2025-03-31-accounts - The Lucy Faithfull Foundation

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LUCY FAITHFULL FOUNDATION Annual report and financial statements 2024/25

Contents

We listen. We research. We innovate. We intervene. We talk, we share, we support. We do everything we can to stop child sexual abuse.

Overview

4 Welcome from our chair and chief executive officer
8 Why our work matters
10 What we do
11 Our values
12 Our strategy – we said, we did
16 Annual report 2024/25 at a glance

Achievements and performance

28 Anonymous advice and support: Stop It Now UK and Ireland helpline
42 Professional services: assessments, interventions and case consultancy
Circles of Support and Accountability
50
52 Tackling online child sexual abuse: services for those arrested and their families
64 Preventing harmful sexual behaviour: our work with children, young people and families
73 Advocacy and communications: influencing policy and public debate, driving awareness
82 LFF Scotland: Keeping Scotland’s children safe from harm

Financial review

132 Overview
134 Income
140 Raising funds
141 Expenditure on charitable activities
150 Looking ahead to 2026
152 Reserves
155 Statement of trustees‘ responsibilities

Auditor’s report

156 Independent auditor’s report to the members of The Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Financial statements

160 Financial statements and notes to the accounts

Additional info

183 Officers and contacts
184 Board of trustees
190 With sincere thanks
90 LFF Wales: Working together to keep children safe
100 Supporting professionals: training and consultancy
108 Research, evaluation, and international

Fundraising

114 Fundraising to support our work

Structure

122 Governance, structure and management

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

Welcome from our chair

Jane Leach, Lucy Faithfull Foundation chair

This year marked the final year of our 2020–2025 strategy, as well as the development of our next fiveyear plan. Reflecting on the last five years has been an opportunity to celebrate all we’ve achieved across our strategic pillars of reach, research, and advocacy. From launching new projects and services, to establishing a dedicated research team and expanding our policy and advocacy work - there is much to be proud of.

Since 2020, our income has grown by 75%, increasing by £2.2 million. Alongside that financial growth, we’ve also seen a significant impact across our strategic areas:

Reach: We dramatically increased activities to make sure people know help is available when they need it. This led to increased website visits and calls to the Stop It Now helpline, and greater use of our online self-help resources. We also developed new services. For example, our education project to address harmful sexual behaviour in schools and Shore, a unique service supporting young people who are worried about their own sexual thoughts or feelings, or those of a friend.
Research: We marked a major milestone with the creation of our in-house research function, producing insights and evidence that shape better interventions and support for those who need it most.
Advocacy: Our policy and influencing work deepened and widened, giving voice to our expertise in more decision-making spaces and helping to shape responses that protect children at scale.

This year, we continued to strengthen and evolve our clinical services, delivering hundreds of expert assessments and interventions to local authorities and partners - ensuring our work drives real-world impact where it’s needed most. Our projects remained focused on preventing child sexual

abuse across England, Wales, and Scotland, while our efforts to make the internet a safer space continued. We worked directly with individuals who have caused harm online and collaborated with tech companies to push for better interventions to prevent online child sexual abuse.

Our Stop It Now helpline provided vital support to more than 8,000 people, and we marked a key milestone: the first anniversary of Shore, our online resource and live chat service for young people concerned about their own sexual thoughts or those of a friend. The impact has been clear - 72% of the young people we supported had never previously spoken to a professional or anyone else about their concerns. For many, Shore represented a crucial first step toward getting help.

Of course, none of this would be possible without our incredible funders and supporters. To each and every one of you – thank you. Your commitment enables us to reach more people, deliver lifechanging services, and push for the changes that keep children safe.

Our staff are among the most committed I’ve had the privilege to work with. They face challenging and often distressing issues with compassion, professionalism, and determination - always driven by our shared mission. On behalf of the board, I offer heartfelt thanks to every staff member.

I also want to thank my fellow trustees, who give their time, insight, and leadership so generously. Each brings unique expertise and perspective. This year, we said farewell to three exceptional trustees - Derek Perkins, who served the Foundation for 18 years, Gopi Krishnan, and Paul Monks, our safeguarding lead. We thank them all for their invaluable contributions.

This year, we were deeply saddened by the loss of our Patron, Baroness Valerie Howarth of Breckland OBE, who passed away from cancer. Valerie was admired and loved by so many. Her wisdom, compassion, and tireless advocacy for children leave a lasting legacy. She profoundly influenced our work and the wider sector, and we will honour her memory by continuing to work with the same determination she embodied.

Jane Leach

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

Welcome from our chief executive ofcer

Deborah Denis, Lucy Faithfull Foundation chief executive officer

Thank you for reading our 2024/25 Annual Report. It’s packed with insights, stories, and evidence that reflect the breadth of our work and the impact we’re having.

I’m deeply grateful to our incredible team, dedicated trustees, generous supporters, committed funders, and inspiring partners - your contributions make everything we do possible.

Over the past year, we’ve continued to make a meaningful difference in keeping children safe, driving progress across our strategic priorities: reach, research, and advocacy. We supported more than 16,000 people across the UK through direct work - in person, online, and via our Stop It Now helpline. We delivered on our major digital project, launching new websites with a refreshed look and improved navigation that make it easier for people to find the help they need, when they need it. As a result, website users grew from 1.3 million to 1.8 million, with improved engagement. We also focused on expanding our public presence, contributing to media discussions on child sexual abuse, and publishing blogs and thought leadership pieces to help shift public understanding and support prevention.

We grew our research team and introduced a new structure for our research activity. Highlights include the start of the evaluation of our Stop It Now helpline under the Prevention Global initiative, and a collaboration with Professor Michael Seto, at the University of Ottawa, to advance knowledge on preventing intrafamilial child sexual abuse.

In advocacy, we welcomed a new policy officer and continued to influence meaningful change. Our submission to Ofcom helped improve guidance for large search services, where we argued that warning messages for illegal child sexual abuse searches should be developed with expert input. The Pornography Review final report featured several of our contributions, including our deterrence chatbot with IWF and Aylo, the ‘What’s porn got to do with it?’ Faithfull Paper, and helpline data from adults selfreporting concerns related to pornography.

Yet, alongside our achievements, we also faced some challenges – many of which are shared by others in the sector. This year, the National Safeguarding Panel’s review into child sexual abuse within families

highlighted “significant and long-standing issues,” including a lack of skills and guidance for child protection professionals. Despite this, we saw reductions in commissions for our professional services – assessments, interventions, training and consultancy. We took action to raise awareness of our services, and by year-end, referrals began to recover. But these dips in activity levels are deeply worrying - not least because they come at a time when the need for services is so urgent. We know many sector partners are experiencing financial strain, leading to reduced training budgets, so we are committed to campaigning for sustained investment in child protection systems and services.

Day in, day out, we deliver meaningful work that makes a real difference - but our journey is far from over. We’ve identified five key objectives that will help us deliver on our 2025-2030 strategic aims. Each contributes something different to our ability to prevent sexual abuse, but they are connected, and when applied together will have a powerful impact on our ability to deliver the change we want to make.

Practice: We will run and develop inclusive, innovative and flexible clinical services grounded in evidence, responsive to our beneficiaries and those with lived experience, and we will reach more people in more ways.
Places: We will focus on making places safer for children and young people wherever they are.
Partnerships: We will build broader partnerships, collaborate with more people and organisations, and harness the power of strength in numbers to develop and deliver prevention.
People: We will ensure we attract a diverse group of people into the LFF family and create an organisational culture where everyone can grow and thrive, driven by the shared passion to keep children safe.
Performance: We will embed excellence, efficiency and sustainability across the charity.

Together, we’re laying the foundations for a stronger, more responsive, and more inclusive future. Thank you for your support – and I hope you’ll continue to be part of our journey.

Deborah Denis

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

Why our work matters

One in ten children experiences some form of sexual abuse before the age of 16. This breaks down to 15% of girls and 5% of boys.[1]

Jess Phillips Minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls

Only 1 in 8 victims of child sexual abuse are estimated to come to the attention of authorities.[2]
Online child sexual abuse remains a significant and growing challenge. According to published Home Office data, police forces across England and Wales recorded 38,685 child sexual abuse image offences in the year 2023/24, averaging more than 100 offences per day.[3]
According to police, 52% of reported child sexual abuse offences in 2023 were carried out by someone under 18, rising from around a third in previous years.[4]
There is a recognised lack of confidence among professionals in addressing child sexual abuse – both observed in our own practice and highlighted in the National Safeguarding Panel Review, which stated that “practitioners working with children and families have not been equipped with the knowledge, skills and practical guidance to identify and respond confidently when there are concerns of child sexual abuse in the family environment”.[5]

Given the hidden nature of child sexual abuse, a criminal justice response that relies on discovery or disclosure, law enforcement action and punishment is necessary, but nowhere near enough. It also only reacts after abuse has taken place and a child has been harmed. Leaving it to the criminal justice system to arrest and prosecute everyone who causes harm is never going to be sufficient, nor indeed possible. This is why we must all work harder to prevent harm from happening in the first place, while also enhancing the criminal justice response.

“Child sexual abuse and exploitation are the most vile and horrific of crimes - an abuse of power against those who are most vulnerable, leaving lifelong trauma and scars. It is therefore critical that we tackle these heinous crimes and safeguard children from all forms of sexual abuse. Or even better, we stop this abuse from occurring in the first place. It is essential that we prioritise tackling child sexual abuse and exploitation at the highest level by continuing to root out and bring perpetrators to justice, prioritise prevention, support victims and survivors, and drive forward leadership and cooperation at an international level.

Over the last thirty years, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation has been invaluable in their contributions to tackling child sexual abuse through their work with people who might cause harm. Their continued commitment to creating a world where children live free from the threat of child sexual abuse is invaluable and deeply appreciated.

It is a real pleasure to see the launch of LFF’s Annual Report 2024/25 to mark all of the excellent work that has taken place over the last twelve months.”

1 “The scale and nature of child sexual abuse: Review of evidence”, Kairika Karsna and Liz Kelly www.csacentre.org.uk/research-resources/research-evidence/scale-nature-of-abuse/the-scale-and-nature-of-child-sexual-abuse/

2 Children’s Commissioner for England, 2015

3 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/policeforceareadatatables

4 https://www.vkpp.org.uk/assets/Files/Publications/Totality-year-2-report-National-Analysis-of-Police-Recorded-CSAE-Crimes-Report-2023-compressed_1.pdf

5 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-review-into-child-sexual-abuse-within-the-family-environment

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

What we do

Everything we do protects children from sexual abuse. We keep children safe by:

Providing free and confidential advice through our helpline, enabling callers to take positive, preventative actions to protect children.

Helping people achieve positive change and offence-free living. Our direct delivery services and online self-guided interventions help people make better choices and live a good life.

We help thousands of people each year who call, email or talk to us via live chat.

Our values

These guide our work and keep us focused on how to achieve the best possible outcomes for children.

Integrity

We are ethical, open and honest. We follow through on our words and act with professionalism.

Collaboration

We are stronger and achieve more when we work together – with each other, with our beneficiaries and with our partners.

Innovation

Creating safer environments in families, communities and online. We work to prevent abuse from happening in the first place, or from happening again if it already has.

Equipping professionals with knowledge and tools to better protect children. We strengthen the ability of professionals to identify, respond to, and prevent child sexual abuse.

Influencing social and political attitudes about how children can best be protected. We advocate for a greater focus on preventing abuse before it happens and for taking a public health approach to preventing child sexual abuse.

We apply practice-based insights and ongoing evaluation to develop pioneering services and innovative interventions.

Ambition We aim to be the best we can be, strive for excellence in everything that we do, and encourage colleagues and beneficiaries alike to reach their full potential. —

Hope Child sexual abuse is preventable, not inevitable. So, we have hope that inspires action. =

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

Our strategy: We said, we did

Research

Imagine... if, through research and development, we could anticipate the next serious risk that children might face – and create preventative interventions and campaigns ahead of time.

Our 2020-2025 strategic plan set out our key aims to achieve greater impact and protect more children from sexual harm, building on our achievements over more than 30 years. The plan outlined our areas of focus and our key objectives, centred around three pillars - reach, research and advocacy. In this final year of the plan, we continued to make excellent progress against each of our strategic aims, setting us up well for the future.

Reach

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Aim: To make best use of our expertise, our data and our insights to develop new strategies and interventions that make prevention real both independently and in partnership with others, sharing our insights about effective practice with agencies and the broader public.

We introduced a new structure for our research activity, allowing us to track our achievements in four key areas: research foundations, understanding our impact, research in partnership, and communicating our research.
We launched the evaluation of our Stop It Now helpline as part of Prevention Global.

Imagine... if all adults who pose a sexual risk to children get help before they harm a child. Imagine too that all adults responsible for children understood everything they need to know about child sexual abuse to prevent harm from occurring in the first place, and crucially, can access confidential help when they need it.

We collaborated with Professor Michael Seto, of the University of Ottowa, to gather important insights on intrafamilial child sexual abuse prevention.
Our ongoing collaboration with Professor Pamela Taylor’s team at Cardiff University allowed us to further develop our understanding of key aspects of our Stop It Now helpline this year.

Aim: To ensure that everyone knows we are here for them – whether they 1 need help for themselves or for someone they know.

We worked directly with 16,046 people across our services (2023/24:15,450).
Over 1.8 million people visited our websites.
8,435 people received advice and support from our Stop It Now helpline.
We completed 218 assessments for local authorities and others and delivered 56 pieces of intervention.
We worked directly with 373 men arrested for online sexual offences to help prevent future offending.
We supported 325 family members affected by the arrest of a loved one for online offences and a further 1,019 family members engaged in online peer support.
We supervised and completed a project with Leeds Beckett University on how people who have been investigated, arrested, or convicted for child sexual abuse offences experience the criminal justice system.
Working with the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science and the University of Edinburgh, we recruited a PhD student who will now use a doctoral process to develop a risk assessment tool for under-18s who display harmful sexual behaviour, both offline and online.
We published three Faithfull Papers, which share data and insights about how best to prevent child sexual abuse based on our work. The Faithfull Papers webpage was visited nearly 5,000 times, alongside a range of interactive presentations and webinars on these themes.
• We published three academic articles: Acceptability of a Self Help Programme to Address the Use of Indecent Images of Children; Understanding and Deterring Online Child Grooming: A Qualitative Study and Accessing child sexual abuse material: Pathways to offending and online behaviour.
We worked with 97 young people who had got into trouble online.
We delivered 76 training events, reaching 1,043 professionals in England.
We delivered 27 training events, reaching 914 professionals in Scotland.
We reached 4,697 people through our education sessions, training sessions, webinars, consultations and newsletters in Wales.
We supported 35 media engagements, including with the BBC News, Women’s Hour, The Guardian, The Mirror and The Sun.

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

Advocacy

Imagine... if government decisions put children’s safety first, and public policy and services were designed with the prevention of abuse – rather than the response after abuse – at their core.

Aim: To drive forward the preventing child sexual abuse agenda, shape 3 @ the debate in constructive ways and contribute to domestic and global developments.

In its first statement on illegal harms, Ofcom strengthened its guidance for large search services in direct response to our consultation submission. The revised guidance now recommends that service providers develop warning messages for illegal child sexual abuse searches in collaboration with experts in deterring online child sexual abuse.
We submitted evidence to the Pornography Review. The final report highlighted our deterrence chatbot (in collaboration with IWF and Aylo), our Faithfull Paper ‘What’s porn got to do with it?’, and data from helpline calls in 2023 from adults concerned about themselves who self-reported having problems with pornography.
We worked with partners to ensure the protection of confidential specialist support services for children in the Crime and Policing Bill in relation to mandatory reporting.
Collaboration has been a key feature of our advocacy work and with our partners the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse and the Marie Collins Foundation, we launched the report ‘Closer to Home’, setting out a series of recommendations for policy makers to prevent and better respond to child sexual abuse
We continued to serve as joint secretariat for the Saving Futures Cross-Party Group on Preventing Child Sexual Abuse in Wales and played an active part in the development of the Welsh Government’s next national action plan which will go out for public consultation in 2025.
We were invited to participate in the Scottish Government’s National Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Strategic Group and are members and co-convenors of the Cross-Party Group for Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse.
We published 25 blog posts, which collectively gained 1,565 page views.
We continue to work with the UK government in the Tackling CSA Strategy Third Sector Stakeholder Group.
We worked with the WeProtect Global Alliance as part of their Civil Society Reference Group.
We are active members of the National Crime Agency-led Prevent, Protect and Prepare Board.

