Help us continue to deliver and expand our services to reach more people and help prevent child sexual abuse. Please donate today.