For 30 years, we’ve been supporting professionals with specialist consultancy work.
When working with a family affected by sexual harm, practitioners can face some of the most complex and emotionally challenging decisions of their careers.
Even experienced social workers, youth justice practitioners and safeguarding professionals may only encounter this type of work occasionally, making it difficult to maintain confidence and stay up to date with best practice.
To find out more about the impact of our consultancy service, we spoke to Helen Anthony, Service Manager at the Youth Justice & Targeted Prevention Service in London’s Redbridge Council, about her team’s long-standing partnership with us.
How did your work with us begin?
We have worked with Lucy Faithfull Foundation for 20 years. We first began working together in 2006, and your support has been invaluable in helping our practitioners feel equipped, skilled, and able to deliver this work.
Our statutory service works with children and young people involved in all types of offending, to help them build on their strengths, which will prevent offending. While our practitioners are experienced in supporting children and young people with a wide range of needs, not everyone feels confident when harmful sexual behaviour is involved. That’s where specialist support makes a real difference.
We buy a block of consultancy sessions and use them as and when we need them. Even though sexual harm doesn’t come up every day, we know that we do get these referrals, and we know our staff value the support.
Because we know we’ll need to work with children and young people displaying sexual harm sooner or later, we find a consultancy retainer model much more practical than commissioning support on a case-by-case basis.
Having that expertise come in at that point to support is just invaluable.
Which situations do you seek our support with?
We access consultancy support when working with anyone where there has been harmful sexual behaviour.
For example, these might be abusive relationships between two teenagers, a child or young person arrested for rape, and children and young people involved in online harms, such as image-sharing over social media.
Why is our consultancy valuable to your practitioners?
This type of work can bring up lots of emotions, and without the right support, practitioners can easily feel deskilled. Talking through concerns with specialists, supported by the current research, has helped us massively. I’ve had caseworkers say, “I wish I had asked for this earlier”.
People might assume that social workers and Youth Justice Service workers deal with this every day. Actually, most of our work focuses on a wide range of other issues. Working with a child or young person involved in sexual harm is completely different to your tenth robbery or theft case. Although all our practitioners are trained in AIM3 assessments, harmful sexual behaviour doesn’t arise frequently enough for them to continually practise those skills.
The consultancy support removes anxiety and builds confidence. Often, it reassures practitioners they are already on the right track. Having a specialist alongside them, they can be confident in their assessments.
We do attend training and conferences to keep up to date with the latest research and best practices, but having the specialist support ensures we don’t miss anything. Particularly when dealing with emerging trends or complex situations, having someone with whom we can discuss the evidence behind an assessment is incredibly valuable.
I've had caseworkers say, “I wish I had asked for this earlier”.
What happens in a typical consultation meeting?
We’ll send an anonymised overview beforehand, so that the LFF team can think about resources to share, such as the family safety plan.
During the consultation, we’ll discuss what’s happened so far and the key questions we’re trying to answer.
It might be a child or young person going through criminal justice because they have viewed and shared sexual images of children, for instance. We’ll be writing a pre-sentence report to advise the court on a sentence proposal. We’ll also be assessing the risk they could pose to others. We’ll be thinking about concerns raised, but also about that child or young person’s strengths, and how to support them to desist from harm in the future.
The case manager will explain their view and the proposal they’d like to make. They will include social factors, other behaviours that have come through, and what the drivers might be.
The LFF practitioner brings specialist knowledge, extensive experience, and an understanding of the latest research. They help us think critically about how to support the child or young person, and ensure we’re considering all the relevant factors.
They don’t make the decisions for us – proposals remain the responsibility of the caseworker. What consultancy does provide is greater clarity, confidence, and assurance that our decisions are informed by the best available evidence.
Being able to say we’re drawing on current research, rather than guidance from years ago, is hugely helpful.
Do you think this kind of support would benefit other services?
This retainer model could work very well for both adult and children’s services.
Most youth justice services are so small it is not always practical to have a dedicated worker for harmful sexual behaviour. This is how we fill the gap. I think this consultancy model is purpose made for youth justice services, and I’m quite surprised that more youth justice services aren’t using this support.
Knowing that we’ve got the support of experts just helps us stay responsive to new challenges, maintain strong practise in this area, and ensure our practitioners feel equipped, empowered and supported when working with children and young people who need our support.
I'm quite surprised that more youth justice services aren't using this support.
We can provide specialist support for your team.
We provide consultation support for teams working with young people or adults who may pose a risk of sexual harm to children, or who work with families where there are concerns around risk, or where there is a concern about parents’ or carers’ ability to protect.
Drawing on more than 30 years of clinical experience, we specialise in providing training, assessments, interventions, and case consultancy in relation to child sexual abuse and harmful sexual behaviour. We work with a range of organisations including children’s and adults’ services, education, healthcare, and with individuals.
Contact our Referrals Manager at lffreferrals@lucyfaithfull.org.uk to discuss how we could support you.
Perhaps your organisation can benefit from training. Delivered by experts, our training ranges from brief inputs and webinars, to in-depth courses focused on various aspects of safeguarding, risk management, sexual harm, ability to protect, and safer recruitment.
Around 10% of contacts to our free, anonymous Stop It Now helpline come from professionals seeking guidance on complex cases, practitioner wellbeing, or support with signposting.
If you’re concerned about preventing child sexual abuse, contact us – whatever your worry.
Shore is our anonymous live chat service and website for young people worried about sexual behaviour, including those who have got in trouble with the police or are concerned about their sexual thoughts or behaviour towards younger children. We also offer Inform Young People, a 10-week psycho-educational programme for young people who have got into trouble online, and their families.
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