Safeguarding Capabilities in Preventing Child Sexual Abuse: Exploratory Factor Analysis of a Scale Measuring Safeguarding Capabilities in Youth-Serving Organizations Workers

Abstract

Media reports and government enquiries have shone a spotlight on institutional child sexual abuse (CSA) globally. With youth-serving organizations seeking to identify how to improve policies and procedures developed to protect children, a gap exists in research and organizational quality assurance procedures. A new tool is needed to measure the capability of workers to implement and support effective child-safeguarding policies and practices. To address this, our aim was to develop the Safeguarding Capabilities in Preventing Child Sexual Abuse Scale. Participants (n = 345) from a range of youth-serving sectors in Australia answered 128 questions. Using exploratory factor analysis to assess the underlying factor structure and refine the item pool, items loaded onto four factors. Reliability coefficients ranged from .68 to .95. Results showed that knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy to take action, and awareness are all key capabilities related to creating conditions of safety for children and young people and preventing CSA in youth-serving organizations.

Keywords

child sexual abuse exploratory factor analysis conditions of safety organizations public health

Child sexual abuse (CSA) within institutions and other youth-serving organizations has begun to receive specific focus both in terms of research and in policies and practices related to its prevention. In Australia, the recent Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2017a; the Royal Commission) brought to light the failings of numerous different youth-serving organizations across a broad range of sectors. With the introduction of legislatively mandated child-safe standards in the state of Victoria (Australia), and with other jurisdictions set to follow, that include staff training of knowledge, skills and awareness, as well as the embedding of an organizational culture that embodies child safety (Mathews, 2017), it is vital that researchers and organizations have access to reliable valid measures, supporting changes in these areas.

Why Measure Safeguarding Capability?

Globally, CSA has been identified as a public health concern (Letourneau, Brown, Fang, Hassan, & Mercy, 2018; Mathews, 2017). Recent estimates for the prevalence of CSA are between 18% and 19.7% for girls and between 7.6% and 7.9% for boys (Pereda, Guilera, Forns, & Gomez-Benito, 2009; Stoltenborgh, Bakermans-Kranenburg, Alink, & van Ijzendoorn, 2015). However, estimates are fraught with difficulty, given the secrecy, silence, and shame associated with CSA. Coupled with specific findings of CSA in institutional contexts, this has led to a need to develop systematic approaches to prevention, focused on improvements in safeguarding practices in a wide range of youth-serving organizations.

In Australia, the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2017b) reported evidence suggesting nonpenetrative CSA prevalence rates of between 14% and 26.8% for girls and between 5.2% and 12% for boys. To reduce CSA in institutional settings, the Royal Commission recommended the necessary strategies should include training staff in relation to strategies to prevent and report CSA and enhancing the capacity for workers across different sectors to provide advocacy and support (Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2017c). The United States, UK, Ireland, and Canada have had similar enquiries, with important lessons learned about the conditions of safety for children and what needs to be done in institutions to create a culture of prevention (Higgins, Kaufman, & Erooga, 2016). However, there is a lack of appropriate measures to assess the “culture” of youth-serving organizations and the level of progress toward achieving a culture based around creating conditions of safety for children. Existing measures are either focused on knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors relating to reporting abuse (rather than prevention) or focused on specific youth sectors (such as teachers, doctors, sports administrators; see Dinehart & Kenny, 2015; Goodman-Delahunty, Martschuk, & Cossins, 2016; Kenny, 2004; Noble & Vermillion, 2014; Walsh, Rassafiani, Mathews, Farrell, & Butler, 2012).

CSA in Youth-Serving Organizations

As well as the general risk factors for CSA occurring (such as age, gender, history of maltreatment, and disability status of the child/young person), specific risk factors related to institutional CSA have begun to be identified in research (Kaufman et al., 2016). A factor that increases the risk of CSA is the level of involvement and amount of time a young person spends within an institution (Carr et al., 2010). Alongside this, compulsory attendance at activities at an institution such as school, after-hours care, or church increases the potential to be harmed (Wolfe, Jaffei, & Jetté, 2003). The power differentials that come hand-in-hand with the child-to-adult relationships that are formed within such institutions also add not only to the risk of being abused (Bohm, Zollner, Fegert, & Liebhardt, 2014; Wurtele, 2012) but also difficulty in disclosing such abuse (Wolfe et al., 2003). This is due in particular to the level of trust that the communities—and specifically parents—have in them. Such environmental factors have supported the notion of utilizing a situational crime prevention model to reduce CSA in institutional contexts and improve youth-serving organizations safeguarding policies and practices (Morely & Higgins, 2018).