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

Annual Report 2024/25 at a glance

April 2024

Our online deterrence campaign was shortlisted for Not For Profit Campaign of the Year at the PRmoment Awards. While we did not win, the recognition affirmed our role as sector leaders and innovators.

We celebrated the retirement of longstanding director Donald Findlater, honouring his legacy in child sexual abuse prevention. A blog with a podcast featuring chief executive Deborah Denis and an article in Children and Young People Now marked the occasion. Donald reminded us: “We must never take our eyes off the prize of prevention. Child sexual abuse is not inevitable.”

May 2024

At the 2024 NOTA conference, we presented on topics including assessing individuals without convictions and designing effective online prevention programmes.

We published our Faithfull Paper What’s porn got to do with it? The link between viewing adult pornography and online sexual ofending against children.

Guardian columnist Sonia Sodha shared it with her 80,000 followers on X and echoed our key messages in her column.

Save the Children Denmark visited our offices to meet the children and young people’s team and learn about our Shore website for teenagers.

We welcomed Sir Sajid Javid to our HQ to share progress on preventing child sexual abuse, including updates on the Stop It Now helpline and Everyone’s Safer schools project. His ongoing support strengthens our mission to protect children.

The Scottish Government published new guidance to help professionals address harmful sexual behaviour in children and ~~——_—~~ young people. It was developed by the assessment and intervention group, chaired by our Scotland director, Stuart Allardyce.

Stop It Now was selected for Prevention Global, a flagship international research initiative and resource hub showcasing effective ways to prevent child sexual abuse.

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

June 2024

Our head of clinical engagement, Tom Squire, featured in a Guardian article on AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery, highlighting how some individuals minimise the harm of their actions.

Deborah Denis discussed tech solutions and global responsibilities for preventing child sexual abuse on a panel at the Envision 2024 conference in Washington DC, hosted by the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse.

July 2024

We increased our Stop It Now chat opening hours to include Mondays from 1-4pm.

We published our Everyone’s Safer: Year 2 report. The report summarises key findings from the second year of our three-year action research project to tackle harmful sexual behaviour in schools.

Deborah Denis gave a wide-ranging TalkTV interview with Trisha Goddard, covering our Stop It Now services, our deterrence campaign, online pornography’s impact on young people, and the Online Safety Act.

Deborah Denis and operations director Adrian McNulty visited KPMG to discuss challenges, including AI use in the charity sector.

LFF Scotland and Police Scotland launched a campaign to deter potential child sexual abuse, directing individuals to Stop It Now for support. A new campaign video was created, and the initiative won the UnAwards for Best Collaboration.

LFF Wales held its first focus group with Plant Dewi Young Parents (ages 18–26), discussing AI use among children and reviewing our Shore website and SMART rules resources.

Emily and Matthew, a couple who had been through our Inform and Inform Plus programmes, shared their story with The Guardian. The article featured an in-depth account of “the knock” and subsequent events from the perspectives of both Emily and Matthew. The article prompted at least three people to call the Stop It Now helpline.

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

August 2024

We launched our first fundraising appeal to raise funds for the Stop It Now helpline. It invited people to join us in preventing child sexual abuse and generated more than £11,000.

We interviewed our chair Jane Leach, and new trustees Martin Kersey, Fred Langford and John O’Brien CBE about their experience, dedication to preventing child sexual abuse and hopes for LFF’s future. Their responses were published in a blog.

We were shortlisted in two categories at the Children & Young People Now Awards 2024: Donald Findlater for Children and Young People’s Champion and our Shore website for Digital Innovation.

September 2024

The LFF Scotland team presented at the NOTA Scotland conference, sharing our work and insights on child sexual abuse prevention.

We published our Faithfull Paper: Chatbots and Warning Messages – Innovations in the Fight Against Online Child Sexual Abuse detailing how our innovative chatbot and warning messages tackle online child sexual abuse.

Deborah Denis appeared on BBC Women’s Hour following Huw Edwards’ sentencing, highlighting the impact on victims and the need for accessible support. She discussed our Stop It Now services and the importance of helping people change their behaviour.

We celebrated a year of making waves through Shore, our website for young people concerned about themselves or others.

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

October 2024

We published a blog: What’s the point – How our specialist programmes reclaim hope and protect children exploring how our work with those who have offended online, and their families, changes lives.

Our operations director, Adrian McNulty, took part in the Charity Digital AI summit to look at risks and opportunities for artificial intelligence (AI) use within charities. We also created a set of AI guidelines for staff to consider when using AI.

November 2024

Our head of research and evaluation, Erifili Efthymiadou, joined global partners at Safe Online’s “Data for Change” workshop at Google London to explore ways to strengthen data on online child sexual abuse.

We penned a blog in response to the national review into child sexual abuse within the family environment, showcasing how our services equip professionals to work confidently, sensitively, and effectively in this complex area.

Stuart Allardyce presented at the ATSA conference in Texas on the findings from our pioneering chatbot.

Our head of clinical services for children & young people, Rachel Haynes, shared insights from the first year of Shore at the Marie Collins Foundation Conference.

Our regional deterrence campaign kicked off in Plymouth. The press push focused on local statistics showing that more than 13,000 people in Devon and Cornwall visited the Stop It Now online self-help resources or contacted the Stop It Now helpline in 2023.

During National Safeguarding Week, our LFF Wales team ran public education sessions and engaged with partners across Wales, including Wrexham County Borough Council, TGP Cymru, Hywel Dda Health Board, and Cardiff’s fostering team.

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

December 2024

Deborah Denis presented at the WeProtect Global Summit 2024 in Abu Dhabi, speaking on the importance of prevention.

LFF Scotland's director Stuart Allardyce appeared on STV’s flagship news and current affairs programme Scotland Tonight. He appeared alongside colleagues from Childlight and NSPCC, emphasising our perpetrator-focused prevention work.

January 2025

Deborah Denis wrote a blog responding to media and political focus on grooming gangs, calling for greater attention to the needs of victims and survivors, and stronger efforts to prevent child sexual exploitation and abuse.

We hosted The Hydrant Programme team to discuss collaboration and working together towards a future free from child sexual abuse.

Ida Oeverland, project worker for programmes, attended and presented at the Protech Project Conference, Online Sexual Abuse – New Developments and Challenges, in Antwerp, Belgium. She showcased our Inform Plus and Engage Plus programmes, which support people to stop offending online.

We were pleased to welcome the Stop It Now Netherlands team to our offices. It was a valuable opportunity to share insights and exchange ideas on achieving the best outcomes for children.

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Overview

February 2025

We published a blog on supporting the secondary victims of online child sexual abuse, highlighting our Inform programme for those close to individuals arrested or convicted for such offences.

We launched our new and improved family safety plan – a proactive, practical guide to help parents, carers and professionals take decisive action to protect children from sexual abuse.

March 2025

In partnership with NWG Network, we hosted a webinar for 170 attendees on the impact of pornography, pathways to harmful sexual behaviour, and the role of tech companies in creating safer online spaces.

Head of Stop It Now, Vicky Young, attended the STOP-CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) Project conference in Brussels. It was a great opportunity to network with other prevention projects and focus on the findings from the STOP-CSAM Project.

We launched our ~~ooo~~ 2025-2030 strategy - focused not just on what we do, but on how we inspire hope, equip others, and mobilise collective action to protect children from sexual abuse.

Together with NSPCC, Barnardo's, Marie Collins Foundation, and the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse, we wrote to the home secretary and technology secretary, urging them to strengthen the implementation of the Online Safety Act.

We published our Faithfull Paper: Trends and insights from a unique helpline preventing child sexual abuse, which explores how we use our experience to support research, develop effective resources and spot emerging threats.

Our website content manager, Jenna Mackay, shared a blog about taking on the 2025 London Marathon to help raise vital funds to keep children safe from sexual abuse.

For over a decade, we've partnered with Google on a vital search intervention to deter people from seeking sexual images of children. Our director of advocacy and communications, Frances Frost, attended Google’s ‘Growing Up in the Digital Age’ conference to continue this important work.

Our strategy 2025-2030

Protecting children. Preventing child sexual abuse.

With heavy hearts, we posted a tribute to Baroness Valerie Howarth of Breckland OBE, who passed away on 23 March 2025, aged 84. But we also celebrated a life well lived. Much loved, admired and respected by so many, her death leaves an enormous void.

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Achievements and performance

Anonymous advice and support: Stop It Now UK and Ireland helpline

For more than 20 years, the Stop It Now helpline has provided support and interventions to protect children and prevent child sexual abuse. The helpline is a safe space for callers to talk about their concerns and questions. Our advisors listen to callers and give guidance and advice tailored to what they need. They help people take active steps that protect children and build positive lives.

Alex Davies-Jones, minister for victims and tackling violence against women and girls , said é6 Safety and protection from abhorrent sexual abuse and exploitation is the very least a child deserves. Across government, we continue to strive towards a place where no child is the victim of such heinous and life-altering crimes.

For 30 years, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation has been an invaluable partner to survivors, families, and the criminal justice system. From the Stop It Now initiative to the support Shore provides, their research and early intervention techniques to stop sexual abuse at its source are progressive and transformative in equal measure.

I thank them sincerely for their unwavering commitment to the protection of children, and join them in celebrating the legacy of Baroness Valerie Howarth, whose work changed the lives of children past, present and future. We must continue the incredible work she started and give every child the chance at life they deserve.

The key people we seek to reach

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52% of callers 26% of callers
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7% of callers
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Adults concerned about their own sexual thoughts about, or behaviour towards, children: to encourage them to recognise their behaviour as abusive or potentially abusive and to seek help to change.

Adults concerned about another adult who may be a sexual risk to children: to encourage them to recognise the signs of abusive behaviour in those close to them and to seek advice about what action to take.

Parents, carers or others concerned about the sexual behaviour of a child or young person: to encourage them to recognise the signs of concerning or abusive behaviour and to seek advice about what positive action they can take.

Additional groups we help

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9% of callers 2% of callers 1% of callers
Professionals seeking case People concerned that their Survivors of child sexual
advice and support. child has been sexually abuse looking to make sense
abused or is at risk. of what happened to them or
discuss present-day risk.
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3% of callers fall outside our target groups and include, for example, someone calling about abuse that is not child sexual abuse e.g. domestic abuse, requests for general information, and inappropriate callers.

When our advisors pick up the phone or answer a chat session, they don’t know what type of caller* will be on the other end. Each caller is different, and our experienced and compassionate staff handle every contact with care and professionalism.

* For brevity, ‘callers’ include those who call, email and use live chat

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Achievements and performance

Our reach in 2024/25

We helped 8,435 people who made 19,161 contacts between them (‘contacts’ includes calls, chats and emails). This is a small decrease in people (8,774) and contacts (19,349) from the previous year. A range of reasons contributed to these reductions, including tech problems following a phone system upgrade, web chat issues after our new website went live, and the mix of new and repeat callers. We are working hard to ensure those that need us are able to reach us and have implemented a number of actions including conducting an efficiency review, taking additional steps to ensure IT reliability, and increased promotional activity to drive awareness of the helpline.

While our phoneline operating hours remained the same, we again increased our chat opening hours by adding an additional shift on our busiest day (Mondays) resulting in more chats in 2024/25 than 2023/24 year (1,989 vs 1,956).

Very helpful, I’m so thankful for everyone at Stop It Now - the support and guidance you are providing has helped me through my darkest thoughts and times and encourages me to deal with my issues and look to the future. For the first time in 30 years, I’m feeling hopeful that with this service I can permanently change my behaviour which is what I want.

My call today with someone who knows about the criminal justice system has been really helpful and put my mind at rest about what might happen to my partner.

A partner of someone arrested for online sexual offending

A chatter who had engaged in online sexual communication with another adult about a child

Missed callers

We remain committed to making sure we help as many people as we can, though we are acutely aware that we do not pick up the phone to everyone who needs us. We continuously monitor efficiency, making sure our technology supports effective delivery with an aim to increase advisor hours.

Across 2024/25, 5,135 callers didn’t get through on their first attempt to call the helpline, which represents a 5% decrease from 2023/24 (N = 5,410). Missed callers who eventually got through were 55% (we are seeing this slowly increase each year; 53% (2,844 out of 5,402) in 2022/23 and 54% (2,915 out of 5,410) in 2023/24).

In June, we introduced a system to let callers know their position in the queue and feedback has indicated this is a positive feature, as call waits can be lengthy.

Total contacts and callers/emailers/chatters since 2002

----- Start of picture text -----
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0
2002/03 2024/25
Calls, emails and chats Callers, emailers and chatters
----- End of picture text -----

----- Start of picture text -----
How people contacted us
----- End of picture text -----

----- Start of picture text -----
2024/25 19,161
2023/24 19,349
2022/23 16,764
0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000 18,000 20,000
Calls Emails Chats
----- End of picture text -----

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Achievements and performance

How we help people

We help people protect children by:

Understanding the context: we talk through the issues, helping callers clarify their concerns so we can fully understand the situation and ensure we are giving the best possible advice.
Ensuring the immediate safety of children: we explore any immediate child protection considerations and agree on safeguarding steps needed to minimise risk, such as developing family safety plans, changing online behaviour or stopping unsupervised contact with children, especially during personal care.
Supporting better understanding: we provide information and support to help callers make sense of their situation and think about the next steps, such as explaining the criminal justice process, the role of children’s services and what support is available.
Helping people identify a way forward: we discuss available options, including referral to another agency or our own follow-up services, so they can explore the motivations for their behaviour, get support for addictions, learn how to disclose their offending, find therapeutic support and identify risks in their family.
Agreeing actions to protect children and increase safety: we advise callers about actions to consider and use motivational interviewing skills to encourage callers to agree on one or more protective actions they will take, such as placing controls on their internet use, seeing their GP for mental health support or starting the self-help modules to understand and address their behaviour.

Thank you, I will continue to work through the modules on your website and put them into practice where applicable. I will also give your helpline a call to assist me in applying the learning from modules and book a call- ~~bac~~ k. Thank you for all the hard work and ~~edu~~ cation that you provide – it is very important and valuable.

Caller, concerned about accessing indecent images

We are an action-orientated service

98% ~~C)~~ of people we helped agreed on ~~@~~ one or more actions to protect a child – reducing the likelihood of offending or reoffending

96%

of repeat callers tell us they had taken the actions they had previously agreed on

We work with callers who are often contacting us when they are highly distressed. We know that working with them to achieve a more stable state of mind will help them to take more considered actions to prevent harm. For example, if someone calls after being arrested for online sexual offending, they are often highly distressed and in many cases suicidal, so we will focus on their self-care and wellbeing and then help them to start thinking about practical measures, like restricting their internet use, and in the long run, looking at why they were accessing sexual images of under-18s, what their triggers were for engaging in the behaviour, and what they can do to make sure they do not repeat it.

We protect children by preventing offending

There are few places people can go to for help if they are concerned they might sexually harm a child. Just as there are few places people can go to if they have concerns about someone they know. We are one of those places.

In 2024/25:

475 people contacted us saying that they had not harmed a child but were concerned about their sexual thoughts towards children and their risk of committing a contact offence. 264 people contacted us about their risky online behaviour. That is 18% of callers concerned about themselves who are seeking help before they have harmed a child, giving us a unique opportunity to prevent abuse from happening.
223 people contacted us because they had concerns about someone they knew who might be at risk of committing a contact offence and 135 were concerned about someone’s online behaviour. That is 17% of callers concerned about another adult.

Evaluating our service

In December 2024, we launched our important external evaluation of the helpline and chat service, as part of Prevention Global, funded by Oak Foundation. This involves our advisor asking a series of questions at the start and end of a client’s first interaction with the helpline, recording the answers on our secure system, as well as booking the client in for a 3-week followup call. The questions asked allowed advisors to gain vital insight into the caller’s sexual behaviour and emotional wellbeing, and we are getting some very positive initial feedback from callers and chatters about their experience of the helpline. From the start of the evaluation to the end of March 2025, we completed 56 followup calls and are progressing well against our target of 250.

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Achievements and performance

Trends and themes

Faithfull paper

This year, we published a Faithfull Paper on the Stop It Now helpline, which looks at the trends and insights we have seen since we launched in 2002. Two key trends we focus on are the continuing emergence of AI-generated images and the rise in online sexual communication.

Artificial intelligence

Looking at data relating to AI-generated images in 2024/25, of the 6,146 people who contacted us via phone or live chat 112 (c 2%) referenced AI. Amongst adults concerned about their own sexual thoughts/behaviour, it was referenced 86 (1%) times.

