This week we continue to support Child Safety Week run by Child Accident Prevention Trust to raise awareness of the risks of child accidents and how they can be prevented. Accidents involving children can easily happen inside or outside of the home. There are risks in everything we do but most parents and guardians hope to find the right balance in order to allow children to grow and explore their surroundings. Many accidents are preventable but unfortunately still happen as a result of the negligence of others.

Child Action Prevention Trust are raising awareness of injuries being suffered by children and offer guidance on working together as a community to prevent injury to children, who are of course very vulnerable in society. Children are often unable to recognise dangerous situations in the same way adults are. For example, whilst children are playing it is often the case unfortunately that they step into the road in front of a passing vehicle, or can suffer injuries whilst playing on various apparatus within a play area. In addition, it is becoming easier for children to be targeted by potential abusers. The normality of social media means that children are interacting with strangers on a daily basis who could be posing as children to gain their trust with the intention of abusing the child.

In the recent case of Herefordshire Council v AB [2018] EWFC 10 Mr Justice Keehan heavily criticised Herefordshire Council for what he described as “two of the most egregious abuses of section 20 accommodation by a Local Authority.”

​A child-grooming scandal in Telford - in which up to 1,000 children are estimated to have been abused - has prompted calls for an inquiry. The abuse is reported to have been carried out over a 40-year period.

As a result of a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court, victims and survivors of serious crime may be able to sue the police for failures in their investigations. The case concerned two of John Worboy’s rape victims who had previously received compensation as a result of the handling of their cases by the Met Police. The Met had appealed against this decision, however, yesterday the Supreme Court upheld the previous judgments.

Former youth football coach, Barry Bennell, has been sentenced to 31 years in prison after being convicted of 50 counts of sexual assaults on boys aged 8-15. During the hearing, the Court had been told of Bennell’s abuse of 12 boys between 1979 – 1990. He was described by Prosecutors as a “predatory paedophile” who abused boys on an “industrial scale.” Sentencing Bennell, Judge Clement Goldstone QC said "to those boys you appeared as a god... in reality you were the devil incarnate."

This week is Sexual Abuse and Sexual Violence Awareness Week, which is all about raising awareness and promoting support for survivors of sexual abuse #itsnotok.​Our earlier blogs this week considered the steps that survivors can take to achieve some form of justice following the abuse suffered at the hands of perpetrators.

​This week is Sexual Abuse and Sexual Violence Awareness Week. Raising awareness and promoting support for survivors of sexual abuse. #itsnotok.