Specific programs have been developed to support the prevention of CSA in youth-serving organizations, particularly CSA prevention education (“protective behaviors” programs). However, they often relate to the skills of workers, with a narrow focus on mandatory reporting knowledge and skills (Walsh et al., 2012). Some are focused on the behavior and capability of children and young people themselves, particularly CSA prevention education (“protective behaviors”) programs. However, such programs lack rigorous evaluation (Letourneau, Eaton, Bass, Berlin, & Moore, 2014). One of the challenges to such evaluations is that the long-term outcome (the occurrence, or the successful prevention of, CSA) is difficult to measure, given the relatively low incidence of CSA within statutory child protection data (compared to other child maltreatment types) and the sensitivity of the content presenting ethical and practical challenges for measurement of sexual abuse prevalence within organizational settings (Mathews et al., 2015). Currently, there are no suitable “proxy” measures of progress toward a culture of safeguarding in organizations that are operationalized at the individual worker level and that can apply across a broad range of youth-serving sectors.

What Should Safeguarding Capability Look Like?

Based on recent Australian research (Moore, McArthur, Heerde, Roche, & O’Leary, 2016; Moore, McArthur, Noble-Carr, & Harcourt, 2015) and policy proposals in Australia (the National Principles for Child-Safe Organisations developed by all Australian Governments, Australian Human Rights Commission, 2018), the Australian Catholic University (ACU, 2017) has outlined six broad capabilities that adults in youth-serving organizations need in order to develop and implement appropriate approaches to child safety. The ACU Safeguarding Capability Framework is prevention-oriented, tailored to the specific issues and challenges of CSA prevention and responses. It is focused on equipping adults with the skills needed to keep children safe through implementation of strategies and compliance with regulatory regimes and standards. Although focused specifically on creating child-safe organizational environments that address the risks of CSA, it is applicable to safeguarding children from all forms of maltreatment including harm from peers. Capabilities are framed in terms of the skills, knowledge, and behaviors needed of adults to support and empower children and young people and implement effective strategies to prevent harm and respond to risks. The Framework includes the following six capabilities: Nature of abuse and risk factors, Child-safe organizational cultures and governance, Risk-management strategies, Participation of children and young people, Education and prevention, and Responsive care and support (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Safeguarding Capabilities of Workers and Volunteers for Preventing and Responding to Child Sexual Abuse Within Organizational Contexts.

Safeguarding Capability	Description of the Safeguarding Concept
Nature of abuse and risk factors	Understands the nature of child sexual abuse (CSA) and other types of harm experienced by children and young people, factors that increase the risk of abuse occurring, and factors that are protective or reduce risk
Child-safe organizational cultures and governance	Knows what enables child-safe organizational cultures and environments; effective child-safe practices; how to address attitudes, beliefs, and values of staff and communities about children and young people, sexual abuse, and other types of abuse to support child-safe behaviors; the role of leadership and the legal and governance frameworks needed (i.e., policies, code of conduct, human resource procedures, and clear accountabilities for staff)
Risk-management strategies	Develops and implements effective strategies that address organizational risks, including situational factors, and take appropriate action when concerns and issues arise
Participation of children and young people	Facilitates children and young people’s engagement in child-centered participatory processes including those that enable and respond to disclosures and complaints
Education and prevention	Demonstrates skills in being able to talk in developmentally appropriate and safe ways with young people about sexuality, relationships, safety, and help-seeking, by applying models of sex education, respectful relationship education, and CSA prevention to address the safety needs of children and young people
Responsive care and support	Responds appropriately to the ongoing needs of children and young people who have experienced abuse and manages the impact of this abuse on other children and young people, staff, families, and the organization

Source: Adapted from Australian Catholic University (ACU) Safeguarding Capability Framework (ACU, 2017).

