Practitioners are failing children at significant risk of sexual abuse, warn analysts who have revealed a record 8% drop in identification of the harm compared with last year.

In 2023/24, children’s services placed 2,160 children on child protection plans for this reason – making up just 3.5% of all new plans.

It is the lowest number in three decades of data collection on the topic – with a quarter of plans recording the issue 30 years ago.

The “alarming decrease” is despite a rise in child sexual abuse convictions over the same period, states the Child sexual abuse 2023/24: Trends in official data report by The Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre).

Criminal proceedings were brought against 9,215 defendants for child sexual abuse offences in the year to December 2023, which is the highest number since 2016 and 15% more than the previous year.

However, the campaign says that 60% of investigations closed with no further action due to evidential difficulties and it attributes poor safeguarding responses as one potential explanation for this.

The report comes weeks ahead of a publication of the government’s timeline for implementing all 20 recommendations from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) – promised by Easter.

CSA Centre, which is hosted by charity Barnardo’s, described the number of children being identified by police and local authorities as the “tip of the iceberg”, with the “gap getting wider” between identification and actual numbers.

The CSA Centre estimates that at least 500,000 children are sexually abused in England and Wales each year.

While many local areas are committed to improving their response to all children who are abused, more than two-thirds (103 out of 152) of local authorities in England placed no or very few children on child protection plans because of sexual abuse, the report finds.

The fall is despite there being no drop in the overall number of assessments which recorded safeguarding concerns.

In addition, seven local authorities in England placed no children on protection plans over concerns about sexual abuse.

Five English authorities did not identify a single concern of this nature in any of their needs assessments of children throughout the entire year.

“Surveys show that sexual abuse is just as common as other forms of childhood abuse and harm, yet issues such as neglect and emotional abuse remain much more likely to be identified in children’s services data,” said the organisation, adding: “Without sexual abuse being recorded and identified formally and correctly, children are unlikely to receive the specific support they need, and the true scale of child sexual abuse remains unknown.”

In contrast, police forces in England and Wales recorded over 101,000 child sexual abuse offences in 2023/24 – the third year in a row where police forces recorded over 100,000 offences.

CSA Centre says that “worryingly research shows that children are too often left without wider safeguarding responses and support when police investigations conclude with no further action", adding: “The responses to safeguard and protect children when there are concerns of sexual abuse must be matched across all agencies, with robust protective activity taking place alongside criminal justice investigations.”

CSA Centre director Ian Dean called for "system-wide change" to tackle under-identification of child sexual abuse, which is “less likely to be identified and named as a concern in child protection plans than ever before”.

Dean added: “It is deeply troubling that concerns about child sexual abuse, which thirty years ago made up around a quarter of a social worker's child protection caseload, is now recorded in barely 4% of child protection plans.

“Not all children who are sexually abused or at risk of being sexually abused need to be on a child protection plan.

“But, given what we know about the vast scale of sexual abuse and the diminishing availability of support services for children and families, child in need and child protection measures are often the only way to track and ensure that action is taken to protect and support them... 

"We need to build a system where professionals have strong leadership, clear guidance, and proper support to identify abuse early and prevent further harm.

"Around all of this we need to build capacity across our society to prevent abuse from happening. Beyond the political rhetoric and media furore, these longstanding issues require concerted and determined cross-government activity, with sustained commitment over the coming years.”

Lynn Perry, Barnardo’s chief executive, said: “Being a victim of sexual abuse has devastating, life-long consequences for children, and we know from our work supporting thousands of victims and survivors across the UK that many don’t get the support they need and are at continued risk of harm.

“We urge the government to use the new Crime and Policing Bill to make the changes that child victims of sexual abuse desperately need. It rightly includes measures to protect children and provide help for professionals to identify abuse and act effectively – but we also call on the government to make sure all children who have been abused or exploited have access to the specialist support services they need.

“There is a unique opportunity here to improve how professionals who are responsible for keeping children safe work better together, and provide the right level of funding, so that police officers, social workers, teachers and others have the resources they need to identify children at risk of abuse, put the right support in place, and give them back their future.”