Out of those concerned about their behaviour, we have looked at other aspects of their online behaviour and identified the following:

88% accessed sexual images of under 18s (n=98).
43% identify they have a problem with legal pornography (n=48).
38% accessed illegal Hentai, Manga, or Anime (both types of material more commonly reported together than would be statistically expected) (n=43).
28% engaged in online sexual communication with a child (n=31).
21% engaged in online sexual communication with another adult about a child (n=23).

We also saw that 28% were not known to the authorities, which is higher than we see with people who are concerned about their online behaviour.

We have updated several areas of the Stop It Now Get Help material to incorporate key messages regarding accessing AI-generated images. Our information makes the law clear, helps readers understand the risks and their motivations, and challenges common justifications for accessing AI material.

Case study

Peter’s story

Peter, 27, contacted us after being charged with making indecent pseudo-images of children. He said he was not in paid employment due to his caring responsibilities for his seriously disabled mother. He fills much of his spare time with online gaming, has little social life save online and receives medication for depression.

Over the years, he had developed skills in 3D image creation, many with a sexual or fantasy theme, and was paid for some of these after he offered his ‘services’ online. Some of the images he created were based on photographs of real children that he found online. He said there was ‘no limit’ to what he created, with some images being ‘extreme’, including bestiality. He said that he created and shared the images to help him deal with his loneliness and that he enjoyed the attention and appreciation he received.

Peter contacted the helpline 22 times while going through the Court process. He worked through the Get Help modules and said they helped him challenge his justification that he was simply creating ‘art’. He wrote to the helpline following receipt of a prison sentence and stated his intention of keeping in contact with us upon his eventual release to continue the work on tackling his offending behaviour and developing a “good life”.

Online sexual communication

Understanding and deterring online child grooming - A qualitative study was published in February 2024. This research was undertaken after we experienced a big increase in callers reporting having engaged in online sexual communication with children online, and a Freedom of Information request to police forces found an 82% increase

Case study

Ali’s story

Ali, 52, contacted us after being confronted at his home by “vigilantes”. He said he had been engaging in sexual communication online with a girl he believed to be 13 and had sent her pictures of his genitals. He said he had provided his address, as the girl had said she wanted to send him a Christmas card. He was engaging in a lot of online sexual communications at this time, and he wasn’t concerned about the age of the person he engaged with, as he simply got sexual excitement when the conversations became sexual and when he shared images. His confrontation with the “vigilantes” was posted on a social media site, and as a result, he lost his job.

in grooming crimes over five years. The study explored motivations and pathways to online grooming behaviour, patterns of offending, and thoughts on how online grooming could be prevented. Research findings are helping to inform strategies for improved prevention and intervention for online grooming including improving our online self-help module, Sexual Communication with Children Online.

His wife and parents were shocked and “disgusted” by his offending behaviour, but they continue to support him as he waits for the police investigation to start. He said his online behaviour was out of control and, ultimately, inappropriate and shameful.

Over the course of two helpline calls, we agreed on a number of steps for Ali to take to manage his immediate behaviour and begin to make positive changes for the future. As a result, he is currently only going online in the presence of adult family members who are aware of his offending and has started to work through the Get Help self-help materials. He is now involving himself in family activities and has joined a gym in an effort to improve his overall physical and mental health. He has shared information about Get Help with his parents, who have started consulting the content written for family and friends.

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Achievements and perfomance

Achievements and performance

Further support

We continue to ensure we support people as much as possible. For some callers, a one-off call is enough to give safeguarding advice and support, however many others need ongoing support, especially if we are helping them with changing their behaviour.

Support for those concerned about their own thoughts or behaviour

Our support for those who are not known to the authorities is limited, as we are unable to signpost to other services such as face-to-face work, so our online self-help material becomes central to our intervention. Whilst our online materials are comprehensive, we recognise that working through them alone can be difficult for some. Therefore, we offer a call-back service, allowing people to access consistent, tailored support which focuses on their journey through the self-help modules. We have two self-help resources available:

‘Get Help’ online self-directed intervention

Self-help for people worried about their own or someone else’s online sexual behaviour towards children.

‘Get Support’ online self-directed intervention

Self-help for people worried about their own or someone else’s sexual thoughts or behaviour towards children not involving the internet.

In December 2024, a small research study was published looking into the ‘acceptability’ of our online Get Help resources. We interviewed eight men who had completed the Get Help modules and call-backs and used the concept of “acceptability” to explore whether users felt the service “makes sense”, whether it is easy to use and effective, and whether it aligned with their values. It also explored any barriers they had to overcome to complete the modules and call-backs.

Participants told us that the modules and callbacks helped them stop viewing sexual images of children, and the call-backs held them accountable.

There is no question that finding someone to be accountable to has been really, really important.

Study participant

Whilst they experienced difficult emotions such as shame, and found some of the modules highly challenging, Get Help provided a better understanding of their feelings. They left more hopeful about their future – critical to changing behaviour.

It’s made me feel that I will be able to manage going forward because I understand the things that could lead to me going back to the offending behaviour and I know how to recognise it, and what to do about them.

Study participant

The research also showed us practical ways to improve Get Help. Some users weren’t sure which order to complete the modules in, or how long to spend on each. Technical issues made the modules difficult to navigate. Although the website with the modules and the Get Help call-backs is fully anonymous, some were concerned about anonymity or being tracked.

We used these insights to improve both the Get Help modules and the advice we give on our Stop It Now helpline.

We encourage people to work through the modules at whatever pace works for them and call the helpline if they have questions.
We have added a new wellbeing and self-care section. We advise people to complete this first, before the more hard-hitting modules.
We highlight the anonymity of our services on the website. We let everyone who calls the helpline know they can stay anonymous.
We’ve redesigned our website to make navigation through the modules easier.

I have had many sessions both on the phone and online since that first contact. I have also benefitted greatly from practitioner sessions. I hate to think how many pages of notes I have generated since but I have always found the experience of talking to advisors positive. The modules are very helpful in getting you to think about why you are behaving the way you are and what you should be doing to try to resist in future.

Feedback from someone who worked through the Get Help modules via call-backs

Supporting parents/carers to improve their ability to protect children in their family

We are now extending this support by implementing a similar series of call-backs focusing on protective parenting skills, using the short videos on the Parent’s Protect website and the Family Safety Plan.

An overview of a protective parenting session:

Check-in: How are you? What’s your current situation? How do you feel?
Discuss: Explore the two videos that have been reviewed at home – what are the learning points? How do they relate to your particular family situation?
Safety planning: Discuss the family safety plan which has been worked on in between the sessions - what’s in place? What more can we do?
Recap: What has stood out for you from this week’s session? What do you feel is important?
Next steps: Planning for the next session – what actions to take between now and then?

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Achievements and performance

Ensuring the helpline is accessible

Case study: Supporting a caller with learning difficulties

We recognise the importance of making the helpline accessible to anyone with concerns about child sexual abuse, including individuals with additional needs. Below are some examples of how we’ve supported people with additional needs in addressing their online behaviour:

Case study: Supporting a caller with autism spectrum disorder

Simon’s story

Over five months, Simon had 25 calls/chats with the helpline, including practitioner call-backs, to support him in working through the online Get Help self-help modules. He took issues he was exploring on Get Help into his meetings with an external counsellor, with whom he also explored the theme of shame running through his life. This theme involved not simply his struggle with interpersonal relationships, but also his heavy use of alcohol to escape from “bad feelings” and distressing experiences. Engaging with strangers online had been another means of escaping from these feelings.

Simon, 56, called the helpline after being arrested for sexual communication with a child. He is unemployed, lives in supported accommodation due to mental illness and has good support from his family. He is single but has had age-appropriate relationships in the past. He said that since his arrest, he has had suicidal thoughts but stressed he would never act on them.

Simon’s arrest followed his sexual chatting with 13-year-old girls via Facebook. He said he thought alcohol and an addiction to legal pornography had played a big part in his illegal online behaviour, as he often engaged in both before seeking conversations with adults and children online. Whilst insisting he was initially seeking companionship and emotional connections through the chats, he recognised he did derive a feeling of power when he could turn them into sexual engagements. Across his adult life, he had felt that “people didn’t get me”, which caused him bewilderment and confusion. A recent diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder had come as something of a reassurance in helping to explain what was going on.

Simon made many changes whilst engaging with the helpline. With the aid of his mental health support worker and GP, he joined a local autism support group and also attends local meetings of AA on a weekly basis. He developed a good daily routine, including helping at a local rescue kennel with dog walking, studying, and weekly social meetings with family and adult friends away from the pub. He is using online tools to block adult pornography on his phone and tablet and has removed himself from Facebook.

Richard’s story

Richard, 38, recently received a Community Order for accessing sexual images of under-18s. He is supported by his parents, who he lives with, and his probation officer. Richard has learning difficulties, struggles with reading and writing and is diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. He has no contact with children through family or friends.

Richard called with the help of his probation officer and a parent. He stated that he has been obsessed with adult pornography for years. More recently, he had started chatting online to other adults with a shared interest in pornography. One of this group had sent him sexual images of children, which Richard now recognises as illegal. He was adamant that he

had not sought these images and has no sexual interest in children. He called the helpline looking for support in managing his online behaviour so that he did not find himself in this situation again.

Richard made three calls to the helpline and, with the support of his probation officer, we directed him to the modules of the self-help resources, Get Help, most appropriate for his circumstances, along with the sequence in which to undertake them. A practitioner held a separate online meeting with his probation officer to support his work with Richard on Get Help, including providing an easy-read version of a digital safety plan. He was introduced to Research Autism, an online sex education resource for people with autism aged over 15, which he shared with Richard’s parents.

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Achievements and performance

Raising awareness

The team undertook a range of awareness-raising activities, including proactive media engagement. Highlights include our head of Stop It Now, Vicky Young, speaking to the Daily Mirror in response to new data on the scale of online sexual ofending. She was also quoted in The Sun in an article about individuals who pose a risk to children applying for jobs in the children’s workforce, and in another piece where she provided guidance on how to protect children from grooming gangs.

Collaboration across the sector

We work with others across the sector to ensure we and all those working to protect children from harm are aware of the support available from different agencies. Our helpline team keep an up-to-date library of resources to signpost callers towards and we regularly host presentations from partner organisations in our helpline advisor training schedules.

This year, we focused on extending the reach of the helpline by raising awareness of it with key professionals in areas such as health, law enforcement, criminal justice and other helplines. We presented a webinar via NOTA (National Organisation for the Treatment of Abuse) highlighting the role of the helpline and sharing some of our insights and research. We also engaged with organisations globally, and we have been involved in international projects. We shared insights from our Live Chat service at a conference hosted by Charité for their STOP CSAM project and engaged with key stakeholders at the Protech final conference. These opportunities to share research and practice allow us to develop our own services and join the global fight against child sexual abuse.

I called late on a Friday afternoon at the end of my tether after a very difficult disclosure from a student. The advisor was incredibly helpful and reassuring, exactly what I needed to get me through that horrible day. I was so grateful and I would recommend the helpline to you all - the advisors are there to help us, do use them.

Professional calling for advice

Working with the international Stop It Now family

We continued to work with partners who run Stop It Now projects across the world through regular meetings to discuss operational and strategic issues.

Collectively, we are developing a framework that details the aims, values and approaches of Stop It Now so we can ensure that others share the same mission and recognise the importance of recruiting and training experienced staff who are able to ensure child protection is at the core of the work.

Stop It Now UK and Ireland helpline

This year we will…

Last year we said we would…

Start the evaluation of the helpline under the Oak Foundation Prevention Global project with Professor Elizabeth Letourneau at Johns Hopkins University and Professor Michael Seto at the University of Ottawa. This evaluation is underway and expected to be completed in 2025/26.
Complete the helpline evaluation to make the best use of our data and insights to drive activities and service developments as well as contribute to the body of knowledge on child sexual abuse prevention.
Expand and develop our call-back services by piloting Protective Parenting call-backs, increasing our delivery of call-backs to support people accessing our self-help modules and developing the service so it is delivered via the chat service.
Develop a webinar to share helpline insights and make this available for as many professionals as possible through networks such as NOTA and the NWG Network. We delivered these webinars in February and March respectively, reaching an audience of 330 people.
Drive collaborations with partners, including working with our international partner Stop It Now projects to develop a framework to define the key benchmarks for what makes a helpline truly aligned with our brand, setting the standard for consistency and excellence.
Publish a Faithfull Paper looking at trends and insights from the helpline. Our Faithfull Paper was published in February.

We are currently working on a project to support the development of a deterrence chatbot in the Netherlands based on the success of our chatbot project. We have also been approached by other countries wanting to start similar services and we are exploring how we can best support these developments.

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Achievements and performance Achievements and p Achievements and performance Assessments Assessments include: Professional services: assessments, • Assessments of children and young people who have exhibited harmful sexual behaviour, including interventions, and case consultancy sibling sexual abuse, sexual harm to other children or problematic sexual behaviours. • Assessments of adults who have committed or are Our multi-skilled practitioner team play a vital role in guiding alleged to have committed sexual abuse against a child. This includes online and contact sexual abuse concerns. professional decision-making in families where child sexual abuse has occurred, or there is a risk that it might. Through providing expert • Assessments of women who have committed sexual offences or may pose a risk of sexual harm to children. risk assessments and interventions for the family court system, local authorities and others, we ensure that the best interests of children • Ability to protect assessments with adults, including partners, parents and caregivers in families where are front and centre of the child protection system. concerns about child sexual abuse have been identified. We undertake comprehensive formulation-based • Dual or whole family assessments for families with assessments with individuals and/or families, Our reach in 2024/25 complex needs. including assessments of adults who have a committed or are alleged to have committed We delivered 210 risk assessments and 8 sexual abuse, and assessments of children and case consultancies (218 total), a decrease young people who have displayed harmful sexual y compared to 2023/24 (270). We also behaviour. We also conduct ability to protect delivered 56 pieces of intervention, a assessments with adults, children and young Types of assessments decrease from 84 in 2023/24. people, including partners, parents and caregivers in families where concerns about child sexual In the second and third quarters of 2024/25, abuse have been identified. Our interventions are we experienced a reduction in the number tailored to the needs of individuals or families of enquiries from professionals. Typically, and include intervention to individuals, couples •[ Protective parenting: 95]

We undertake comprehensive formulation-based assessments with individuals and/or families, including assessments of adults who have committed or are alleged to have committed sexual abuse, and assessments of children and young people who have displayed harmful sexual behaviour. We also conduct ability to protect assessments with adults, children and young people, including partners, parents and caregivers in families where concerns about child sexual abuse have been identified. Our interventions are tailored to the needs of individuals or families and include intervention to individuals, couples or families where there are child sexual abuse concerns.

In the second and third quarters of 2024/25, we experienced a reduction in the number of enquiries from professionals. Typically, we have always had a significant number of requests coming in for specialist assessments and intervention, these mainly coming from local authorities in relation to families where there is a concern about risk of sexual harm to children, and also through legal aidfunded work in cases where sexual harm has been identified as part of family court proceedings. Given the known prevalence of child sexual abuse, the downturn was concerning. In response, we implemented an action plan to ensure frontline services are fully aware of the support we offer, as well as our collaborative approach with referrers, tailoring our work to meet their specific needs.

[ Females who have sexually offended: 3]
[ Males who have sexually offended: 80]

While it’s a busy and complex area of work, our national service has never been needed more. In November, a national review into child sexual abuse within families found ‘significant and longstanding issues’ with the response to child sexual abuse within the family. Every day, our experts work alongside professionals, helping them navigate often complex dynamics and family situations, enhancing professional expertise and helping professionals make the right decisions for children.

[ Adolescents who have caused sexual harm: 25]
[ Under 12s who have caused sexual harm: 5]
[ Psychological assessments: 2]
[ Case consultancies: 8]

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Achievements and performance

We equip our expert practitioners with the latest evidence on preventing child sexual abuse. This year, for example, we enhanced their skills in working with women who may pose a risk to children.

Case study

Case study: Assessing a woman who had sexually offended

Jayne’s story

and vulnerability of the child. The assessment identified protective factors, illustrating changes in her circumstances and attitude since the offending. She recognised the harm and illegality of her behaviour and important aspects of her life and family that she had put in jeopardy. It concluded that her risk of re-offending was low, and that a SHPO was not required, as the notification requirements (part of her sex offender registration) were deemed sufficient to manage any risk.

We received a referral from a solicitor regarding a Crown Court case. The client was a woman who had sexually abused her son’s teenage friend and intended to plead guilty to charges of inciting and engaging in sexual activity with a child. A risk assessment was requested prior to sentencing, including whether a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) was indicated in the circumstances.