Existing Measures

As outlined below, several existing measures have been used over the years to support research into the safeguarding capabilities of staff and volunteers in youth-serving sectors. In an effort to develop a suitable proxy measure, the key areas of previous measures have focused on attitudes toward both reporting CSA and organizational training and disclosures, knowledge of prevalence of CSA and its impact on victims, and awareness of policies and procedures related to safeguarding, safety communication, and empowerment of staff to take safeguarding action.

Knowledge of CSA

Knowledge of CSA and how to prevent it has long been seen as an important capability of those with a duty of care to protect children and young people. Historically, teachers were seen as a major player in the defense of children from abuse (they have been in many Anglophone jurisdictions, a key mechanism of mandatory reporting schemes). As a result, it is unsurprising that one of the earlier measures designed, the Educators Child Abuse Questionnaire (ECAQ; Kenny 2004), focused on teachers’ knowledge of CSA as well as beliefs regarding their role in disciplining children. Keeping in mind that workers who perceive themselves to have a high level of knowledge, which is not matched by actual skills, may fail to protect children and young people from abuse. Coupled with a global move to remove physical discipline from classrooms, the ECAQ focuses too much on reporting rather than preventing. Further limitations to this measure relate to the lack of potential use in a broad range of sectors outside of education, which engage with children and youth, ranging from arts and drama clubs to youth justice.

More recently, the Child Sexual Abuse Knowledge Questionnaire, regarding jurors’ knowledge of CSA and its impact (Goodman-Delahunty et al., 2016), and the Administrators and Child Abuse Questionnaire (Noble & Vermillion, 2014), based on Kenny’s ECAQ, have been used for investigating abuse in sports club settings. Although broadening the number of sectors able to be investigated, these measures focus largely on staff’s self-perceived knowledge, as opposed to factual knowledge, and are not able to be used across the broader organizational contexts recently identified such as child welfare, pediatric health and mental health, and youth development (i.e., Scouts, Girl Guides).

Attitudes

Researchers have argued that staff with “positive” attitudes toward their roles in identifying, reporting, and supporting victims of CSA will be more capable than staff with poorer attitudes (Fraser, Mathews, Walsh, Chen, & Dunne, 2010). Hawkins and McCallum (2001) developed the Attitudes Towards the Reporting of Child Abuse and Neglect Questionnaire. Focusing solely on teachers’ attitudes toward their role in reporting abuse, not specifically sexual, and neglect, the questionnaire focuses more on responding to harm rather than capabilities to create cultures of prevention and foster conditions of safety for children and young people. As an extension of her original ECAQ, Kenny (2011) developed the Early Childhood ECAQ. Also focused within professionals largely in the education sector, the questionnaire similarly asks about attitudes toward reporting child abuse, organizational policy awareness questions, and questions regarding both factual and perceived level of knowledge related to abuse. The questionnaire lacks applicability beyond the education sector and broader use as a result of some questions being specific to state laws in Florida, United States.

The Teacher Reporting Attitude Scale toward Child Sexual Abuse Scale (Walsh et al., 2012) similarly focuses largely on workers in the education sector and on attitudes toward their role in reporting CSA. Questionnaires concerning attitudes toward procedures surrounding disclosure and justice systems (Finnila-Tuohimaa et al., 2008) and the extent and quality of an employee’s safety training (Noble & Vermillion, 2014) have also been developed with specific focuses in psychologists and sports club administrators, respectively. The Child Sexual Abuse Attitude and Belief Scale (Finnila-Tuohimaa et al., 2008), focusing on court-based instances, does not support the prevention of CSA but rather an understanding of psychologists’ capability to support court proceedings.

Safety Climate

Developed to support implementation of prevention strategies and enhancing safety in organizational settings, including work with U.S. organizations such as Boys & Girls Clubs of America (Kaufman, personal communication, July, 2015), the Organizational Safety Climate Survey measures staff capabilities related to safety communication, safety responsibility, safety empowerment, and organizational safety climate. A lack of specific questioning around preventative actions and knowledge regarding CSA risk factors prevents the survey from supporting an understanding of workers’ capabilities related to these important CSA prevention competencies. Along similar lines, the Domestic Abuse and Safeguarding Children (DASC) Scale (Szilassy, Carpenter, Patsios, & Hackett, 2013) also measures safety communication and empowerment, likely driven by the movement at the time to increase discussions between workers and organizational leaders and ensuring staff and volunteers felt comfortable and trained to deal with risks threatening youth safety. Despite having a focus on domestic abuse with safeguarding of children being discussed as a result of exposure to abuse, the DASC Scale is one of the few scales that measures workers’ awareness of organizational policies. Another measure used to enhance safety in organizational settings is the CSA Prevention Evaluation Tool for Organizations, which was recently used in a study to outline standards, focusing largely on HR procedures and policy implementation, which can help organizations improve safeguarding practices (Wurtele, Mathews, & Kenny, 2019).

