Sharron Wareham
Patterns of behaviour or missed opportunities? Developmental Lens
Workshop Abstract
Sexual abuse is just as common as any other form of childhood abuse, although it is less likely to be identified and named by professionals, leading to devastating consequences for all affected.
The workshop will focus on learning from recent inquiries, child practice reviews, as well as the Centre of expertise’s key messages from research and resources. It will explore how understanding of and responses to child sexual abuse may be best improved across safeguarding systems.
The workshop will use a co-produced case study (with consent) from a young person, to illustrate a child’s journey through safeguarding systems. It will highlight the barriers in place to respond to them as a child who needed protection from sexual abuse. It will focus on intra familial sexual abuse by adults, sibling sexual abuse and harmful sexual behaviour.
The workshop will then consider the missed opportunities in this case and the impact on longer term life chances for children who do not receive the right support at the right time, including the impact on achieving best adult life chances and aspects of parenting.
Using examples from practice we will illustrate how a child first approach can be used to consider missed opportunities.
Reframing of language and behaviour used in practice will be thought provoking and encourage developmental sensitivity in assessments and interventions with children and young adults where there are concerns relating to sexualised behaviour.
The workshop will be interactive in nature, use small group-based discussion and will share practice improvement considerations from children and families.
About the Speaker
Sharron is a qualified social worker with over 20 years experience of supporting children and families impacted by child sexual abuse. She has worked directly with children harmed by child sexual abuse, child sexual exploitation and children who display harmful sexual behaviour.
Sharron has published and presented widely on this topic, alongside developing practice resources to support improved responsivity in assessment and recovery Sharron is currently a practice improvement advisor at the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse. She is also the Chair of NOTA Cymru.