The report was positively received at the sentencing hearing and was referenced by the prosecution in their decision to not pursue a SHPO. The judge commented on the report’s helpfulness, using extracts to justify the sentencing - a suspended prison sentence. This enabled the client to continue the therapeutic work on her offending that she had started, as well as to provide family stability for her son.

The assessment concluded that the offending took place at a challenging time in Jayne’s life, when she had become isolated from peers and was managing negative mood states from significant life events, including bereavement and job insecurity. In her pursuit of emotional connection, support and intimacy, she ignored the young age

considered carefully enough, leading to children being placed at risk, or risk being assumed to be high and families experiencing overly restrictive sanctions and/or removal of the person of concern or even children, from the home. The absence of a criminal conviction does not mean that we need not be concerned about risk, and so in order to safeguard children, assessments are necessary.

The complexity of cases where there are no convictions

A large proportion of the referrals we receive for assessments and interventions for adults are in relation to families where there are child sexual abuse concerns, but where there is not a criminal conviction. It is common for child sexual abuse investigations to result in no further action by the police for lots of reasons, but where there are any concerns in relation to sexual harm, safeguarding children must be paramount.

We undertake complex assessments of risk so that we can help professionals make decisions that best safeguard children. Our practitioners are suitably trained and supported, and they engage clients with sensitivity and professionalism. We strive to engage people with compassion, but also to provide the most thorough assessment we can, which can help professionals support families to move forward in whatever way is necessary to ensure that children are kept safe from harm.

Assessing risk in the absence of a conviction can create challenges in practice, such as the lack of evidence or information, and engagement barriers such as denial and minimisation. There can also be difficulties created as a result of disproportionate responses to concerns – such as risk not being

James’ story

We received a referral for a risk assessment of a man, James, who was undergoing family court proceedings in regards to contact arrangements with his five-year-old daughter, Daisy. Mary, the child’s mother, objected to him having contact, citing the risk of sexual abuse. Daisy had previously made an allegation of sexual abuse by her father, but the court had made a finding of fact that it had not happened. James was of the view that Mary had invented the allegation in a bid to obstruct his contact. He was also of the view that Mary’s parenting was inadequate and was itself causing harm.

From the outset, James expressed concern and anxiety about an assessment being undertaken of his sexual risk, especially in light of the finding of fact. However, over the course of the assessment interviews, the practitioner explained the process and purpose of an independent risk assessment, using an open, transparent and empathic approach, which facilitated his engagement. James found some matters particularly difficult to discuss – his own experiences of being abused as a child and his sexual interests and behaviours - and he initially requested that they be withheld from the written report. The practitioner reminded James of the contracting undertaken at the start of the assessment, and again demonstrated how these sensitive and highly personal matters were pertinent to the assessment itself and the court’s decision-making. He ultimately withdrew his request that they be withheld.

The assessment concluded that he posed a low risk of sexual harm to his daughter and that contact with her father could prove of benefit to the child, subject to other professional assessments of her needs and best interests. A National Youth Advocacy Service (NYAS) worker had a good working relationship with both daughter and father and was recommended as a support in any initial contacts agreed. The report was provided to the court as well as to children’s services.

At the end of the sessions, James stated that his experience of the assessment process had been more positive than he had anticipated, that he was able to express himself openly and felt he was dealt with professionally. In subsequent written feedback, he stated: -

“I have read the report and I wanted to message you to say thank you. As you said, you presented our conversation with sensitivity. I appreciate the work that you put into this. I find it difficult to cry in most situations, but I’m close and have tingly shivers going up and down my body as I write this. You have at least given me some reason to do more to trust people in positions of trust and authority. Thank you so much.”

A short while later, James let us know that the assessment had led him to feel hopeful about his contact with his daughter for the future. He was thankful for our input and the way we professionally reported on the sensitive information he had disclosed. The commissioner of the assessment indicated that the report had been of high quality, and they were waiting for the next family court hearing.

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Achievements and performance

Working with families

Interventions

Through delivering interventions we help reduce the risk of child sexual abuse and increase safety. Each case is different, so we tailor our response to the needs of the individual or family – and we work flexibly and responsively with both clients and the professionals around them. We work with adults, adolescents and children.

Types of interventions

[ Protective parenting: 35]
[ Females who have sexually offended: 1]
[ Males who have sexually offended: 14]
[ Adolescents who have caused sexual harm: 6]

Supporting young people

Working with children and young people who display problematic or harmful sexual behaviours can be challenging and emotive. Its discovery can be extremely difficult for families to come to terms with, and when the person who has displayed this behaviour is a child within the same family, it can be even harder for parents and carers to reconcile this.

Many of our referrals for work with young people come from local authorities regarding families affected by sibling sexual behaviour, as do an increasing number of referrals for protective parenting interventions with adults where harmful sexual behaviour has occurred between children in their care. In addition, we know many young people become involved in and are vulnerable to harmful sexual behaviours online or with peers.

We strive to provide the best support for families and professionals managing harmful sexual behaviour incidents so that sound decision-making can be made about safeguarding to protect all children. Our assessments with young people and/or their families are specialist, independent, trauma-informed and child-centred. We undertake interventions with children and young people that are bespoke, responsive to their needs, and focused on helping them and their families move forward in healthy, non-harmful ways for a positive future.

Our children and young people’s practitioners are passionate about working with children in ways that engage them best. The team are often travelling around to meet children and families armed with games, puppets and resources that can best help overcome some of the natural anxieties and fear that talking about sexual behaviour can elicit. We engage with people around the child or young person to gather information and complete our assessment. When it may not be in the child’s best interest to provide direct work or intervention, we offer support to the professional network to help them positively support the child and their family.

Protective parenting

We know that working with protective family members is a powerful way to reduce the risk of child sexual abuse. Our skilled practitioners bring extensive experience in engaging this vital group, empowering them to take practical, effective steps to keep children safe. This may include interventions with parents, carers, foster carers, and other extended family members to improve their safeguarding ability. We also contribute to safety planning with families and support professionals to guide impactful safeguarding decisions.

Psychology

Our psychology services continue to underpin and support all areas of our work, from training delivery and professional services to research and the deterrence campaign. This year, changes were made to the structure of psychological services, resulting in two of our Assistant Psychologists dedicating two days a week to our research team and to children and young people’s service. This has meant that direct psychology support can be provided to these specific services. The mapping of the career path from training practitioner to practitioner has been completed, with the next steps focusing on costings and framework, with a view to starting this unique training opportunity in the next year.

Psychology continues to be important in our relationship with external stakeholders, particularly with the production of statistical reports for our government-supported projects, such as Stop It Now and Shore. Psychological services continue to support our practitioner staff on the use of standardised tools for assessment, intervention models and making the recent research developments accessible via our internal research library, ensuring that our staff continue to develop their expertise in the field.

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Case study: A young person who had engaged in harmful sexual behaviour re Sean’s story

a range of sporting activities. These activities were designed to help him meet his needs in interesting and healthy ways, developing the skills and confidence to build a good life for himself.

Sean, 17, was referred for a bespoke intervention following a long history of harmful sexual behaviour towards younger children and adults. He has complex needs, including ADHD and a learning disability, including difficulties in understanding and processing information. He had spent a period in a secure accommodation and was now living in residential home with close supervision by staff.

Sean was immensely proud of the progress he made over the six months of our work and, following our final session, he phoned his social worker to share what he had learned and how far he felt he had come. The feedback from Jacob was very positive about the impact of the work for Sean:

Sean initially found the intervention challenging and was reluctant to engage. We enlisted the support of a care worker, Jacob, with whom he had a good relationship. Jacob had a good understanding of Sean’s needs and of the best approaches to take with him. Through using creative resources including videos, animations and quizzes to support his engagement, we were able to help Sean develop a clearer understanding of healthy relationships, sexual boundaries, sexual consent, as well as sex and criminal law. We helped him develop and practice skills in managing his feelings, including managing sexual thoughts and impulses.

“I will miss these sessions. I found them really productive for Sean, and you were lovely to work with, very understanding and patient with him. I know he has learned a lot from you and I wish you all the best for the future. Hopefully, our paths will cross again in the future to help another child.”

Sean came to engage enthusiastically in all the sessions once Jacob was involved. Feedback from the residential staff group confirmed that he gradually became less volatile over the course of our work. This positive progress led us to recommend a relaxation in aspects of his supervision, which enabled him to engage in positive, healthy group activities, including cooking, money management and

Assessments, interventions and case consultancy —————— Last year This year we said we would… we will…

Our research team will be working with those commissioning our assessment and intervention services to understand the value our support creates and how our work can be more relevant for referral agencies in the future. The feedback we already collect on our professional services shows that our work is highly valued by local authorities, schools and others. This new research will provide a more systematic look at people’s experience of working with us, a clearer picture of the context in which partners choose to access our support, and the impact we have.
Focus on understanding our impact, including implementing new ways of collecting feedback from people who commission our services. We made progress here, securing more feedback from those who commission our services than ever before, but it remains a work in progress and evaluating our impact will be a focus for 2025/26.
Train our practitioners in Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) – a traumafocused way of engaging with people we work with that also has benefits for staff care and wellbeing. We will review how we incorporate CFT methods in our assessments and interventions. This was completed and is now in use across our intervention work. Through our continuous learning approach, what we learn from this will help to inform and support other services we deliver, including the Stop It Now helpline.
Given the importance of our protective parenting work, we will refine and strengthen the evidence base which underpins this work, review and update content, and seek to capture the impact of this work more systematically.
Review and update our intervention offer regarding the work we do with people who pose a risk of sexual harm to children – to incorporate compassion-focused therapy approaches.
Review the assessment and interventions we offer for children and young people and their families. Our referral numbers decreased, so we will investigate why, and review what we can offer to ensure we are meeting the needs of these people. We implemented a more relational approach to those who need our support, which means we help commissioners identify what is best for the children and young people involved, sometimes reframing the issues to ensure what is delivered will have the biggest impact.

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Circles of Support and Accountability

In July 2023, we started a Circles of Support and Accountability project in the West Midlands region. We were one of a number of new projects across the country funded through a contract with HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS). We welcomed the opportunity to tender for the HMPPS contract and were delighted to start delivering Circles again, having supported their implementation in the UK in the 1990s, and been a regular Circles provider up to 2017/18.

Circles are community-based initiatives, designed to reduce sexual offending. They are an innovative and successful contribution to child protection. Circles are made up of four to six trainers from the local community who help to support one person who has sexually offended – the Core Member. The volunteers work in close partnership with criminal justice agencies, and the Core Member is subject to probation oversight throughout the process.

At the end of 2023/24, we paused our contract while collaborating with HMPPS and Circles UK to explore a sustainable funding model, following a year in which our costs exceeded income. In May 2024, our trustees made the decision to honour our commitment to our three existing core members but not to accept any new referrals. One Circle closed in July 2024, and the remaining two Circles were formally closed in January 2025. Our experience of delivering Circles provides further evidence of the impact a community-based initiative can have on reducing the risk of sexual offending.

Several factors contributed to our decision to exit the contract. A slow project start, combined with a shortened referral window, meant that income did not cover costs in the first year. While we would have accepted the losses in the interests of setting up the project, uncertainty about the project’s long-term viability prevented us from bringing on new core members, limiting our ability to generate additional contract income.

Looking ahead

We remain committed to the concept of Circles, as demonstrated by trustees’ willingness to use our unrestricted funds to cover the losses in year one of the contract. We will consider any future opportunities when they arise.

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Tackling online child sexual abuse: services for those arrested and their families

Online child sexual abuse remains a significant and growing challenge. According to published Home Office data, police forces across England and Wales recorded 38,685 child sexual abuse image offences in the year 2023/24, averaging more than 100 offences per day.[6] Identifying and bringing offenders to justice remains a priority for law enforcement, with around 800 people arrested each month for offences related to viewing and sharing sexual images of children, and/or having sexual conversations with children.

It’s clear that more needs to be done to prevent online offending in the first place – but we also need to ensure services are available for people affected by an arrest. This includes those who have caused harm, to help them manage their behaviour in the future. It also includes their families, who struggle with the emotional and practical impact of the arrest of a loved one. We offer evidence-based psycho-educational programmes as well as online support services for these groups.

Dn Inform Plus – to help prevent viewing

Inform Plus – to help prevent viewing sexual images of children

This programme is for men who are under investigation or have been arrested, cautioned or convicted of viewing sexual images of children online. Delivered as a group or individually, it helps men understand their behaviour and implement strategies to avoid reoffending. It is mostly selffunded by participants, with some subsidised places for those in financial hardship.

Of Inform Plus participants who completed evaluations:

all reported making good or maximum progress on their ability to reduce their risk of reoffending
94% reported making good or maximum progress in understanding their own offending behaviour patterns

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Inform Plus
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201

Across England and Wales, 109 men attended the group programme, 42 completed the course on an individual basis, an additional 18 men had a single assessment session, and 32 attended a review session.

That’s 201 men in total, a slight decrease compared to 2023/24 (211).

6 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/policeforceareadatatables

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Case study

William’s story

William, 72, first contacted the Stop It Now helpline in October 2024 after pleading guilty to possession and distribution of indecent images of children. When he called, he was awaiting sentencing. He had thought to call over many months, but says he was advised by his solicitor to delay contact until the case had progressed further. By the time he contacted the helpline, he described deeply regretting taking this advice as he had simply delayed getting the help he needed.

William was evidently distressed during his first call. He said he felt overwhelmed, ashamed and eager to understand why he had done what he did, even at this late stage. He expressed shame and remorse for his behaviour and appeared to have developed a good grasp of the harm caused by viewing and sharing sexual images of children as a result of the reading and reflecting he had done while waiting for his court date.

William explained that he is divorced, retired, with no family or close friends to talk to. He told us that he had been diagnosed with cancer in early 2020 and that during the COVID-19 lockdowns, he had completely isolated himself through fear of being exposed to the virus, which could have had an impact on his cancer treatment. He said that struggling with fear, anxiety and loneliness, he had come to spend a huge amount of time online, initially seeking general connections with other adults. Over time, he had started having sexual conversations with adults, and that this had escalated into

receiving and sharing sexual images of children. He said his offending ended when the platform he was using, Snapchat, suspended his account.

What we did

After an initial focus on his mental health and physical wellbeing, both of which appeared fine, the helpline advisor began an exploration of William’s offending behaviour. As a next step, he was encouraged to visit our ‘Get Help’ selfhelp resources on the Stop It Now website to start exploring his online behaviour. During a subsequent helpline call, William stated that he had neglected his health more than he initially told us. The advisor explored some initial steps he could take to improve his wellbeing, including going for regular walks, preparing more balanced and nutritious meals and, even though his cancer treatment had been successful, making an appointment with his GP to check his current state of health. Due to the issues arising from his engagement with the Get Help resources, the advisor suggested he consider attending the Inform Plus programme as the next step in exploring his offending and developing a plan to manage his future risk.

The outcome

William called back, keen to attend the Inform Plus programme. He subsequently used the group sessions to explore the emotional and psychological needs that he felt had influenced his offending - his lack of human connection, a desire for acceptance, as well as a need to

escape the realities of his cancer diagnosis. The group environment helped him feel less alone in his experiences, while also holding him accountable for the harm he had caused and his progress.

Throughout the programme, William developed a greater sense of self-awareness about his thinking patterns, decision-making and the impact of his behaviour on others. Recognising a need for further support after the

Engage Plus – to help prevent online sexual communication with children

This programme is for men who have had sexual conversations with children online, solicited sexual images from children online or attempted to meet with a child after communicating online, with the intention of committing a sexual offence. Like Inform Plus, it is designed to help men understand their behaviour and put in place strategies to avoid reoffending in the future. It is mostly self-funded by participants, with some subsidised places for those in financial hardship.

Of Engage Plus participants who completed evaluations:

all reported making good or maximum progress on their ability to reduce their risk of reoffending
96% reported making good or maximum progress in understanding their own offending behaviour patterns

programme had ended, William accepted the offer of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy provided by the NHS, which he had previously rejected for fear of having to confront the reality of his offending. He also decided to join a local adult choir to meet his need for connection, where he was introduced to other retirees, some of whom had shared similar health problems in the past. William remains in contact with the helpline to keep himself accountable, and to update the advisors of his progress.

Engage Plus

101

Across England and Wales 58 men completed the group programme, 31 completed the course on an individual basis, an additional nine had a single assessment session, and three attended a review session.

That’s 101 men in total, an increase compared to 2023/24 (85).

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Case study

Patrick’s story

Patrick, 46, called the helpline in November 2023, a few days after being arrested for online sexual communication with a 13-year-old girl. Patrick lives with his wife of 20 years, Jane. They do not have children nor does he have contact with children

through work or other activities. He is concerned about the impact his criminal behaviour and arrest will have on his wife and their relationship.