Although existing measures have supported research and action related to safeguarding children in organizations, some key areas and limitations have thus far prevented wide scope research that could be translated into improvements in policies and procedures related to creating a child-safe culture across all manner of youth-serving organizations. Lacking in current measures are concepts related to knowledge of risk and protective factors, awareness of micro-, organizational-level policies and procedures related to prevention of CSA, self-efficacy to act to both prevent abuse and respond to allegations of abuse, and the existence of an empirically tested measure that can be utilized to sample staff and volunteers across the multiple sectors in which youth-serving organizations operate.

Aim of Study

The aim of the current study is to investigate the factor structure and internal reliability of a new scale to measure workers’ capabilities to prevent CSA in organizations. Using exploratory factor analysis, this study will develop the Safeguarding Capabilities in Preventing Child Sexual Abuse Survey: a measure of youth-serving worker capability related to safeguarding children and preventing CSA across the diverse sectors in which youth are served.

Method

Participants

The analysis is based on an opportunistic sample of staff and volunteers (n = 345) working in youth-serving organizations across Australia. More than half of participants (53.9%) worked directly with children and young people, while 30.7% identified themselves as middle management, and 14.8% identified themselves as senior management (principals, CEOs, and directors). We purposefully recruited workers across a range of employment types within youth-serving organizations, due to the fact that safeguarding children is the role of all staff and volunteers (the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2017c), not just that of those who work directly with children. Of the 594 potential participants who commenced data collection, 126 completed only the demographic questions and were excluded. Of the 468 respondents, a further 123 (26%) were excluded from analysis due to answering less than 95% of the 128 items from the scale under development. The majority of the final sample of 345 were female (n = 277; 80%), with 1 participant identifying outside the male–female gender binary. Participants ranged in age from 16 to 80 (M = 25.4, SD = 13.3). In an effort to develop a broadly applicable scale, we invited individuals and organizations working across multiple different service contexts. Table 2 shows the breakdown of the service-sector participants who were employed or volunteering in at the time of data collection.

Table 2.

Participants’ Service Sector.

Service Sector	n
Alcohol and other drugs program	36
Arts/drama/cultural groups	8
Carer Support and Respite	32
Community mental health services	64
Children’s facilities (i.e., camps, swimming pools, libraries, trampoline parks, etc.)	36
Children’s services	49
Early childhood education and care (including kindergarten)	62
Child welfare (e.g., counseling)	36
Community development/community engagement	32
Disability services	41
Domestic and family violence services	98
Education: schools	26
Education: tuition (i.e., music, individual sport coaching)	19
Employment services	69
Families and children services	16
Health, mental health and medical services	42
Housing and homelessness services	38
Out of home care: residential care	30
Out of home care: foster/kinship care	43
Outreach	41
Recreational/youth development/holiday programs (i.e., Scouts, Girl Guides)	23
Religious, worship or faith development (i.e., Sunday School, Parish/Church)	16
Sexual health	9
Sports clubs/groups	68
Youth justice	18
Youth work (e.g., counseling, drop-in centers)	64
Other (please specify)	16

Note. Total number across sectors is greater than total participants, as some respondents were working in organizations that were cross-sectoral (e.g., faith-based school/education service), or they might be working and/or volunteering in more than one organization.

Procedure

Participants for the current study were recruited via e-mail invitations sent to organizational leaders in youth-serving organizations in Australia, subscribers to the newsletter of a university web portal that makes available research, practice tools, training, and other resources related to safeguarding children and young people in youth-serving organizations (https://safeguardingchildren.acu.edu.au/). An invitation was also sent to peak bodies across the child and family welfare, domestic violence, and early childhood education and care sectors, who advertised the research project in newsletters and on websites, and through posting a link to the survey on social media (LinkedIn). The study was described as an opportunity to those who work or volunteer in youth-serving organizations to help develop a new survey regarding safeguarding capabilities in preventing child sexual abuse. Data were collected across a period of 2 months from August to September 2018.

