The Inquiry’s Terms of Reference require it to:
consider all the information which is available from the various published and unpublished reviews, court cases, and investigations which have so far concluded.
As a result, the Inquiry is considering what can be learned from the range of reviews and investigations that have preceded it. Part of this work has involved reviewing the recommendations from a number of previous public reports and investigations into child sexual abuse to identify whether there are consistent issues arising that should inform the Inquiry’s work. In total, 211 reviews and reports ‒ containing 3,004 recommendations ‒ have been analysed.
The Inquiry has organised the recommendations made by these reports into a number of thematic areas (Table 1) to assist the Inquiry in identifying key issues that have arisen in previous reports and reviews. It is notable that the most frequently recurring issues have also arisen regularly in other parts of the Inquiry’s work and are discussed in Chapter 6 of this report: the need for a culture change in relation to attitudes towards child sexual abuse, the role of leadership in supporting this culture change, and issues relating to staff practice and safe recruitment.
| Recommendation areas | Number of recommendations |
|---|---|
| Staffing (including practice, supervision and recruitment) | 826 (27.5%) |
| Records management systems and processes (including information sharing) | 501 (16.7%) |
| Failures, issues and attitudes in working or supporting children and/or victims and survivors | 413 (13.7%) |
| Leadership and oversight | 396 (13.2%) |
| Inter-agency working | 318 (10.6%) |
| Other recommendations (including operational policy and procedure, and complaints) | 550 (18.3%) |
The Inquiry is considering whether the recommendations made in previous reports and investigations about child sexual abuse have been implemented as part of the ‘Child sexual exploitation by organised networks’ investigation.