He described how, over the last five or so years he has spent a lot of time online – up to six hours a day - engaged in sexual conversations with adult females. This was partly out of dissatisfaction with his sex life at home, but also the greater confidence he found in online versus face-to-face conversations. He struggled to explain how he ended up in illegal sexual conversations with a 13-year-old, but thought the taboo nature of the behaviour and the interest and engagement of the child over a number of days played a part.

Over a series of calls, Patrick explained that he knew his behaviour was wrong at the time, but he felt he could not stop. During the calls, he readily slipped into excusing his illegal behaviour - for example saying it was a way of coping with stress and low self-esteem, but he readily recognised he needed to accept responsibility for his actions and find legal ways of coping, or he would remain at risk of reoffending.

Patrick was assessed as suitable for the Engage Plus programme. Midway through the Engage Plus programme, Patrick contacted the helpline again. He disclosed that he had recently purchased a new phone, which he had hidden from his wife. His intention was to engage in sexual communication with adult women. He said that, after the shock of his arrest, he had not anticipated the temptation to engage in online sexual conversations to be so strong. However, he also acknowledged that reaching out to the helpline before speaking to anyone online, and disclosing the phone purchase and his intentions was positive.

What we did

Our programme facilitators worked with Patrick outside of the programme and helped him think through the recent decision he had made to purchase the phone. He decided to be open with his wife as well as with the other Engage Plus group members about what he had done. He described how his behaviour, both at the time of offending but also with this recent phone purchase had convinced him that he could not manage without the help of others. He valued the structured approach of the groupwork sessions and found the non-judgemental discussions around increasing his resilience and responses to triggers particularly helpful. But he knew there was more he needed to do to consolidate his learning and build plans and supports for a better life.

The outcome

Patrick completed the programme, investing significant effort in his personal work including his internet safety and healthy life plans. We supported him in sharing these plans with his wife and together they agreed to seek ongoing emotional support through couples

Inform - support for people affected by the arrest of a loved one for online sexual offending

This programme is for partners, ex-partners, adult family members or friends of people who have been arrested for online offending. They are often in crisis and Inform provides a much-needed safe space for people to talk about what they are going through and gain support from others. It can be delivered as a group or individually.

counselling. Patrick started attending meetings with Sex Addicts Anonymous and arranged for a series of additional appointments with one of our practitioners. Upon completion, he was encouraged to keep in occasional contact with the helpline for continued support. Patrick is currently going through the criminal justice system.

Inform

180

Across England and Wales, 127 people completed the group programme, 19 completed the course on an individual basis, and 34 had a single assessment session.

That’s 180 people in total, an increase compared to 2023/24 (165).

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Case study

The Davies Family

Sarah, 63, called the Stop It Now helpline for the first time in December 2024. She told the helpline advisor that her adult son, Peter, aged 30, a self-employed bricklayer, had been arrested two years ago for online sexual communication with a 14-year-old girl. At the time of his arrest, Peter was living with his wife, but he is now living with Sarah and her husband.

Peter had called the helpline soon after his arrest, and had been receiving support since, including through completing the Engage Plus programme. During this period, Sarah and her husband had focused their energies on ensuring Peter accessed the necessary mental health support, along with help to address his offending behaviour. As a result, they had rather neglected their own needs over the last two years. Peter had recently received a suspended prison sentence, and Sarah explained that she, her husband, and her two other adult children, Dan and Robert, felt it was now time to seek support for themselves, to help them deal with the emotional and practical impact of Peter’s offending. She said she had read about the Inform programme on our website and wondered if it might be useful to her and her and other family members.

What we did

The advisor explored the immediate support needs of Sarah herself and encouraged her to pass on the helpline details to her other

family members so they too could call if they wished. Over the following few weeks, Jeremy (Sarah’s husband), Dan and Robert all called for individual support. The family asked whether they could do the Inform programme together as a closed group, to help them better understand the nature and motivations behind this kind of offending and begin to process its impact on and implications for the family. Our programmes team offered each family member an individual, initial meeting to explore the impact of Peter’s offence on them individually. The family were allocated an Inform group facilitator and went on to complete the five sessions together.

The outcome

The programme gave each family member a safe space to talk about how Peter’s offending had affected them individually, while also giving them the opportunity to work through the course content as a family unit. The family showed a strong willingness to learn and support each other, and by the end of the programme they all reported feeling more confident in supporting each other, continuing to support and manage difficult conversations with Peter, as well as look after themselves. Sarah said the sessions helped her feel far less alone and better equipped to support her family. Dan and Robert both said they had learned a huge amount about how offending such as Peter’s can manifest, and Jeremy said the group helped him understand the broader impact of sexual offending.

Responding to demand across our programmes

This year, we have seen a notable increase in demand for our Inform programme, resulting in longer wait times for participants to access the course. While enrolments for Inform Plus have declined, we have seen a marked rise in demand for Engage Plus. This shift may, in part, reflect broader trends in online child sexual offending. In November 2024, the NSPCC reported an 89% rise in online grooming offences over a six-year period. According to the children’s charity, police recorded over 7,000 offences of ‘Sexual Communication with a Child’ in 2023/24 - an increase of 89% since the offence was introduced in 2017/18.[7]

Responding to trends and changes in offending behaviour

In response to the growing use of artificial intelligence in offending behaviour, we have begun collecting data and insights from individuals who engage with our programmes. This effort aims to build a clearer understanding of how AI is being used in such contexts, helping us identify emerging patterns and inform the development of our services to help prevent future offences.

Supporting change to protect children

In October, we published a blog highlighting the work of our programmes for men. What’s the point?’ How our specialist programmes reclaim hope and protect children highlights the vital role of our Inform Plus and Engage Plus programmes in preventing child sexual abuse by supporting individuals who have offended to make meaningful, lasting changes. The blog described how facilitators guide these sessions with empathy and skill, helping participants better understand their behaviour and its impact - not only on victims, but also on their own families. By fostering selfreflection, accountability, and encouraging personal growth, the programmes help individuals make positive changes that reduce the risk of reoffending, and ultimately protect children and families from future harm.

7 https://racetothemoon.nspcc.org.uk/about-us/news-opinion/2024/online-grooming-crimes-increase/

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Family and Friends Forum - peer support for people affected by the arrest of a loved one for online sexual offending

Our Family and Friends Forum, running since 2018, is an invaluable peer support network for family and friends of people who have sexually offended online. Users can register and post their own experiences, offering and receiving advice as they navigate their way through the distress and trauma of the arrest of a friend or family member.

Across 2024/25, we had a total of 12,377 posts, 1,763 new topics and 10,614 replies on the Family and Friends Forum. These posts were made by 1,019 active users. Across the year, 240 users sent 6,300 direct messages between them. The forum is available to view without registration being required and this year had 104,425 web visitors, an increase of 129% from the previous year (45,669). 5,880 users have registered with the forum since its launch seven years ago.

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Support offered by peers on the forum is a lifeline for many. It provides support that they cannot find
anywhere else.
Family and Friends Forum web users since it launched
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Picking up the pieces

In February, we published the blog: Picking up the pieces: supporting the secondary victims of online child sexual abuse. It explores the vital support that we provide to families and friends of people who have offended online, highlighting the often-overlooked emotional toll they experience. Through our Inform programme and the Family and Friends Forum, we offer safe, judgement-free spaces where loved ones can process shock, shame, and confusion, connect with others facing similar challenges, and access practical and emotional guidance. With tens of thousands turning to our services, the forum and our Inform programme act as lifelines - empowering families to care for themselves, understand complex circumstances, and begin to rebuild their lives in the wake of devastating revelations.

The blog sparked powerful responses from forum users:

66

Any publicity about this subject and your support as a forum can only mean a way forward, which is desperately needed. It’s a world that society should face up to and not just promote hate and labels, the increasing numbers of internet crime show these outdated views are not stopping this crime. Make people realise this can and does happen to ANY family. We need to keep online viewing safe for everyone and not create victims of any kind, also do our best to end the availability of this material online. A truthful interesting read... the forum has been priceless personally for me throughout the years - a fact I’ll be eternally grateful for.

A very well-needed blog post, anything to make more awareness is always greatly appreciated. I did the Inform course a few years back and found it very helpful. The forum has been and will continue to be in my life, now on the other side of sentencing and a long road ahead knowing we are not alone and can offer help and support to others is so important.

Continuous improvement

We’re committed to continually improving the forum and being responsive to user feedback. Across the year, we made various updates to the site, including simplifying the home page and amplifying the warning we give users that some content may be sensitive or triggering for some. We created more content on wellbeing and took a proactive approach to supporting users sending 73 wellbeing emails to check on users we thought could benefit from additional support. We also made popular posts resources in their own rights, including a glossary of terms post and a sources of support page. Additional topic folders were also added based on user feedback including a ‘new users’ topic folder, ‘life after sentencing’ and ‘families affected by the online sexual behaviour of a young person’. Finally, we added a quick exit button, so people can close the site easily if they need to, and a reaction button, which allows users to ‘heart’ a message they want to show support for as an alternative to replying.

We would like to thank all those who support our work to prevent online child sexual abuse, including The Emmanuel Kaye Foundation, Porticus UK and The Dawes Trust.

Tackling online child sexual abuse

This year we will…

Last year we said we would…

Continue to ensure quality delivery, for example, through a review of our programmes’ quality assurance approach and the launch of a bi-annual forum user satisfaction survey on the forum. This year we made a series of improvements based on user feedback and have implemented an annual user survey.
Develop a communications plan to identify new and engaging ways to advertise the services we offer including further use of blog posts to highlight progress and success stories, and to give first-hand accounts of the impact we have.
Using what we learn from our exploration of how artificial intelligence is being used by the people we work with, we will refresh and pilot new Inform, Inform Plus and Engage Plus manuals to include material that addresses AI, including understanding the law.
Take forward what we learnt from our scoping exercise into how we can increase user engagement with the development of the forum, including through virtual meetings and a user steering group. Due to what we learn from existing forum user engagement, we are reviewing the need and benefit of such a group.
Work with our service users to help improve what we do, including hosting a focus group of forum users to gather in-depth insights into what works, what doesn’t work, what we could do more of and what we could do less of.
Seek to take a more personal approach to our communications, to reach our audiences in the right way at the right time. We implemented a proactive wellbeing check approach, sending 73 emails to users we thought would benefit from extra support, and published two blogs about the work to reach a wider audience.

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Preventing harmful sexual behaviour: our work with children, young people and families

According to police, 52% of reported child sexual abuse offences in 2023 were carried out by someone under-18, rising from around a third in previous years.[8] However, despite the huge challenges children and young people are facing, there are very few services available to support them or their families once harm has occurred. There are even fewer aimed at preventing harm in the first place. This is where the Lucy Faithfull Foundation comes in. With more than 30 years’ experience working with children and young people, our expertise lies in both preventing harm and helping young people and their families rebuild their lives if harm has occurred.

Since we launched in September 2023:

More than 55,000 users have visited the Shore website
There have been 81,101 sessions with 223,126 page views
We have engaged in 447 chats with 142 young people
We have responded to 265 emails from 192 people

Shore: who contacted us this year?

Support for young people concerned about their own thoughts or behaviour

In September 2023, we launched Shore, an online resource for young people aged 13-18, worried about their own or someone else’s sexual thoughts and behaviours. Over the last year, 29,850 people visited the site, totalling 135,001 views. We supported 242 people across the chat and email service, responding to 331 chats and 199 emails. Our advisors give confidential advice to young people struggling with a wide range of issues, including worries about their own sexual behaviour online and offline, and concerns about other people’s behaviour, including experiences of exploitation and abuse. Awareness of, and engagement with, the service has continued to grow across the year, with the final quarter being the busiest yet, on both the chat and email services.

Harnessing the power of young people’s voices has been crucial to Shore’s success; we have worked with young people to gather their insights at every

stage of Shore’s development, to ensure that what we have created truly meets their needs. This year, we worked with young people to create animations on a range of topics, including the impact of pornography, understanding enthusiastic consent and how to deal with difficult emotions.

Young people have told us these animations make Shore more accessible and engaging, transforming the content into something that truly resonates:

“They were simple and easy to understand. I liked the language that was used.”

“I think they are really accessible.”

“This animation and website would be very helpful to lots of young people. I think most young people worry about sex or how others have treated them at some point so the information available is very clear and helpful.”

“The animations are a good way of letting teenagers know that there is support and resources out there.”

[ U18s who committed an online sexual ] offence: 21%
[ Victims/survivors of child sexual abuse: 9% ]
[ Adults who were concerned about the ] harmful sexual behaviour they engaged in under the age of 18: 18%
[ Adults concerned about the thoughts or ] behaviours of a young person: 7%
•[ Professionals: 8% ] • (including adult offenders): 18% Other categories not within Shore’s remit
•[ U18s concerned about the thoughts or ] behaviour of someone else: 2%
[ U18s concerned about their general online ] behaviour: 4%
[ U18s who have engaged in harmful sexual ] behaviour: 5%
[ U18s concerned about their own sexual ] thoughts about children: 8%

8 https://www.vkpp.org.uk/assets/Files/Publications/Totality-year-2-report-National-Analysis-of-Police-Recorded-CSAE-Crimes-Report-2023-compressed_1.pdf

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A snapshot of contacts:

Dylan, aged 17

Dylan contacted Shore after being arrested by the police for accessing sexual images of under-18s in online chatrooms. At the time, because of how frequently he experienced these images being shared, he thought this was normal online behaviour for his age. Since his arrest, he’s been unable to go to school or see friends, and this has had a big impact on his mental health. He has been in contact with Shore 14 times during the financial year and has self-referred to the Inform Young People programme.

Joel, aged 16

Joel had been experiencing sexual thoughts about his brother’s friends, who were significantly younger than him. He had tried to seek help online and had been engaging in conversations on forums, including with VIRPED (a group of people who self-identify as ‘virtuous paedophiles’). He found the sense of community very helpful but was unsure about some of the advice given, such as it being okay to masturbate to fantasies about younger children and engage in fantasies with adults, so he contacted Shore for advice.

Libby, aged 15

Libby contacted us after she was arrested for sharing self-generated sexual images with other teens her age. Through a series of chats, Shore advisors ascertained that she had done so owing to low self-esteem and reduced inhibitions due to substance misuse. She has professional support for substance misuse but those supporting her had felt unable to support her with the technologyassisted harmful sexual behaviour.

Lauren, aged 16

Lauren contacted Shore for support and advice after a Discord server she hosted for transgender teens was infiltrated by external users and flooded with sexual images of children, exposing all the teenagers on the server to those images. She had reported this already but had found the content very distressing and difficult to deal with but was unsure of where to seek help. She shared that she felt responsible for her peers being exposed to this content as she was the group’s moderator.

Future development of Shore

Scaling to reach more young people in need

Continued support, when it counts

Our pilot evaluation of Shore demonstrated that the majority of young people accessing the chat service have been able to take on board advisors’ suggestions and take positive steps to make their lives safer, after several chats. However, for a small cohort of young people, coping with complex and entrenched challenges, we identified that more intensive support is required. Whilst the chat service is providing these young people with a safe place to talk without judgement, due to their complex situations and lack of wider support, they are struggling to move forward.

In October 2024, we were fortunate to be put forward by the Oak Foundation to take part in the Scale Accelerator Programme; this programme, run by Spring Impact, supports organisations to scale high-potential, effective solutions to prevent child sexual abuse.

Working with the team at Spring Impact, we have created our draft strategy for scaling Shore’s impact and reach. We are now entering the second phase of the programme, where we will be designing and undertaking lean tests to investigate our assumptions and determine the viability of our scaling plans. This will help us create a roadmap for scaling Shore, with a clearer understanding of the resource input we will need to achieve our goals.

In March 2025, we received funding from the Home Office to commence the development of a new, follow-on service for these young people. This service will provide more intensive support, via guided self-help resources and one-to-one, anonymous support and is aimed at two specific groups:

Young people who have displayed illegal behaviour online, whose behaviour is not known to any professional;
Young people who are worried about their sexual thoughts or feelings towards younger children.

We know that relationship-building is a crucial part of the change process. Our new service will give these young people the opportunity to build a meaningful relationship with an adult who believes in them and can see their potential, can motivate and guide them to make changes. We will take a compassion-focused approach, working with young people to identify their needs and provide tailored support to help them move forward with their lives and prevent further harm to themselves or other people.