Measurement

The development of the online questionnaire followed the eight steps for scale development suggested by DeVellis (2016). After deciding on the latent construct of “safeguarding capabilities,” a pool of items was generated across the six capabilities. The item construction process occurred in such a way that they try to cover four different ways in which each capability needs to be applied or expressed by individuals: content knowledge (i.e., factual, research-based information about CSA and prevention/responses), organizational awareness (i.e., of the presence of policies and procedures and what they should cover), attitudes (both toward CSA as a general concept and to the various aspects of safeguarding practice), and confidence or self-efficacy to take action to implement safeguarding strategies (e.g., confidence to be able to speak to young people in developmentally appropriate and safe ways about sexual development). Sources for capabilities included the final report of the Royal Commission, the Taking Us Seriously (Moore et al., 2015) and Our Safety Counts (Moore et al., 2016) reports, as well as the ACU Safeguarding Capability Framework (ACU, 2017).

Once 128 initial questions had been developed, these were given to an expert panel to review for content and clarity of wording to adjust or suggest removal as they felt appropriate. The expert panel consisted of three academic experts: (a) an education specialist whose research focuses on school-based interventions and strategies to prevent CSA, with experience in scale development related to this topic; (b) a criminologist who has researched CSA both in and out of organizational contexts for over 20 years; and (c) a mental health and public health specialist whose expertise in CSA prevention is internationally recognized and has experience in scale development. Ethics clearance was provided by the ACU human research ethics committee (2018-116E). The authors then approached organizations and individuals working in youth-serving contexts via e-mail invitation.

Statistical Analysis

To determine the dimensionality of the Safeguarding Capabilities Survey, factor analysis including tests for suitability and exploratory factor analysis with principal axis factoring were used to determine the minimum number of factors to explain the variance with retention of factors with eigenvalues loading above 1.0 and interpretation of a scree plot. Reliability was addressed following the retention of the final items as informed by factor analysis and determination of the internal consistency using Cronbach’s α.

Results

All data were analyzed using IBM SPSS for Windows (Version 25). Prior to analysis, data were checked for missing values. Little’s Missing Completely at Random test indicated that data were not missing at random; thus, the use of expectation–minimization procedures to handle missing data was not seen as suitable. As a result, any participant missing more than 5% of questions related to safeguarding capabilities were removed, and pairwise deletion was used within the factor analysis. Mahalanobis’s distance was calculated to identify any potential multivariate outliers. Using a threshold value of χ² = 183.19, α = .001, and degrees of freedom (df) = 128, no multivariate outliers were identified. Sampling adequacy and factorability of the data were tested using the Kaiser–Mayer–Olkin measure (.87) and Bartlett’s test of sphericity (χ² = 19.558.13, df = 7,750, p = .000), demonstrating an adequate sample size for the analysis. Of the 128 questions tested, 54 were reverse coded prior to analysis.

A principal axis factoring analysis using an oblique promax rotation was used because any potential subscales were assumed to be correlated to the overarching construct of safeguarding capability. Items were retained in the analysis after identifying the number of factors if the rotated factor loading weight was greater than ±0.4. Initial analysis indicated four distinct factors. After forcing three-, four-, and five-factor rotations, 75 items were retained in a four-factor solution. One item, “My organization focuses on the danger that children and young people face from strangers,” was removed due to an unexpected negative factor loading. Another item, “My employer regularly facilitates training opportunities about responding effectively to child safety issues,” was removed due to significant and large correlations with 3 other items, leaving a total of 73 items (See Table 3). Online Supplemental Table S1 identifies the full 128 items developed and cross-loadings evident in the four-factor solution. Intercorrelations between the four factors ranged from .25 to .55.

Table 3.

Factor Loadings for the 73 Items, Percentage of Variance, Internal Consistency, and Descriptive Statistics of the Four Factors.

