Our 2023-24 annual report: how we’ve worked to protect children from sexual abuse

We’ve just published our annual report detailing key achievements from the past year and outlining some of our plans for the future.

“This year’s annual report is a treasure trove of information on how we are at the forefront of child protection,” said Deborah Denis, CEO.

“It details our new projects and interventions to prevent harm, and showcases how our clinical team supported decision-making situations across the country by delivering hundreds of assessments and interventions. It tells of how our Stop It Now helpline helped more people than ever, and of how we supported hundreds of others through our services to tackle online sexual offending.

“Vitally, it shows how we help prevent abuse before it happens.”

How our preventative approach has an impact

Our Stop It Now helpline: 536 people contacted us saying that they had not harmed a child but were concerned about their sexual thoughts towards children and their risk of committing a contact offence. 279 others called because they had concerns about someone they knew who might be at risk of committing a contact offence.

Early intervention in Wales: 1,199 parents and professionals attended our Keeping Children Safe public education sessions in Wales and we completed early intervention programmes with 60 families who had been identified by statutory or community services as at risk or as needing early intervention with regard to child sexual abuse.

Project Intercept and our Chatbot: The University of Tasmania’s independent evaluation of our chatbot project was published showing a statistically significant reduction in searches for sexual images of under-18s over the 18-month project, demonstrating that warning messages have a deterrent effect on people looking for sexual images of under-18s on adult pornography websites.

Shore: In September, we launched Shore – our website for teenagers worried about their own sexual thoughts or behaviour, or that of a friend. More than 25,000 users visited the website and 106 people contacted us for help. Of the under-18s who contacted us, 72% had not yet spoken to a professional  about what was worrying them.

Schools: Our three-year project to tackle harmful sexual behaviour in schools completed its second year. Hundreds of students have benefited from the work we did with 99 schools across the west midlands to address issues work towards whole-school approaches to prevention.

Promoting the public health approach to prevention: In November, we held a joint conference with NOTA on the public health approach to prevent child sexual abuse. Prevention was considered through a multi-agency public health lens and attendees gained confidence in their roles to prevent child sexual abuse having acquired knowledge, skills and tools to use in their work.

Jane Leach, Chair of Trustees, said that it has been an inspiring and ambitious year. “Thank you to everyone who has helped continue our work, including our funders and supporters who share our mission. Thank you to all the staff who work so hard, day in and day out, to keep children safe from harm.”

An overview of achievements against our strategic plan

Our 2020-2025 strategic plan set out our key aims to achieve greater impact and protect more children from sexual harm, building on our achievements over more than 30 years. The plan outlined our areas of focus and our key objectives, which are centred around the three pillars of reach, research and advocacy. This year, we made excellent progress against each of our strategic aims and a full breakdown can be found in our report. Here are some highlights.

Reach

• 8,774 people received advice and support from our Stop It Now helpline.
• We completed 270 assessments for local authorities and others and delivered 84 pieces of intervention.
• We started delivering psychological assessments.
• We worked with 439 men arrested for online offences to help prevent future offending.
• We supported 292 family members affected by the arrest of a loved one for online offences and a further 957 people engaged in online peer support.
• We worked with 109 young people who had got into trouble online.
• We trained 171 people from 10 agencies across the UK and Ireland including those in health, education, the justice service, NGOs and care homes in how to help young people who have got into trouble online.
• We delivered 86 training events reaching 1,174 professionals in England.
• We delivered 20 training events reaching 583 professionals in Scotland.
• We delivered two half-day webinars for professionals and four keynote speaking events reaching 417 beneficiaries in Wales.
• We supported 29 separate press engagements, more than doubling the total from last year (14), including in the BBC, Sky, Woman’s Hour, The Guardian, The Times, The Mirror and The i.
• Nearly 1,300,000 users visited our websites.

Research

• We published three Faithfull Papers which share data and insights about how best to prevent child sexual abuse based on our work.
• Dr Sarah Wefers et al published our research on understanding and deterring online child grooming.
• A paper was published exploring the impact of our public health campaign to deter viewing of child sexual abuse images online.
• The University of Tasmania’s independent evaluation of our chatbot project was published. The evaluation has been instrumental in building the evidence base for warning messages to be deployed in online environments where searches for illegal material can be made. Vitally, the report showed that there was a statistically significant reduction in searches for sexual images of under-18s over the 18-month project.
• We started work with Professor Michael Seto at the University of Ottawa Institute of Mental Health Research to develop an evidence base for intrafamilial child sexual abuse prevention.
• We developed methodologies for an evaluation of our helpline and online resources being conducted with Professor Elizabeth Letourneau at Johns Hopkins University and Professor Michael Seto at the University of Ottawa.

Advocacy

• Whilst the Online Safety Bill continued to progress through Parliament, we worked in coalition with charitable partners to support briefings to parliamentarians with quotes and case studies, and endorsed open letters. As a result, the government amended the Bill to include highly effective age verification for pornography sites and social media platforms, and announced the Independent Pornography Review.
• We submitted a wide-ranging response to the Independent Pornography Review call for evidence, drawing on insights from all areas of our work, and attended a round table hosted by Baroness Bertin, who is leading the review.
• We responded to both the government’s call for evidence and the consultation on mandatory reporting. We worked with the Welsh Government and key partners to start creating the next National Action Plan for Preventing and Responding to Child Sexual Abuse, leading on the prevention strand.
• We provided evidence about online harm to the Scottish Parliament Justice Committee.
• In collaboration with the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre), we published new guidance for social workers and other professionals to support the whole family when a parent has offended online.
• We are part of the steering group of IICSA Changemakers, a group of more than 64 organisations across the sector who are committed to ensuring that the recommendations of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) are a turning point for change.

Find out more

We provide a range of services to people who offend, their loved ones, children and professionals to ensure that children are safe from sexual harm.

Our anonymous Stop It Now helpline can support any adult worried about a child or young person’s sexual behaviour.

Our Shore website has anonymous advice and information for teenagers worried about their own or a friend’s sexual behaviour.

We need your support

We want to stop child sexual abuse, before it happens but we cannot achieve this without your kindness and generosity.

Help us to continue delivering and expanding our services in order to reach more people and prevent child sexual abuse. Please consider donating today.

If you have any questions or feedback about the report or our work in general, please do get in touch.

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