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Achievements and performance

Everyone’s Safer: our project to support effective leadership responses to harmful sexual behaviour in schools

We successfully completed the final year of our three-year project, meeting our target to directly support 30 schools across the West Midlands. Each year we supported ten schools to help understand the context and circumstances of the school’s experiences of harmful sexual behaviour, creating individual packages of interventions for staff, students, parents/carers and multi-agency partners. The project was evaluated by Dr Emily Setty (associate professor in criminology at the University of Surrey) and the final research report and academic journal article will be published later in 2025.

Maximising the impact of RSHE (Relationships, Sex, and Health Education) by ensuring that the content and teaching methods are effective.

Year 3: planning to promote positive change

Shift from reactive, punitive responses to restorative and strengths-based strategies.
Piloted curriculum changes such as promoting positive masculinity, respectful relationships and restorative practices.
Empowered students through participation and feedback.

The evaluation of our interventions helped to build evidence of what works to prevent and respond to harmful sexual behaviour in schools. These areas of promising practice underpin the following recommendations:

Key lessons learnt

School staff, students and parents were generous and open in their interactions with us, sharing honest reflections which enabled us to identify key themes across the three years:

Support safeguarding staff with more time, training and resources.

Year 1: acknowledging the challenges

Adopt whole-school, public health approaches, backed by clear policy guidance and the support of multi-agency partners.
Staff lacked confidence and clarity around harmful sexual behaviour.
Shift from punitive to restorative strategies, balancing accountability with education.
Students and adults often misunderstood or disagreed on what counts as harmful sexual behaviour.
Include boys constructively in prevention, through gender-sensitive RSHE and open dialogue.
Our interventions focused on raising staff awareness and listening to student voice.
Strengthen RSE with relevant, participatory content shaped by student voice.

Year 2: recognising the need to build partnerships and confidence

Emphasis on multi-agency collaboration and family engagement.
Safeguarding the safeguarders: Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs) need additional time, training and support from multi-agency partners.
Permanent school call-back service – continued free support via the Stop It Now helpline for any school needing help with harmful sexual behaviour.

Next steps

We’re not stopping here. The next phase of our work with schools includes:

Youth advocacy project – amplifying young people’s voices to influence school policy and social change.
Harmful sexual behaviour prevention lead training – a one-day programme to help schools build prevention plans and manage incidents effectively.
Continued research and policy work – using these findings to influence government guidance and close support gaps.

Case study

Promoting positive masculinity in schools

Since the Netflix drama Adolescence hit the screens in early 2025, conversations around masculinity have become widespread. The Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, called for schools to “encourage as many pupils as possible to watch the show” with an arrangement between Netflix and IntoFilms+ to stream Adolescence for free in UK secondary schools. Following these announcements, school staff began contacting us for advice. We were wellplaced to offer support as we had been working with schools about masculinity throughout our Everyone’s Safer project.

The male staff member was able to take the student aside to explore where his language and attitudes had come from, resulting in a positive ‘teachable moment’, where the student was able to reflect upon the impact of growing up with an abusive father. However, as this safeguarding lead pointed out, few teachers have the luxury of the time (and sometimes the confidence) to address these complex situations. As a result, most of these incidents go unchallenged or are treated with behaviour sanctions such as isolation or exclusion, without an opportunity to have the valuable conversation that could lead to lasting change.

The teacher consulted with safeguarding leads across his networks and reported that school staff welcomed the important conversations arising from Adolescence but called for more time, training and resources to equip their workforce with the knowledge and skills to manage these sensitive discussions. Staff felt wary of opening up conversations, without evidencebased resources to manage these topics.

A conversation with a safeguarding advisor for a multi-academy trust highlighted some of the issues schools face. He shared an example of how the recent focus on misogyny had helped school staff reframe behaviours that might previously have been handled differently: on a recent visit to a school, he and a female colleague both asked the same young man to stop sitting on a table. The male teacher’s request was met with polite compliance, whilst the female teacher’s identical request was met with aggression.

We were able to share this feedback with the Department for Education and other partners calling for more guidance in Keeping Children Safe in Education and a freely available resource about how school staff and parents can talk with students about masculinity and misogyny.

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Achievements and performance

Inform Young People

Inform Young People is a psycho-educational programme for young people who have got in trouble for harmful or illegal sexual behaviour online. The programme supports young people to understand their behaviours, learn how to meet their needs in healthy and safe ways, and put measures in place to restore safety. We also work with parents and carers to support them to better understand their child’s behaviour, and how to support them to stay safe and sustain behaviour change.

In the last year, we completed 64 programmes with young people and supported 29 parents and caregivers. This was a decrease compared to 2023/24 when we completed 84 programmes and engaged with 28 parents and caregivers.

The downturn in our programme completions is partially due to capacity within the team; with the increasing demand on our staff’s time due to the launch and development of Shore. To bolster capacity, we have recruited new advisors to the Shore chat service and will be recruiting a new young people’s project worker in the new financial year. Sadly, we continue to see high demand for this programme, resulting in a continual waiting list.

It remains challenging to identify funding for our Inform Young People programme, due to the increased demands on charitable trusts and foundations, and we continue to explore alternative funding sources.

Comments from young people we work with show the impact we have:

66

I have learnt... the importance of supporting myself emotionally, and comprehending situations before getting involved, I have also learned quite a bit about the criminal justice system, and the importance of ensuring I have a healthy “relationship” as it were, with online pornography.

I have started looking at myself in a more positive way I am spending more time with my family I am trying to approach my problems rather than shying away from them and seeking help.

Outcomes:

Safer online habits: 100% of young people who provided feedback said they felt more confident in using the internet safely and responsibly in the future.
Greater confidence in staying safe: 78% of parents and carers who provided feedback said they felt more confident that their child can use the internet safely and responsibly in the future.
Increased understanding: 89% of parents and carers said they received enough information to help them understand their child’s behaviour.

External evaluation

We are grateful to the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for funding an external evaluation of our Inform Young People Programme. The evaluation, which is being completed by Dr Sophie King-Hill from the University of Birmingham and Dr Emily Setty from the University of Surrey, will involve interviews with young people, their parents/carers and internal and external practitioners who deliver the programme.

The findings, due to be completed in autumn 2025, will help us understand the programme’s impact, as well as identify any areas for development to improve our approach to supporting young people who have engaged in technology-assisted harmful sexual behaviour.

Helping others help young people

This year, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, we continued our work to equip other organisations to work with young people who have exhibited harmful sexual behaviour online. We have now trained over 400 people across the UK and Ireland to deliver the Inform Young People programme, including practitioners in health, education, social care, the justice service, NGOs and care homes. Our independent evaluation will help us understand the impact this training has had and influence our plans for the continued dissemination of our programme and resources.

Case study

John’s story

the sessions. These focused on supporting him to develop a better understanding of the criminal law relating to sexually explicit material, his pathways into offending and how to avoid any further harmful or illegal behaviour in the future. This included helping John to recognise the context within which he had offended, understand how his thoughts and feelings impacted his behaviour and plan how to meet his needs in positive, safe and legal ways in the future.

John, 17, was supported by his social worker to contact the Stop It Now helpline, following his arrest for accessing and downloading sexual images of under 18s. During a call-back with a young people’s practitioner, John explained that when he was 15 he had been sent selfgenerated sexual images by his girlfriend, who was aged 14 at the time.

He said that this was the first time he had seen sexually explicit content and that neither he, nor his girlfriend, knew this was illegal. Subsequently, John began looking at adult pornography online and then joined an online forum where a link to sexual images of people of a similar age to himself was shared. It was then that he learned these images of teenagers engaged in sexual activity, as well as the images of his girlfriend that he still had, were illegal. Soon, he began accessing sexual images of young teenagers regularly, which were shared via communications platform Discord.

The outcome

Throughout the programme, John seemed to particularly benefit from having professional support to challenge his “wonky thinking” around what is and is not okay online. The practitioner spent time supporting him to understand his feelings of shame arising from his behaviours and develop his self-esteem and confidence. John’s parents reported that during the programme they noticed a positive change in his behaviour – he secured a part-time job, dedicated more time to college attendance and studies, and engaged in more family activities rather than isolating himself in his bedroom. They said he seemed happier.

What we did

John was given advice on when and how to seek support, should he need it, in the future. A sixmonth review session was planned to check his progress and update his positive pathway plan.

John was matched with a young people’s practitioner to undertake the Inform Young People programme. He completed 12 hours of intervention, participating positively throughout

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Achievements and performance

Our work with children, young people and families

Last year we said we would…

Commission an external, independent evaluation of our Inform Young People programme. We commissioned Dr Sophie King-Hill from the University of Birmingham and Dr Emily Setty from the University of Surrey to conduct the evaluation which will be completed in August 2025.
Work to ensure all young people know about the help available through our Shore website. Awareness of Shore and engagement with the chat and email service has continued to grow; this year, we saw a 10% increase in users visiting Shore, 47% increase in page views, 183% increase in chats, 196% increase in emails.
Build a meaningful and continuous programme of youth engagement, to ensure the voices of young people inform our work. At the end of the year, we were grateful to the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for awarding us their Follow-on Fund, which will enable us, over the next two years, to develop, implement and evaluate a new Youth Engagement and Advocacy Programme. The first phase of the programme will focus on developing our approach; utilising the principles of YouthCentred Design, we will work closely with a diverse range of young people to learn what excellence looks like in youth participation and advocacy and devise our theory of change. We will work with internal and external stakeholders to explore how we can embed our approach within LFF and the wider sector. We will then put what we have learnt into practice, creating a programme which will provide opportunities for young people to influence decision-making at LFF, as well as advocate for change in areas that matter to them. Finally, working with our research team, we will evaluate the programme, to gather insights into its impact on young people, LFF and the wider sector.

This year we will…

Develop and embed our approach to youth participation and advocacy, to amplify young people’s voices across LFF and the wider sector.
Develop, launch and evaluate our new, anonymous follow-on service for young people using Shore chat.
Pilot our harmful sexual behaviour prevention lead training for schools, supporting participants to create wholeschool prevention plans and respond to incidents of harmful sexual behaviour in school settings proportionately and effectively.

Achievements and performance

Advocacy and communications: infuencing policy and public debate, driving awareness

Advocacy

In the final year of our strategy, we continued to make progress with our advocacy pillar. We expanded the team with a new policy officer, enhancing our ability to engage on a broad range of issues in a busy and quickly changing policy landscape and to seek more opportunities to pivot agendas towards the prevention of child sexual abuse. We are grateful to Oak Foundation for supporting this important appointment.

Throughout 2024/25, we actively participated in multiple consultation processes. This year, our sustained engagement translated into tangible results, reflected in the influence we successfully achieved:

FOUNDATIONFAITHFULL ee ‘What’s porn got to do with it?’, and data from helpline calls in 2023 from adults concerned about themselves who self-reported having problems with pornography.

Implementation of the Online Safety Act

In December 2024, Ofcom issued its first statement on illegal harms. Ofcom responded to our consultation response by strengthening its guidance for large search services deploying warnings in response to a user searching for illegal child sexual abuse material. They amended the measure to recommend that service providers develop warning messages in collaboration with experts in deterring online child sexual abuse. This is vital – as we know what message we give, and how we give it has a big impact on the effectiveness of messages.

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May 2024
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The report recommended that any harmful pornographic material that is illegal to distribute in physical formats should also be treated as illegal online. Legal parity between offline and online pornography is something we have been calling for with partner organisations for several years. It is now supported by Baroness Bertin’s Review, and we will be pressing the government to adopt the review’s recommendations.

Pornography review

At the end of February, the government released the pornography review which was led by Baroness Bertin. We presented evidence to the review and the final report highlighted our deterrence chatbot (in collaboration with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and Aylo), our Faithfull Paper

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Achievements and performance

Mandatory reporting

Over the past few years, we’ve worked hard to ensure that plans to introduce mandatory reporting in England do not lead to unintended harm. Through sustained stakeholder engagement, we have consistently advocated for the protection of confidential specialist support services for children — such as our Shore service and the NSPCC’s Childline.

We are pleased that our concerns have been heard. The Crime and Policing Bill, introduced to Parliament in February, includes a provision allowing the Secretary of State to exempt special services that support the safety or wellbeing of children where confidentiality is in the child’s best interests. This clause is essential to safeguarding the safe delivery of child protection services for young people.

Alongside this, we continue to work with partners on other critical aspects of mandatory reporting, including pressing the government to invest in the training, support, and resources that mandated reporters need to respond safely and effectively.

Working in partnership to drive change

Collaboration has been a key feature of our advocacy work this year. We have been working in alliance with the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse and the Marie Collins Foundation to grow our collective influence.

In November, the alliance launched the ‘ ’ report Closer to Home . It sets out a series of recommendations for policy makers to prevent and better respond to child sexual abuse. Our launch webinar featured Mark O’Sullivan, writer, director and actor of Channel 4’s My Sexual Abuse: The Sitcom. Through this partnership working we have established an effective platform to further engage with parliamentarians.

We also participated in several international conferences, firmly placing the prevention of child sexual abuse on the global agenda. In June, at the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse’s Envision Conference in Washington, our chief executive Deborah Denis was part of a panel considering the role that the tech industry can take in prevention, shared insights from our chatbot project and discussed the participation of our Stop It Now helpline in the Prevention Global evaluation. In December, at the WeProtect Global Alliance Summit in Abu Dhabi, Deborah was part of a panel discussing Building the Case for Prevention, and showcased our Stop It Now helpline and the importance of prevention initiatives to a global audience.

Communications

There is no single solution to ending child sexual abuse, which is why we offer a range of projects and services tailored to diverse audiences. Our communications reflect the breadth of our work and address all these groups, while supporting our five strategic aims.

more than 1,811,030 visitors from across the world (an increase of 40% from 1,292,379 in 2023/24).

Websites

In December 2023, we launched our new identity, setting the stage for a complete redevelopment of our websites to better align with our refreshed identity and organisational structure. Our goal was to create a user-friendly, intuitive experience that effectively engages our target audiences while embodying our new look and feel. Through multiple stages of user testing, we refined navigation and enhanced accessibility across our websites. In addition, the new websites have allowed us to place a stronger focus on research, advocacy and fundraising, areas that were lacking in attention on our previous websites. Since launching our newly developed sites in November 2024, we have seen a significant increase in both visitors and engagement rates, demonstrating the success of our reimagined digital presence.

Our Stop It Now website, which includes our online self-help resources and information pages had 1,352,898 visitors from across the world (an increase of 38% from 981,960 in 2023/24). This year we adopted alternative approaches to presenting the modules and web pages to enhance the user experience, improve the user journey, and strengthen accessibility.

In June we celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Shore website, which continues to grow and evolve, now featuring animations that are more accessible and engaging for teenagers.

Our Lucy Faithfull Foundation website has undergone its most significant transformation, now strategically focused on serving parents, professionals, funders, and partners. We have seen a substantial increase in user numbers and, importantly, a marked rise in engagement rates.

Our websites help our diverse audiences find what they need when they need it. Combined, the sites had

Finally, this year we have also been working on ways to share our advocacy work more publicly where we can. We developed a new policy and advocacy section for our website to showcase our work, and have been responding to political debate through blogs. We will continue to build the links between advocacy and communications, finding more ways in which we can amplify our voice.

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Achievements and performance

Achievements and performance

What the data says

Stop It Now

Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Creating a world free from child sexual abuse

Support and advice for anyone when they need it most

145,253 visitors (93% increase) 209,654 sessions (75% increase)

1,352,898 visitors (38% increase) 1,503,222 sessions (85% increase)

Get Support ee (

Get Help

Self-help for people worried about their own or someone else’s sexual thoughts or behaviour towards children

Self-help for people worried about their own or someone else’s online sexual behaviour towards children

45,604 visitors (39% decrease) 51,512 sessions (38% decrease)

575,134 visitors (27% increase) 608,938 sessions (12% increase)

Family and Friends Forum

Parents Protect

Peer support for people affected by a loved one’s online sexual offending against children

Advice, support, and information for parents and carers

104,425 visitors (129% increase) 326,108 sessions (35% increase)

131,213 visitors (8% decrease) 150,610 sessions (7% decrease)

Shore

A safe space for teenagers worried about their sexual behaviour

29,850 visitors 42,833 sessions

*Previous full-year comparison not available.

Press

Featuring in news stories helps us reach people who have never heard of us with the information they may need. People often contact the Stop It Now helpline, telling us that they first heard about our work through the press.

This year, we supported 35 media engagements, an increase on last year’s total (29). Highlights include:

The Guardian and The Observer: Faithfull Paper column and case study feature

Following the publication of our Faithfull Paper on pornography, The Observer published a column expanding on many of its themes. The piece described different reasons people may begin offending, including through escalating pornography habits.