Item	Factor
Item	1	2	3	4
My organization makes sure I am aware of things that our organization can do to protect children and young people from sexual abuse	.83
My organization provides sufficient training about sexual abuse that can be experienced by children and young people	.72
My organization regularly reviews child-safe policies, procedures, and practices to manage risks of abuse	.71
Our organization’s child-safe policies and procedures are readily/always available to clients, staff, and volunteers	.70
My organization keeps issues of child safety high on the agenda (e.g., in supervision, team meetings).	.70
My organization supports children and young people to know about personal safety	.67
My organization does not address the power imbalances that make it hard for children and young people to speak up about their safety^a	.66
My organization examines the physical layout of our building and grounds to ensure that there are improved opportunities for oversight of adult–child interactions while remaining mindful of privacy	.66
My organization has policies that clearly identify the types of behaviors that could be perceived as grooming	.64
My organization values the opinions of children and young people to help inform child-safety policies and procedures	.64
My organization has clear referral pathways to other agencies for support for children and young people who have experienced sexual abuse	.62
My workplace has a culture that prioritizes the protection of children and young people from sexual abuse	.62
When children and young people seek help when they feel unsafe, adults in my organization respond in developmentally appropriate ways	.61
My organization has a hierarchical structure that makes it difficult for employees to influence child-safety policies and procedures^a	.61
My organization involves children and young people in strategies designed to protect them from abuse	.60
In my organization, our managers routinely ask staff and volunteers about procedures related to child safety	.60
My organization assesses the risks of abuse in our specific context	.60
My organization is clear about when I need to listen and respond to children’s views on sexual safety	.59
My organization helps me to understand the characteristics of children and young people who make them more vulnerable to sexual abuse	.57
My organization asks prospective staff/volunteers about their values and attitudes toward working with children and young people	.57
In my organization, adults (staff/volunteers) build the sexual safety skills of children and young people	.57
My organization supports the education of children and young people about respectful relationships with their peers	.57
My organization has leaders who support staff to routinely ask children and young people about how they are feeling and to follow up on any safety concerns	.56
My organization’s expectations regarding appropriate and inappropriate behavior of adults toward children and young people are unclear^a	.54
My organization actively promotes positive attitudes toward people including children and young people from different ages, genders, abilities, faiths, sexualities, and ethnic or cultural backgrounds	.53
My organization is transparent in the ways it plans to deal with instances of child sexual abuse (CSA)	.53
Adults in my organization do not have the skills to talk about sex and sexual safety in developmentally appropriate and safe ways with children and young people^a	.52
My organization is timely in its response and support to children and young people who have experienced abuse	.52
My organization has a code of conduct that defines how adults should interact with children and young people	.52
The leaders in my organization do not understand the importance of safeguarding children and young people from sexual abuse^a	.50
My organization has procedures that make it hard for someone to abuse the trust of children and young people	.49
If I voiced concerns about my organization’s child-safe policies and procedures, I would not be taken seriously^a	.43
I am confident in talking with children and young people about their sexual safety		.83
I am confident providing appropriate support to children and young people who have experienced sexual abuse		.82
I am confident in developing safety plans for children and young people		.78
I am able to provide appropriate and responsive support to children and young people in instances of sexual abuse		.78
I feel confident talking in developmentally appropriate and safe ways with children and young people about their peer relationships		.73
I am capable of educating children about personal safety skills with the goal of keeping them safe from sexual abuse		.72
I do not feel confident in my ability to reassure a child or young person after they disclose sexual abuse^a		.67
I am unsure what to do if I see developmentally inappropriate sexualized behavior in a child or young person^a		.61
I lack confidence in how to look out for the sexual health and safety of children and young people with disabilities/additional needs^a		.59
I am unsure how to help children and young people to identify people they can trust^a		.57
I am confident in my ability to support children and young people’s respectful relationships with each other		.56
I can support children and young people to speak up about people and situations that make them feel concerned		.55
I am confident in being able to fulfill my mandatory reporting obligations		.55
I am confident in my ability to assess potential risks to the sexual safety of children and young people if our organization undertakes a new type of activity (e.g., an excursion)		.54
I don’t really know what is expected of me to create a child-safe environment^a		.48
I would be able to talk to a colleague if I saw him or her act in a way that was just outside of what my organization has said is OK		.43
I routinely include the perspectives of children and young people in addressing and preventing risk of sexual abuse		.42
Children and young people who have been sexually abused all react in the same way to what has happened to them^a			.55
It is solely the parents’ responsibility to teach their child(ren) how to stay safe in different situations^a			.50
Children and young people who get sexually abused have usually acted promiscuously or somehow “asked” for it^a			.49
My organization believes that children and young people must be primarily responsible for protecting themselves^a			.47
The only way to keep children and young people safe is to just do what adults in the organization think is best^a			.47
Children and young people don’t know enough about sexual abuse to have anything relevant to say on the topic^a			.47
Children and young people do not need to be taught about appropriate and inappropriate sexual behavior as it could increase their curiosity and make them more vulnerable to sexual abuse^a			.46
Governments are responsible for making child-safe policies—individual organizations should not have to develop their own policies based on their own identification of risks and opportunities^a			.46
Teaching children and young people about their bodies and privacy issues just confuses them and makes them anxious and fearful^a			.46
The only real way to prevent sexual abuse of children and young people in organizations is to screen staff and volunteers via working with children checks^a			.43
It is more important to understand the intention of a colleague’s behavior than to assess whether it is consistent with, or in breach of, organizational policy^a			.43
If they have been sexually abused, a child or young person will tell you if you just ask^a			.41
When sexual abuse occurs, protecting the organization’s reputation is more important than a child or young person’s well-being^a			.41
If a child or young person asks you not to tell anybody about their abuse, it is necessary to maintain their confidentiality and not tell anyone^a			.41
I don’t need to think about the risks of sexual abuse, provided my organization has good child-safe policies and procedures^a			.41
An important step in preventing sexual abuse is the design of rooms, buildings, and play areas to enable observation and eliminate blind spots				.49
High staff turnover can mean children and young people will be less comfortable speaking up about their sexual safety concerns				.49
Defining acceptable and unacceptable behavior of adults can help prevent sexual abuse				.45
Some risks of sexual abuse can be reduced when staff know what to do				.45
Many people, not just the child or young person who was abused themselves, can be affected by sexual abuse				.42
CSA is more likely to occur when there are opportunities for adults to build close relationships with children or young people or spend time interacting out of sight of (or with low supervision from) other adults				.42
Sexual abuse prevention education can effectively equip young people to know what behaviors are safe and unsafe when interacting with peers and adults				.42
Mental ill-health affects almost all survivors of CSA				.41
Most children and young people who have been sexually abused face long-term consequences				.41
% of variance	17.2	6.0	3.1%	1.7
Cronbach reliability α	.95	.91	.79	.68
Mean	3.95	4.01	4.47	4.26
Standard deviation	.63	.65	.40	.48
Minimum	1.72	1.69	2.94	2.75
Maximum	5.00	5.00	5.00	5.00

