As 2017 concluded, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Royal Commission) delivered its much-anticipated findings and recommendations. What became clear as the Commission undertook its work was that many individuals have been impacted physically, emotionally and psychologically from the actions of the very people who were tasked to protect them as children. The findings and recommendations of the Royal Commission have relevance to various aspects of the work of psychologists, and it will be incumbent on us as a profession to deliver what we can as researchers, educators, practitioners and leaders to meet the needs of those child sexual abuse survivors who have put their trust in the Australian community for a changed future.
In 2012 the then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announced the establishment of the Royal Commission. Although there had over the years been inquiries into institutional child sexual abuse, the lack of acknowledgment as well as action to address past abuse and protect children going forward led to the setting up of a Royal Commission, which is often seen by Government as a last resort. Royal commissioners have extensive and broad legal powers of investigation.
The task undertaken by the Royal Commission was significant, hearing over 1200 witness statements and reviewing over a million documents. An important aim of the Commission was to ensure that all those who had experienced child sexual abuse had the opportunity to be heard. The magnitude and extent of the abuse has been shocking, with the evidence demonstrating that tens of thousands of children were subjected to abuse in many Australian institutions.
On 15 December 2017, the Royal Commission released its much-anticipated final report on its four years of work. The 17-volume report documents the key issues and provides 189 recommendations, based on the Commission’s analysis of information drawn from 8013 people in private sessions and over 1000 written accounts, 57 public hearings, 59 research reports, and 35 policy roundtables since it commenced its work in 2013 (bit.ly/2BnWwCm).
Some of the recommendations will have implications for psychologists so it is important that psychologists understand how the recommendations pertain to services psychologists provide, and how they might respond to the recommendations. In this brief summary of the implications of the Royal Commission’s work for psychologists, I focus on three overriding themes: capability building, treatment services, and prevention strategies.
Capability-building strategies
The Royal Commission based its recommendations not only on the testimony of survivors from private sessions, and the investigations conducted through the public hearings – but also through extensive synthesis of the international literature and then by commissioning new empirical literature to fill key gaps about the causes of sexual abuse in organisational contexts, its impact, and effective prevention and response strategies. For example, to address a significant gap in the knowledge base, they published new research on children’s perceptions of safety in organisations (bit.ly/2EiyG8w).
Having collated that knowledge into the 17 reports, the Commissioners’ next task was to ensure that the knowledge be translated into action. Action obviously needs to be taken by governments – for example, recommendations relating to mandated pre-employment screening processes (i.e., strengthening and having nationally consistent working with children check legislation); establishing child-safe standards; and addressing the ‘invisibility’ and ‘excusability’ of potential grooming behaviour by introducing obligations to report concerning conduct of adults.
But just as important for psychologists is to think about the next steps of implementation, and how we can lead – in our own organisations – or support others to ensure that all youth-serving organisations understand the knowledge and capability that adults within their service need to prevent and respond to harm to children. For example, see the ACU Safeguarding Children and Young People Capability Framework (bit.ly/2IoGAPS), which translates the key messages emerging from the Royal Commission’s research and case studies. The framework developed by ACU outlines six capabilities, where adults need to have knowledge or skills in order to effectively implement safeguarding strategies:
- Nature of abuse and risk factors
- Child-safe organisational cultures and governance
- Risk-management strategies
- Participation of children and young people (“protective participation”)
- Prevention education (including sexual healthy/respectful relationship education)
- Responsive care and support
Psychologists can play a critical role in training and supporting the next generation of workers for youth-serving organisations in what they need to do – both to prevent sexual abuse and other forms of harm in organisations from occurring, and to better respond when concerning behaviours are observed or abuse has occurred, and children and young people need safety and therapeutic responses. For psychologists, capability-building needs to be focused both inward and outward.
