Safeguarding changes and a mandatory reporting update

The end of 2024 and the start of 2025 has seen two announcements by the government. The first being the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill on 17 December 2024 and on 7 January 2025, confirmation that the government will introduce mandatory reporting of abuse as part of the Crime and Policing Bill. This is expected in the Spring this year.

By way of background, on 9 May 2024, the Home Office published its response to the Mandatory Reporting of Child Sexual Abuse consultation. The consultation followed a recommendation of the Inquiry Panel, in the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (“IICSA”) and recommended that the government introduced legislation which places certain individuals under a statutory duty to report child sexual abuse where they have received a disclosure or which they have witnessed themselves.

IICSA found that disclosure of child sexual abuse to a responsible adult did not always lead to action being taken and that protection of an individual or the reputation of an institution was sometimes prioritised over the safety of children. With a change of government, implementation has been delayed.

What practical impact will the two announcements mean for schools?

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

The detail of this Bill is yet to be provided. However, there is a helpful parent log which states that a variety of measures will be introduced with a focus on school reform, home-education and safeguarding. Some of the changes also relate to teacher training, pay and conditions and the curriculum. The Bill still has to be debated in Parliament and, of course, there are likely to be changes as it navigates its way through the parliamentary process.

One of the key changes will be a focus on home-education. This has unfortunately been in the news recently but, in our experience, this has been a topic for discussion in the education sector for nearly a decade. The number of children being home-educated since the pandemic has risen and there has been concern raised from those working in the sector that some of these children can become “invisible”.

The Bill proposes a compulsory Children Not in School Register in every Local Authority in England, so Local Authorities can identify all children not in school in their area and ensure they are receiving a suitable education. Parents will no longer have an automatic right to home-educate if their child is subject to a child protection investigation or under a child protection plan. For all children, if a Local Authority decide the education and/or home environment unsuitable, Local Authorities will now have the power to intervene and require school attendance.

The Bill also introduces a series of safety measures with a focus on preventing vulnerable children from falling through any gaps in the services. These include:

• A plan to have a single, unique identifier number for children across services, similar to how the NHS number works for adult social care, to improve information sharing across agencies
• Strengthening the role of education in safeguarding. Last year, schools were the second largest referrer of cases into children’s social care but currently the law does not require all nurseries, schools or colleges to be included in safeguarding arrangements. There will be a duty on the safeguarding partner to alert Local Authorities, Police and Health to give educators a greater role to influence decision-making. We are reassured that this will included independent schools
• Independent school-specific clauses. There are draft clauses in the Bill relating to the registration of independent schools and suitability of a proprietor. These and other clauses still need to be ‘worked through’ in detail and we will update schools in due course.

Mandatory reporting

The announcement on 7 January 2025 is to implement a key recommendation from IICSA. Already there has been some criticism across the sector that all of the recommendations of the inquiry have not all been brought into force. The proposal under the Crime and Policing Bill, as well as implementing a mandatory reporting duty on those working with children will also:

• Introduce the Victims and Survivors Panel to oversee reforms
• Make grooming an aggravating factor in child sexual offences
• Establish the core data set for child abuse and protection.

As with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the detail still has to be published, and a committed timeframe has not yet been provided.

Our article in April 2022 set out a key number of the recommendations and it is encouraging to see some changes being brought into law. We will of course provide further updates as we know more. If you have any queries please, please don’t hesitate get in touch.