Specialist Therapeutic Support
IICSA · The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse · Issued 20 October 2022 · Addressed to: UK Government
Source — verbatim from the inquiry
●Inquiry recommendation, K.7
The Inquiry recommends that the UK government and the Welsh Government introduce a national guarantee that child victims of sexual abuse will be offered specialist and accredited therapeutic support. There should be sufficient supply of these services so that children in all parts of England and Wales can access support in a timely way. These services should be fully funded. Responsibility for commissioning these services should be given to local authorities. There must be no eligibility criteria for children to access these specialist therapeutic services other than having been a victim of child sexual abuse.
IICSA, The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse · 20 Oct 2022 Source PDF →
Published evidence summary
Publicly available evidence relating to this recommendation:
- No published national guarantee of specialist therapeutic support for child victims of sexual abuse has been identified to March 2026.
Response — verbatim from government
●UK Government
We accept that victims and survivors must be able to access effective systems for provision of therapeutic support. We will elicit views on the future of therapeutic support, including possible systemic changes to provision, through extensive engagement and consultation as part of our response to recommendation 19 on victim redress.
UK Government · 22 May 2023 Written response →
Evidence trail — what's actually happened since
- 8 Apr 2025 Funding CSA Centre training; expanding mental health support; developing holistic provision proposals. Enhanced proposal details to follow post-Spending Review. Home Office doubling funding for national services supporting adult survivors. Source →
- 21 Jan 2025 · Home Affairs Select Committee Professor Alexis Jay told Home Affairs Committee that £187m was spent on IICSA and "to date none of its final recommendations had been implemented." Called for "full implementation" saying "get it done." View source → No Meaningful Progress
Each entry above links to a primary source — gov.uk written statement, consultation response document, or inspection report. The Index does not characterise government intent; it tracks what has been published.
How this page is built
Source and Response are verbatim from primary documents. The Evidence trail records published activity since — written statements, consultation outcomes, inspection findings, parliamentary references. The Index does not paraphrase or characterise intent; it tracks what has been published. Where the evidence is the absence of action (a missed deadline, a slipped timetable), that absence is documented from primary sources rather than inferred.
This recommendation's data is verified periodically against primary sources. The Index is monitored for staleness weekly.