Learning from the experts: young people’s perspectives on how we can support healthy child development after sexual abuse

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We know that an experience of sexual abuse impacts mental health and well-being, however we are less clear about how what should be done, and when, to try and address these impacts and help young people ‘get back on track’ following abuse. This research seeks to address this gap in knowledge by creating opportunities for young people to safely and meaningfully tell us what they think would help. The research focuses particularly on young people whose experience of sexual abuse occurred during adolescence as their needs are particularly under-researched and we cannot assume that what works for someone who experiences sexual abuse as a younger child will work for someone who experiences it at a much older age. The research adopts what is called a ‘participatory action research’ approach. This means we work with young people, and other key stakeholders, to find solutions together and become partners in the research process. Together we will seek to: • map the mental health and well-being support needs of young people who experience sexual abuse in adolescence; • learn how we can better support identification of, and responses to, these needs; • find out how we can build and support young people’s resilience and help them ‘get back on track’ after abuse; • demonstrate that, if done right, it is both safe and appropriate to involve young people in • discussions about these issues - and create a template that others can use to do this; • develop a better model for thinking about these issues; and • create practical resources for young people, parents/carers and professionals that will contribute to better responses to this issue in the future. We will do this through working creatively with 30-40 young people in small groups over a sustained period of time to explore these issues in depth, exploring the same issues with parents/carers and professionals, and then bringing all of these groups together to explore creative solutions. In order to better understand the context and challenges of current responses to sexual abuse in adolescence, we will also undertake 10-15 more in-depth case studies - this will involve us reviewing services case files and interviewing the young people and professionals involved in these. We will also review existing research in this field to make sure we are adding value with our study. We will then analyse all of the information that has come either of these different stages of the research and produce a series of outputs. These will include research reports for different audiences, tools for use in practice and academic articles that share learning about what we find and how we did this with other researchers.