We worked with The Guardian on several pieces this year. Emily and Matthew, a couple who had been through our Inform and Inform Plus programmes, shared their powerful story in July 2024. The article featured an in-depth account of “the knock” and subsequent events from the perspectives of both Emily and Matthew. We know of at least three contacts who reached out to the Stop It Now helpline in response to this piece.

BBC News in Depth: Analysis of child sexual abuse in institutions

We provided expert commentary and research for a BBC News In Depth piece on cases of child sexual abuse in large institutions, such as sports clubs, boarding schools, and churches. In it, our head of clinical engagement, Tom Squire, argued that understanding and unpicking power structures is key to combatting sexual abuse and the secrecy that allows it to thrive.

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Achievements and performance

BBC Woman’s Hour and Radio Wales: Huw Edwards sentencing

In September, Deborah Denis appeared on BBC Woman’s Hour following the sentencing of the former BBC broadcaster and news presenter, Huw Edwards. She recognised the impact that this type of offending has on victims and pointed out that the Huw Edwards case, although shocking, was not uncommon. Deborah outlined the support we give through Stop It Now and emphasised the need to make it more acceptable for people to reach out for help to change their behaviour.

We followed this with a blog, in which Deborah called for greater support available for people who offend, and greater accountability for tech companies whose platforms are used by offenders.

Blog posts

Email

We published 25 blog posts, which collectively gained 1,565 page views. Our blogs not only update our audiences about our work, but also provide a platform for us to give thought leadership on preventing child sexual abuse, particularly in responding to events in the public eye.

While overall engagement metrics dipped this year (open rate down from 36% to 27% and clickthrough rate down from 13% to 8%), our email marketing campaigns still perform above industry averages (26% open rate and 3% click-through rate). This indicates that our content and targeting strategies remain strong and effective.

In January 2025, amidst intense media focus on grooming gangs, or group-based child sexual abuse, we called for a move from sensationalist reporting to a more informed and holistic approach to stopping child sexual abuse in all its forms, knowing that most cases of child sexual abuse take place in family environments.

We have begun laying the foundation for broader audience growth, exploring new target groups to expand our reach sustainably, in a GDPR-compliant manner. We have significantly enhanced our testing strategy, introducing consistent A/B testing of subject lines, with plans to expand into testing content formats. Early insights are already helping us better understand subscriber preferences and will support more effective, data-driven campaigns moving forward.

We also used our platform to encourage people to talk about child sexual abuse and come forward and seek the help they need, in response to the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, in November 2024, and the sentencing of former broadcaster Huw Edwards in September 2024.

Organic social media

Over the past year, our social media presence has continued to grow, with positive trends across LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X, reflecting strong audience engagement and a strategic approach to content.

Driving thought leadership and strategic engagement

LinkedIn emerged as our fastest-growing platform, with followers increasing by 49% - from 5,574 to 8,317 – and clicks nearly doubling, rising 96% from 12,662 to 24,823. This growth was driven by the delivery of high-quality professional content, consistent posting, and strong follower engagement, firmly establishing LinkedIn as a key channel for thought leadership and stakeholder connection. The active involvement of LFF’s key spokespeople further amplified our reach and impact — humanising our brand, strengthening our message through trusted voices, and fostering meaningful cross-sector collaboration.

Engaging younger audiences

We’ve expanded our presence on Instagram to diversify our reach and better connect with younger, visually engaged audiences. By sharing consistent and relevant content, we’ve grown our following to over 1,000 people – a clear reflection of strong interest and engagement with our messaging.

Steady presence

Our Facebook performance remained steady throughout the year, indicating a loyal, though relatively limited, audience base. While the platform continues to offer value for maintaining visibility and reaching specific demographics, growth and engagement have been modest. This is likely influenced by evolving user behaviour and algorithm changes that increasingly prioritise personal content over organisational posts.

Our engagement on X

Usage and engagement on X (formerly Twitter) declined this year, largely due to changes in the platform’s recommendation algorithm, which now favours paid, verified accounts and viral content, reducing visibility of organic posts from non-paying users and organisations. Trust in the platform has also decreased, particularly among charities, journalists, institutions, and certain demographic groups. We have carefully considered our continued presence on X and despite ongoing challenges and growing concerns about the platform’s tone, we have decided to remain active for now due to its ongoing relevance to specific key audiences – this includes professionals, but also our key target audience of individuals who have offended or are at risk of harming children. To place this in context, in 2023, Twitter/X permanently suspended over 11 million accounts for violations of its child sexual exploitation policy – underscoring both the scale of the problem and the platform’s potential for reaching at-risk groups. While not a primary engagement tool, we feel there are opportunities to reach the people we need to. Our engagement on X will remain under review.

Advertising credits

We made strategic use of over £97,588 in advertising credits from Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Snapchat. These credits supported campaigns promoting our helpline, marketing our training and consultancy services for professionals, sharing public education content, and raising awareness of resources and support available to young people. Across all these platforms, our ads were seen 8.7 million times. With a new digital officer in position since February 2025, there will be an increased focus on optimising our ad credits in the year ahead.

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Achievements and performance

Stopping online child sexual abuse

warnings to engage those at risk of offending online as early as possible, ideally before any harm has been caused.

example, we are conducting research with serving prisoners to gain insights into their pathways to offending, and to gauge the effect of warning messages on those pathways. We have also partnered with IPPPRI (International Policing and Public Protection Research Institute) to examine behaviour among offending communities on the dark web and adult legal pornography websites.

multiple platforms within the UK and have Through Project Intercept, we bring over 30 years partnered with IPPPRI (International Policing and resulted in significant increases in traffic (an of expertise in understanding offender behaviour Public Protection Research Institute) to examine average of 276% increase in UK users per week, and motivations to tech companies to collaborate behaviour among offending communities on the during the campaign which ended in April 2025), in creating powerful interventions. We continue dark web and adult legal pornography websites. not only to the landing page but across the entire to build our understanding of offender behaviour We hope to publish these research projects in 2026. website, demonstrating that we are successfully and motivation by conducting new research. For reaching a highly engaged audience.

Deterrence campaign

Our campaign to deter people from viewing sexual images of under-18s or having sexual conversations with under-16s online is in its 10th year.

In April 2024, we wrapped up phase 9 of the campaign. Each campaign phase is independently evaluated, using analysis of helpline call records and online surveys, providing vital insights into our impact and contributing to the strategic planning of the next phase. Key insights from phase 9 include:

• We worked with 15 partners across the South West, including the NHS, police, local authorities, and charities for the third year of this successful regional campaign. In this year’s campaign period, which ran to the end of April 2025, we saw a 39% increase in callers from Devon and Cornwall, compared to last year’s campaign period. In Devon alone, this was a 60% increase. These figures show the value of repeated campaigns with our regional partners, increasing our reach over time.

Advocacy and communications —- Last year This year we said we would… we will…

A clear increase in people accessing our online self-help resources - a 15% increase compared to the period before the campaign.
More people who had offended online, but were not yet known to the authorities reached out for help through the helpline.
Deliver new websites for the Lucy Faithfull Foundation and Stop It Now. Our websites went live in November 2024 and we have seen a significant increase in both users and engagement rates, demonstrating the success of our reimagined digital presence.
Place greater emphasis on promoting and distributing our primary prevention resources for adults, ensuring they have the information needed to help keep children safe – and that these resources are easily accessible on our website.
After speaking with one of our Stop It Now advisors, 83% of people who had offended online reported a changed attitude, 68% said they had taken a positive action based on what was discussed, and 69% said they felt they still needed to take further action to change their behaviour.

Project Intercept

Our warning message project, Intercept, grew quickly in 2024, driving a vast increase in the number of people seeking help to the Stop It Now website. Project Intercept works with tech companies to promote the widespread adoption of online warning messages as both a deterrent and a signpost to help. By the end of March 2025, our warning messages were driving an average of 31,000 people a month from around the world to seek help at the Stop It Now website.

Continue to expand partnerships in advocacy and communications, with a particular focus on strengthening collaboration in key sectors such as health and education.
Renew our focus on advocacy in a general election year and with an update due to our five-year organisational strategy. We are seeing results from our renewed focus, achieving influence in several areas such as online safety and mandatory reporting.

Running between January 2025 and April 2025, phase 10 of the campaign aimed to build on these results. To the end of March 2025:

Renew our focus on evaluating the impact and effectiveness of our communications and advocacy efforts, drawing on data, insights, and best practice to inform continuous improvement.
We ran a national and regional press campaign focused on the escalation of pornography habits from mainstream pornography to illegal child sexual abuse material. 182 outlets and publications covered the story, including 20 TV and radio broadcasters.

Our warnings appear across a range of tech sectors, including search, social media, file storage, gaming, adult sites, and internet service providers, and include tech giants (such as Google and Meta) as well as smaller and newer platforms. We continue to grow our partnerships and are working to develop interventions in new areas like online dating and with AI companies. In addition, we continue to identify more intervention points for

Engage with new tech partners through Project Intercept to roll out new warning messages, bringing people to our online resources. Our warning messages drive an average of 31,000 people a month from around the world to seek help at the Stop It Now website.
We have delivered and continue to deliver digital advertising campaigns aimed at building brand awareness and driving traffic to our campaign landing page. These ads are deployed across

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LFF Scotland: Keeping Scotland’s children safe from harm

We operate Scotland’s only dedicated service focused on preventing child sexual abuse. Our committed team, comprised of experts in forensic psychology, social work, and law enforcement, works closely with partner agencies, the Scottish Government, and Police Scotland to protect children and prevent harm. Each year, we strive to broaden our reach and deepen our impact. In 2024/25, we continued to build on our success through prevention work, innovative projects, and the sharing of best practice.

congregations and lay organisations from across the country, including four of the bishops. They commented:

Partners in hope: prevention in organisations

Preventing abuse before it happens is at the heart of what we do. We have been working with a variety of partners to embed models for prevention within organisations. Working collaboratively with others allows us to extend our reach and engage with individuals and communities we could not otherwise access; this method of partnership also allows us to support the development of advocates for prevention across the country.

Feedback was exceptional, with 97% of delegates rating Stuart’s input highly. Following his specific challenge, “If we are courageous, patient and prayerful as a body and willing to act, could the Church…take social leadership in tackling child sexual abuse?”, significantly more emphasis is being placed on introducing new proactive safeguarding measures to keep people safe in our Catholic communities.

A particular focus for this year has been our work with faith communities. Safeguarding failures – often serious and repeated – have been widely documented within church settings over many years. In response, we have supported local faith leaders in reflecting on these failures, drawing out key lessons, and translating them into meaningful actions that strengthen protections for children moving forward.

We continue our journey in working together with Lucy Faithfull Foundation exploring opportunities to improve our safeguarding practices, such as developing situational prevention strategies, best practice in identifying and managing low-level safeguarding concerns, and much more.

In November 2024, we were invited to give a keynote speech at the Scottish Catholic Safeguarding Standards Annual Conference for 200 delegates from Catholic parishes, religious

This event led to an ongoing partnership with one Archdiocese – Edinburgh & St Andrews. In February, the whole Lucy Faithfull Foundation Scotland team presented at the diocesan Safeguarding Day, a mandatory training event for 94 priests. Their presentations asked a simple question: how can priests be partners in prevention?

We talked about the support we give those who perpetrate harm and their families, our work with children and young people, and what active prevention can look like in a faith setting. We discussed place-based prevention models and encouraged the priests to think about how these could be applied within their parishes. We provided posters with information about our helpline, to be put up in parish settings.

Sharing the principles of prevention with 94 priests has given us reach across many parishes; our long-term ambition is that it will also lead to the development of a proof of concept about prevention in specific parishes that is robustly evaluated, impactful and can provide a template for other faith communities to learn from. Given the Church’s fraught history with safeguarding and the many, many survivors affected by historical abuse, our intervention represents a new chapter in positive engagement and proactive prevention.

An evaluation showed that 83% of participants recorded high approval ratings for our input into the day. Verbal affirmations were given by many of the priests to our team, commenting it was the best day of its kind they had attended, and afterwards organisers commented:

Lucy Faithfull Foundation staff spoke at our annual Clergy Safeguarding Training Day in February covering the wide range of work that it undertakes. Our clergy found this input highly insightful and useful.

The Archdiocese of St Andrews & Edinburgh hopes to do further work with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation looking at various themes including upstream prevention and online dangers. Parishes in the Archdiocese interact with people in the community and so our clergy and volunteers are well placed to identify issues and take appropriate action to address problems at the earliest possible opportunity.

We look forward to continuing our work with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation.

Advancing better practice

This year, we delivered training to 27 partner organisations, reaching a total of 914 attendees. Our sessions ranged from specialist input for professionals in training, such as social workers and psychologists, on child sexual abuse, to presentations at conferences and professional networks. Topics included working with autistic adults who sexually offend, and best practice for supporting individuals who have sexually offended, who themselves experienced sexual abuse in childhood.

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Our direct delivery

offending makes it particularly challenging for families to seek support. We are their champions - providing advice, support and guidance through 1-1 sessions and our Inform group work programme.

Working with families

Every year, approximately 800 people in Scotland are investigated for online child sexual offences. Many of these have partners, children of their own, and other loved ones who are impacted by their crimes. The experience of a loved one being arrested for such offending is a traumatic one – our research shows that over 70% of adult family members experiencing ‘the knock’* from the police subsequently present symptoms indicative of PTSD. The stigma of this particular type of

We worked with 145 family members this year, a 49% increase compared to 2023/24 (97).

*The knock is a phrase that has become associated with the day the police execute a warrant and arrest someone in the home for online sexual offending.

A letter from a family member to Lucy Faithfull Foundation Scotland, following the arrest of their son

To whom this may concern,

This letter is written to provide feedback to the support provided from the team at the Lucy Faithfull Foundation/Stop It Now organisation.

It was the police officer who told us about and advised us to contact the organisation on the day of our son’s arrest. This event was as shocking as it was heartbreaking but we’re so thankful we took the advice from the officer.

Despite being very reluctant, due to the gravity of the situation (we just wanted the world to swallow us whole), we knew we must do something, so we made the decision to call the organisation and meet the situation head on. This was so hard, but a decision we knew we must take and called the number on the same day.

What About Us? – supporting young people affected by the arrest of a loved one

In last year’s Annual Report, we shared Knock NOC: The Lived Experiences of Non-offending Carers and Children – a powerful exhibition created by family members with lived experience. Building on this engagement and our published research into the impact of ‘the knock’, we’re proud to have received funding from Changing Ideas to develop a new resource for young people affected by the arrest of a loved one for online offending.

As part of the What About Us? project, we’re working closely with a young person we’ve previously supported. Their lived insight is shaping the development of a practical, compassionate workbook designed to support both children and parents during an incredibly difficult and confusing time.

Inform Plus

This year we ran 5 Inform Plus groups (+1 on 2023/24). 56 individuals completed the programme – a 22% increase compared to last year (46). On average, participants who completed pre- and post-evaluation forms reported a 57% decrease in suicidality, as well as a 41% decrease in sexual urges or behaviours that cause distress or impairment. The impact we have is evident from the comments we receive from participants:

The sessions have had a massively positive impact on my wellbeing, health and emotions. I now feel that I am in a much better place than I was at the start of the sessions and feel that I have the tools now to combat difficult feelings and situations when they arise.

The supportive atmosphere throughout allowed for all of us group members to explore painful issues and face up to some unpalatable truths, without adding to our shame.

The opportunities for us to share and discuss our experiences gave me solid information and realistic speculation about my situation and what the future holds.

It felt throughout that the focus was on confronting our offending and how we could live lives away from its toxic effects.

We left a teary message with the operator, not having any idea what to expect. Their call was returned very shortly after, and we were in contact with someone from the team.

The support, guidance, and advice we were given from the team was fantastic. They were clearly very experienced in these situations and advised us that we were not alone. They provided helpful statistics to help us understand that these scenarios are sadly becoming more common due to the electronic age we live in.

The team treated us with dignity and empathy throughout and guided us through this heart wrenching situation. We met regularly, first online and then next in person, and I can’t explain how much that helped.

As hard as this situation was for us, we knew this would have a devastating impact on our son. The team helped him to engage in a programme and were so supportive of him throughout.

The team are doing a fantastic job, and we know we honestly couldn’t have got through this situation without them and cannot thank them enough.

Best wishes,

A family member

Our work with individuals who present a risk of harm to children

Interventions with those who have harmed children, or those who are at risk of harming children, are an integral part of our efforts to end child sexual abuse. Our interventions take the form of 1-1 support sessions and two psychoeducational group work programmes – Inform Plus, for individuals who have been arrested for online offences, and Breaking the Links, for arrested individuals who are trauma-experienced themselves.