Note Factor 1: Organizational culture and awareness of policy and procedures. Factor 2: Confidence to act. Factor 3: Attitudes to prevention and agency of children/young people. Factor 4: Situational prevention knowledge and education.

^a Denotes a reverse scored question.

The results of the analysis indicate four factors underpinning the construct of safeguarding capability in youth-serving workers, namely, organizational culture and awareness of policy and procedures, confidence to act, attitudes to prevention and agency of children and young people, and situational prevention knowledge and education. The four factors demonstrated good internal consistency. As shown in Table 3, Cronbach reliability coefficients (α) were excellent for the first two factors (.95 and .91) and moderate for the other two (.79 and .68).

Discussion

The purpose of the current study was to develop a broad-sectored measure of worker capability related to child safeguarding and CSA prevention. The items were constructed to cover the four ways that safeguarding expertise need to be expressed or applied (knowledge, attitude, skills, and confidence) within each of the six content areas of safeguarding identified in the Capability Framework (Table 1). However, we were not sure whether empirical testing would result in a factor structure that mirrors the six content areas, the four ways in which that content needs to be applied or a combination of the two. The exploratory factor analysis indicates that the new 73-item Safeguarding Capabilities Survey has four factors. These four factors are a combination of the content domains and the different applications of capability (knowledge, attitudes, skills, and confidence). These are briefly outlined.

Organizational Culture and Awareness of Policy and Procedures

These questions relate to staff and volunteers’ awareness of the safeguarding policies, procedures, and practices that they are expected to follow in an effort to safeguard children and young people. Ranging from policies that affect them directly to expectations of leadership to help create an organizational culture of safety, these questions not only help identify strengths and gaps in worker awareness but also encourage reflection about the design and delivery of policies within an organization.

