Professionals often refer to ‘gut instinct’ when talking about child sexual abuse. This was identified in both Dorset LCSPRs that were completed in relation to intra-familial child sexual abuse published in 2022 (Final-Dorset-CSPR-Report-Thematic-summary-intra-familial-sexual-abuse-31.03.2022-1.pdf (pdscp.co.uk) and FINAL-LCSPR-Report-The-Siblings-05.08.2022-1.pdf (pdscp.co.uk).

‘Gut instinct’ refers to an unconscious process that occurs automatically in response to perceptions and emotions, integrating a wide range of immediate data to come to an analysis in a quick and relatively effective way. For any professional, it tends to be the case that the more experienced you are, the quicker and more effectively you can pick up on possible signs and indicators of abuse or things that ‘do not feel right’.

However, a ‘gut instinct’ can only be a provisional analysis; whilst it can be a helpful spur to seek further evidence, it must never take the place of evidence.  ‘Gut instincts’ that are not properly tested by evidence and reflection may simply be mechanisms that allow unconscious bias into an investigation, undermining the prospects for keeping the child safe, and introducing illegal discrimination into safeguarding practice.

Practitioners may record ‘gut instincts’ as preliminary steps in their process of analysis, but should be careful to record them as opinion, not as fact. They should set out whatever grounds they have for their gut instincts, how they propose to test them with evidence, and the result of any evidence-gathering and subsequent reflection.

Practice tip

The signs and indicators that you pick up in your professional practice that have led you to think that something is not quite right in a young person’s world should be reflected upon in supervision. You should use supervision as the opportunity to test out your concerns with your supervisor. Your supervisor should help you to unpick your concerns and to reflect on where these may originate, for example you may have made several observations which made you concerned that a child was being sexually abused without having the ‘hard’ evidence to back this up at this stage. Using tools such as the Brook traffic light tool and the signs and indicators tool developed by the Centre of Expertise could be used to build a picture of your concerns.

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