Inward-looking
With recommendations made in relation to establishment of a national redress scheme, and funding for compensation that can be used for treatment services, the skills that psychologists have will be central to this task. In numerous places throughout the reports, the Royal Commission emphasises the importance of trauma-informed services. We need to be sure that existing psychologists, and new graduates are well-versed in trauma-informed practice – both in terms of individual models of clinical practice, and the broader organisational models of care that are necessary to support this (see Wall, Higgins, & Hunter, 2016) and that they are ready to meet the clinical needs of sexual abuse survivors and their families. A particularly challenging area of practice for which psychologists need to be prepared is the provision of effective treatment for young people with problematic sexual behaviours – a key plank of prevention, given the risk of sexually abusive behaviours being experienced from other young people as well as from adults within organisations (El-Murr, 2017; Quadara, Nagy, Higgins, & Siegel, 2015) and for adults who identify that they have concerning thoughts about children and young people (Saunders & McArthur, 2017).
Outward-looking
Psychologists have an important role to play in translating their clinical knowledge of trauma-informed responses to other health as well as non-health professionals. Psychologists have been involved in various projects focused on capacity-building need within service systems and with practitioners working with people affected by trauma (e.g., disaster response, forced adoption practices).
A similar role of capacity building is needed in response to recommendations that have come out of the Royal Commission and psychologists are well-placed to use their research, training and practice skills to support other health professionals in preparing for the supports that survivors will need as they seek redress. Evidence-based resources are vital to this task. Sharing such resources (e.g., bit.ly/2o21zjL) in a way that equips frontline workers in practical ways is essential.
Treatment services
As foreshadowed above, as well as being prepared as a profession with the right training, skills and supervised experience to meet the needs of survivors, the next implication for psychologists is the actual delivery of trauma-focused therapy and trauma-informed services to support victim/survivors in accessing redress, and delivering the services that they require. There will be challenges in issues such as service accessibility. For example, are psychologists and other mental health practitioners located where clients need them?
Another recommendation of the Royal Commission related to the need for specific services for young people with harmful sexual behaviours. Not only are there likely to be training and capacity-building issues, but the practical delivery of such services may introduce particular challenges. Where can they be best placed? Schools where young people can access such services easily is one option – but is that the right location to deliver such sensitive services? What is the right modality (individual versus group), and what assessment tools are available for knowing that we are effectively addressing the risks? There is much that will need to be considered.
Prevention strategies
Finally, and in many ways, most importantly, psychologists have an important role to play in delivering on the Royal Commission’s call for creating child-safe organisations (the subject of Volume 6 of the final report). Knowing the limitations of pre-employment screening, the Royal Commission identified 10 principles that need to underpin all organisations that work with children and young people in order to prevent abuse from happening in the first place. These principles are currently the subject of consultation by the Australian Human Rights Commission, but already Victoria has mandated all youth-serving organisations implement seven child-safe standards that effectively address the same principles (bit.ly/2GrZ5qh).
As a result of the establishment of the Victorian standards, the APS has developed a resource on the Victorian child-safe standards for psychologists who are in private practice and deliver psychological services to children in Victoria. While the Standards are Victorian the APS document is a useful guide for all psychologists delivering psychological services to children (bit.ly/2IoBzqu).
Across a range of contexts psychologists can play a leadership role, and have an obligation to ensure that the settings in which they work and engage with young people are meeting best-practice in terms of adopting child-safe policies, practices, and ultimately, ensuring a positive culture of prevention. With expertise in organisational development and change management, psychologists can help to bring about the culture change that is so sorely needed to ensure the failures of organisations in the past are not replicated in the present.
Psychologists can help drive processes for identifying activities that might be higher risk. These might include low supervision of adult-child interactions, using adults as role models or mentors for young people, or opportunities for misusing social media. These situational risks then need to be managed. Change management is also needed where organisations promote conditions where abuse is more likely to be tolerated, excused or ignored (e.g., gender stereotyping, homophobia or other practices that make grooming of children easier, or make it harder for young people to raise concerns about the behaviour of an adult – bit.ly/2uMcRia).
Stepping forward
Psychologists need to be preparing for delivery of evidence-based trauma-informed services to survivors, while playing a leadership role in institutions to ensure child sexual abuse prevention strategies are implemented within the organisations in which they work, volunteer or engage in their personal lives. Implementing cultural change to protect the most vulnerable in our community is essential and psychologists have an obligation to do their part – the one clear message from the conclusions of the Royal Commission is that the scope is immense.
The author can be contacted at [email protected]