Confidence to Act

These questions relate to confidence to act or self-efficacy of workers. The questions in this factor assess the degree to which staff and volunteers feel confident to implement safeguarding strategies such as providing support for children and young people to keep themselves safe, approaching colleagues and other adults when they feel someone hasn’t followed a child-safe policy or where a child or young person may be—or feel—unsafe, and responding to and supporting young people if something was to happen.

Attitudes to Prevention and Agency of Children and Young People

These questions relate to workers’ attitudes toward activities needed to support prevention of CSA and their sense of personal responsibility for prevention activities. It focuses on the workers’ role in prevention as well as that of children and young people themselves and the role of others including parents and the government. It measures workers’ attitudes toward supporting children’s agency and the empowerment of children and young people.

Situational Prevention Knowledge and Education

The final group of questions address staff and volunteers’ knowledge of situational prevention strategies (i.e., how to modify environmental factors to reduce opportunities for grooming and abuse to occur) and the education of children and young people and the staff who work with them to support the prevention of grooming and sexual abuse.

The four factors derived from the analysis combine expertise or capability in terms of adults knowing about CSA and effective prevention strategies, having positive attitudes about CSA prevention, being skilled in the implementation of preventative actions and therapeutic responses to concerns, and having confidence to implement safeguarding policies. These four sets of questions allow for researchers and organizations to gain a better understanding of staff and volunteers’ safeguarding capabilities.

As well as being a reliable research measure of safeguarding capabilities, implications regarding the development of the Safeguarding Capabilities Survey relate to its potential to be used by youth-serving organizations seeking to better understand their workforce’s capacity to fulfill legal and moral obligations to protect children from institutional CSA. With recent efforts to upskill current professionals as well as the need to prepare future workers in youth-serving organizations, a dual-purpose research measure that can guide quality assurance processes while also collecting data for empirical work has the potential to greatly improve the lives and well-being of children and young people who interact with such organizations around the globe.

We have framed the capabilities in relation to what adults need to know and do within their organizations and sectors to keep children safe and to create the conditions of safety that support effective prevention and responses to harm. Organizations can use the survey to help measure the following attributes of staff and volunteers: (a) awareness of organizational policies, practice, and safeguarding culture; (b) confidence to take action when a child or young person voices a concern about their safety and well-being; (c) attitudes in relation to children and young people’s knowledge and access to safety education; and (d) knowledge about the risks and prevention of CSA. The current study is not without limitations. The participants more strongly reflected some sectors (i.e., community mental health, domestic and family violence services) than others (i.e., youth justice, religious, recreational/youth development). There may be limits on the generalizability of the findings and therefore the applicability of the survey to volunteers and workers in organizations that were less-well represented. A methodological limitation of the study is the removal of 26% of the sample as a result of extensive missing data.

Future research is needed to confirm the factor structure of Safeguarding Capabilities Survey with samples of participants from a broader range of youth-serving organizations, particularly those not well represented in the current sample, and measure the test–retest reliability of the survey. The testing of concurrent validity with existing measures with specific subgroups (i.e., teachers) would also confirm the psychometric properties of the scale. Future research comparing the safeguarding capabilities of staff across different employment types (i.e., administration, management, and frontline workers) would allow for a deeper understanding of how organizations can foster a culture of child safety across all departments and workers. Generalizability to other countries and/or contexts may also need to be tested with suitable translations and/or adaptations. Researchers interested in child safeguarding practices within organizations could examine the relationship of worker capabilities to children’s perceptions of safety in organizations, the efficacy of interventions to improve worker capabilities related to safeguarding practices and examine differences in worker capabilities between different sectors, and level of employment or in action research aiming to improve organizational policies and procedures.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material, Table_4 - Safeguarding Capabilities in Preventing Child Sexual Abuse: Exploratory Factor Analysis of a Scale Measuring Safeguarding Capabilities in Youth-Serving Organizations Workers

Supplemental Material, Table_4 for Safeguarding Capabilities in Preventing Child Sexual Abuse: Exploratory Factor Analysis of a Scale Measuring Safeguarding Capabilities in Youth-Serving Organizations Workers by Douglas Russell and Daryl Higgins in Child Maltreatment

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Douglas Russell

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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