Assessing Risk in Young People who Sexually Abuse

The Derwent Initiative commissioned a piece of work with the aim of enabling those who work with adolescents who sexually abuse and their senior managers across a range of disciplines and organisations, both in the voluntary and statutory sector, to decide what resources and procedures they require for the assessment, referral, and appropriate intervention of these young people.

It highlighted the following areas to be addressed:

• There is no comprehensive strategic overview for this work either at national, regional or local level even though individual agencies or partnerships are collaborating on a number of important initiatives which all contribute to the whole picture.
• There is no one lead agency with lead responsibility for producing such a regional strategy involving all agencies.
• Young people with these problems sit either in the child protection or the youth justice structures, and there are difficulties when trying to develop a joined up approach.
• Although there is acknowledgement of the need to work in partnership differing professional cultures can cause tensions and no mechanisms exist to resolve these tension
• Very little quantifiable data exists.
• How does this work sit with the emerging agenda from the green paper “Every Child Matters”, Children’s Trusts and the national information and tracking system.

This report was first published in 2004, building on work originally undertaken in 1996.