Breaking the Links

15 participants took part in three Breaking the Links groups, our programme for adults who have committed online sexual offences and who themselves have been affected by trauma groups. This was a 25% increase from last year (12). Following group work, individuals on the programme reported a 54% increase in self-control.

“When disturbing terrifying thoughts come, I have used mindfulness techniques and breathing exercises to calm myself down.”

Breaking the Links participant

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Our work with young people

We worked with 33 young people who had displayed harmful sexual behaviour, helping them understand the impact of their behaviour and desist from further harm and move on positively with their lives. This is a 120% increase compared to 2023/24 (15).

I’d really like to express our gratitude for your time and effort, it really helped both of us a lot. It’s good for him to know he has somewhere else to turn when it all seems too much.

Feedback from the parent of a young person we supported

Knowing that the consultancy service is there goes a long way to supporting confidence for us.

Secondary school teacher, Edinburgh

We also delivered a series of information sessions for parents and carers in collaboration with Police Scotland. Keeping Your Child Safe Online: Porn, Nudes and Sexual Harm reached 339 attendees, offering practical advice and guidance to help adults support young people as they navigate the challenges of the digital world. Our in-session survey showed a good increase in confidence in supporting children to stay safe online.

Raising awareness and changing the narrative

Changing the conversation around child sexual abuse is a vital part of our work. We want people to hear a clear message: We are here to help. Change is possible. Child sexual abuse is not inevitable.

#GetHelporGetCaught campaign

Following our rebrand and successful deterrence campaign with Police Scotland last year, we ran another #GetHelpOrGetCaught social media campaign to target people who are committing online sexual offences but are yet to be arrested, or people who are at risk of offending, but have not yet caused harm. 847 individuals accessed our online self-help resources during the six-week campaign period. This represents a 58% rise compared with the number of individuals accessing resources in the six weeks before the campaign.

We were thrilled that the campaign received national recognition at the 2024 UnAwards, where it won Best Collaboration. This respected comms, PR, and digital industry event is judged by both expert panels and community focus groups – making the win especially meaningful. Building on this success, we plan to run the campaign again this year.

Everyone’s Safer Schools Project

1 in 6 children will experience child sexual abuse before the age of 16 with about a third of this committed by peers. Ending child sexual abuse involves tackling the significant challenge of peeron-peer perpetration.

Between 2018 and 2021, we ran the ROSA (Reducing Online Sexual Abuse) project, with the generous support of the RS Macdonald Charitable Trust. The Everyone’s Safer project was built on the legacy of ROSA’s success, seeking to develop all that we learned into a new model for stopping harmful sexual behaviour in schools.

This year we established an Edinburgh-wide consultation service for schools so they can access support about harmful sexual behaviour issues they were encountering. Our Young People’s Manager supported 11 schools, providing much needed guidance and resources to empower staff to offer the right support to the young people they were working with.

Media engagements

Our team are often asked to contribute to public discussions about child sexual abuse. A key example from this year was our Director, Stuart Allardyce, appearing on STV’s Scotland Tonight, where he discussed the global prevalence of online sexual harm and shared practical suggestions for

prevention. He also spoke to BBC Radio Scotland after a news article discussed the number of people being arrested for online sexual offending, offering context to perpetrator interventions, discussing the negative impact of pornography, and highlighting that there is help available to those worried about themselves or others.

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Advocating for change

We play a key leadership role in strategic, multiagency discussions about how we can best prevent and respond to child sexual abuse. This year we:

Were invited to participate in the Scottish Government’s National Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Strategic Group.
Formed an integral part of Police Scotland’s Multi-Agency Online Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (MOCSAE) Strategic Group.
Convened the Indirect Victim of Indecent Images of Children (IVIIC) group, which is now wrapping up and working towards presenting its findings.
Were co-chairs of the Scottish Contextual Safeguarding Core Group for the first six months of the financial year and remain members.
Chaired one of the two days of the annual NOTA (National Organisation for the Treatment of Abuse) Scotland conference.
Chaired the CSA Prevention Network, bringing together partner agencies to ensure that the voices of survivors are centred within prevention approaches.
Were members and co-convenors of the CrossParty Group for Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse.

Active participation in these groups allows us to influence decision-making, share best practice, and ensure a joined-up approach to ending child sexual abuse. We also presented at events further afield:

Chilean Congress on Child Maltreatment and Sexual Abuse: In January 2025, director Stuart Allardyce presented papers and led workshops at the 3rd iteration of this conference in Valparaiso, Chile.
NOTA Conference and events: Stuart is currently chair of NOTA, a membership association for around 1,300 professionals working with sex offenders across the UK.
Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
Safeguarding Day: Stuart gave a keynote speech at this event for medical practitioners who work with children.

LFF Scotland

Last year we said we would…

Conclude the Scottish Indirect Victims of Indecent Images of Children (IVIIC) group and make recommendations on how the police, social workers and other professionals can positively support partners and family members affected by the arrest of a loved one for a sexual offence. The IVIIC group is completing its work and finalising its recommendations, and we look forward to sharing these with our stakeholders by the end of the calendar year.
Provide training for counsellors and psychotherapists about working with adults who are worried about sexual thoughts, feelings and behaviours towards children. We provided training to over 20 professionals in survivor agencies across Scotland on working with adults who have sexually harmed children but who themselves were sexually abused when they were children.

This year we will…

Conclude the Everyone’s Safer schools project and publish a paper sharing lessons from the schools’ consultation service.
Explore new referral pathways with NHS colleagues and other services to help reach individuals worried about their thoughts, feelings and behaviours before they offend.
Move into a new office, providing a larger and more comfortable space for those we help and our staff.
Deliver a campaign designed to deter online sexual offending against children in partnership with Police Scotland. As detailed above, we delivered another highly successful campaign and look forward to collaborating with the police on a new campaign for 2024/25.

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LFF Wales: Working together to keep children safe

Across Wales, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation is committed to protecting children from sexual harm. Since 2008, we’ve worked closely with the Welsh Government, charities, frontline professionals, and communities to make sure that everyone – no matter their role – has the tools and knowledge to help keep children safe.

Over the past five years, our work has been closely linked to the Welsh Government’s National Action Plan for Preventing and Responding to Child Sexual Abuse. This year marked the final phase of our contribution under the current plan. We are hopeful that the development of a new action plan will create further opportunities to continue our vital work with families, professionals, and communities.

We remain deeply grateful to the Welsh Government for supporting two of our core projects:

Keeping children safe from sexual abuse, which provides crucial education and support to help prevent abuse before it happens.
Early intervention for vulnerable or at-risk families, which works proactively to support families where there may be concerns. Keeping children safe from sexual abuse
Through collaboration and prevention-focused work, we’re proud to play our part in building a safer Wales for all children. • We reached 4,697 people through our education sessions, training sessions, webinars, consultations and newsletters.
Keeping children safe from sexual abuse • 90% of attendees to our public education sessions would
This project aims to ensure parents, carers, professionals and volunteers recommend them to a friend, and all attendees say they working with children and families are best placed to prevent child sexual abuse feel supported to protect the people who matter to them and reduce adverse childhood experiences. from abuse. • Follow-up surveys show that 70% of participants share
90% of attendees information they learn with someone else, demonstrating a wider impact beyond the immediate beneficiary.
to our public education sessions would recommend them to a friend, and all attendees say they feel supported to
~~a!~~ a | protect the people who matter to them from abuse.
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Feedback from attendees highlights the value of education sessions:

The session provided us with an opportunity to discuss a difficult topic, that hopefully we will be able to talk about more openly in the future.

This training has helped me – now I can make sure my grandkids are safe.

I valued having an open space to discuss the topic of child sexual abuse as this is often something people find difficult to talk about. Having the opportunity to understand the different “normal” and healthy behaviours for different ages will help throughout my work day to day given I work with children from 0-16.

In 2024/25, Lucy Faithfull Foundation Wales:

Delivered 134 public education sessions to 1,361 parents and professionals.
Delivered three train-the-trainer sessions to 14 people who work with children and families so they can run their own awareness sessions, through which we recruited six project champions to deliver Parents Protect sessions in their own communities.
Delivered four multi-agency webinars for professionals and six keynote speaking events reaching 1,398 beneficiaries.
Conducted 10 consultation sessions with 40 parents and three consultation sessions with 22 professionals to help review and refine our child sexual abuse prevention resources.
We launched two new youth consultation groups with 11 young people, which met three times.

• Delivered 15 toolkit sessions reaching 137 people. Sessions equip practitioners with the confidence and knowledge to use our bilingual prevention toolkit for practitioners in their roles. Workshops are open to any groups of professionals across Wales who feel that their staff would benefit from them.

Over the year, 23,277 users from Wales accessed child sexual abuse prevention information from our Stop It Now and Parents Protect websites.

Early intervention for vulnerable or at-risk families

We work with families identified by statutory or community services as at risk or as needing early intervention with regard to child sexual abuse. The interventions are tailored to participants’ needs, giving them the opportunity to voice their concerns, speak openly about their worries and shape content and delivery. Each family coproduces a family safety plan to help protect children in the future.

We completed interventions with 54 families, which often involved working with multiple family members, including kinship carers and foster carers. This is a decrease compared to 2023/24 (60) but we exceeded our target of 45, which was reduced based on the complexity of cases being received. We also worked with nine young people.

Feedback from families demonstrates the value of the interventions we provide:

Given me knowledge I didn’t have, first time I have openly talked about this, don’t really talk to anyone about it.

It helped to put things into perspective. I had so many questions and had no answers or experience to draw from. It helped answer those questions and in turn, started the acceptance of the situation we are in.

Feedback from statutory partners shows the impact we have:

The sessions have helped the client to recognise risks and to develop strategies to manage these risks in the future. They also have a better understanding of child sexual abuse.

The intervention has given the parent a better understanding of how to keep her daughter safe online and how to deal with situations when they arise.

Working with young people

This year, we responded to an identified need for targeted interventions with young people. We supported nine individuals, each presenting with unique and diverse needs.

Examples of the scenarios where we provided intervention include:

A boy aged 15 who had been arrested for downloading/storing/distributing sexual images of under-18s after being groomed online by adults.
A boy aged 17 who had sought advice from his GP on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and LGBTQIA+. The discussions led to the GP raising concerns to the police relating to the watching of inappropriate material.
A boy aged 16 who was under investigation for viewing sexual images of children after exploring their sexuality online. The child had significant Global Developmental Delay (GDD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
A boy aged 16 had been arrested for accessing and distributing sexual images of under-18s on Discord and Instagram.
A boy aged 14 who was under investigation for using a ‘nudify’ AI app where they generated unclothed images of peers.

Each intervention was tailored to the individual needs of the young person. However, common themes within our work included exploring how they became involved in harmful online behaviour and strategies to prevent it from happening again; understanding online safety; developing healthy coping mechanisms; discussing the impact of

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pornography on young people; learning about enthusiastic consent; gaining insight into the criminal justice system; and promoting positive life choices through the Good Lives Model.

Each child came with additional needs:

All young people who received an intervention identified as male:

Four identified as LGBTQIA+.
Four had a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
One had a diagnosis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
Four had experienced depression and/or anxiety (most confided that this was as a result of their arrest and subsequent waiting times for the investigation to conclude).
One confided that they felt suicidal, so their parent was informed and recommendations were made to the young person. A safeguarding report was also filed.
One young person got in touch after their programme had been completed and asked for advice for their friend who was suffering from suicidal thoughts. Support and advice were provided.

Feedback from young people shows how we help them create safer futures:

I have learnt ways to change for example using old me and new me. To look at my hobbies and to create a more positive environment for myself. I found the water bucket model really helped me to work on different strategies and to try and work on solving the problem. When I am online it is important to think about changing my thoughts into new positive thoughts and think about the consequences.

This course has been so helpful, supportive and a weight lifted off your shoulder having someone to talk to and confide in with the sessions. I have found the sessions, which were at first embarrassing and worrying. But as the sessions went on, I found them to be so helpful and I revealed my worries and feelings. I found the practitioner incredibly experienced and helpful in all fields.

Case study

Ruth’s story

We received a referral from a health professional who was working with Ruth, the mother of a three-year-old girl, Sally. Ruth had disclosed that she had previously been subjected to domestic, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of her ex-partner, Sally’s father, who continues to have access, including weekly overnight stays. The matter had been reported to the police, with Ruth referred to a counselling service, New Pathway. The professionals involved were concerned about the inappropriate sexualised language that Sally was exposed to and was now using. They had a concern that she may have been sexually abused by her father. The referral was seeking education and support for Ruth in recognising appropriate and inappropriate behaviour and language between adults and children, identifying the warning signs of sexual abuse, and developing confidence in reporting concerns.

Parent feedback

In her feedback at the close of the sessions, Ruth stated “The sessions helped me feel more confident.” She specifically mentioned that “the session around the sexual development of children and the grooming process and learning more about the warning signs to look out for in children and adults was very helpful.”

Referrer feedback

“Prior to the intervention, my client was not aware of the different forms of abuse. And the fact that it could happen within the family was a reality check for her. Accessing the service free to my client was invaluable as I felt out of my depth. I do not have the expertise to support my client, so having support and tapping into the expertise of LFF was vital.”

Ruth attended six two-hourly weekly sessions and engaged well. We covered a range of topics including the process of child sexual abuse within the family, and the warning signs to look out for in children and in adults. We codeveloped a family safety plan and Ruth now intends to use the various resources we shared with her daughter and adult family members over the coming weeks.

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Case study

Pauline’s story

The original referral was received from children’s services and related to Pauline, a mother of two children - a boy aged two and a new-born baby girl. Pauline is currently in a relationship with Steven, the children’s father, who is pleading not guilty to charges of sexual assault against one of his daughters from a previous relationship. Pauline has chosen to remain in a relationship with Steven and has stated that she does not feel that he poses any risk to her children. Children’s services are concerned about the possible risk of sexual harm considering the outstanding allegations. We were asked to work with Pauline to support her understanding around the risks of child sexual abuse within the family setting. We were also asked to work with extended family members to support their understanding of child sexual abuse risk, warning signs and prevention because of their caring role for the children, including supervising access by Steven.

Pauline attended five two-hourly weekly sessions and engaged well. We covered a variety of topics including the process of child sexual abuse and the warning signs to look out for in children. Pauline was supported to develop a family safety plan, including collecting materials to use with her children at appropriate moments and stages of development relating to privacy and “no secrets”.

Our work with three members of the extended family took place over three weeks covering the same topics as with Pauline. The sessions were well received and provided a platform for family members to discuss their feelings and concerns, enabling them to develop confidence in protecting the two young children as well as other children in the wider family.

Parent feedback

In her feedback, Pauline stated that she “has more confidence in understanding the risk of child sexual abuse”, adding that she is “still processing what she has learned, now with the clarity that if her partner is found guilty of the offences, she will not stay with him.”

Family feedback

Debbie, the children’s grandmother commented that she found the sessions “overwhelming” at the start but, at the end, states that the programme has “opened my eyes”. She now feels more confident in playing her role as protector of the children, recognising the importance of understanding the risks and warning signs as well as ensuring vigilance when supervising contact. She also recognises the importance of reporting concerns to professionals should they arise.

The Families First, Conwy Borough Council project

We marked the 11th year of our valued partnership with Conwy County Borough Council in delivering public education on preventing child sexual abuse. Thanks to continued support through the Families First Grant, we facilitated 16 prevention sessions for parents and carers across the borough, reaching a total of 120 participants. Our annual grant funding remains steady at £7,500, enabling us to maintain this vital work within the community.

As part of our evaluation process, we ask participants what actions they plan to take following the session. Here’s a selection of their responses:

“I will encourage open discussions with my daughter.”
“Speak to children and young people earlier, before concerns arise.”
“Be more aware, question anything I’m concerned about, and have open conversations.”
“Share the information and resources with the children and young people in my care.”
“Use correct terms when naming body parts.”
“Bring up this topic in everyday conversations.”
“Monitor phone and internet use - and explain why.”
“As a mother of a ten-year-old, I will talk about safe and unsafe touch.”
“It’s given me the skills to speak to other parents and share this knowledge.”

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Advocacy

Working with the government

We continue to serve as joint secretariat for the Saving Futures Cross-Party Group (CPG) on Preventing Child Sexual Abuse. In July 2024, we held our first meeting under the leadership of the new Chair, Buffy Williams MS. The event also included our Annual General Meeting, where we presented our annual report. The meeting featured presentations from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation on Project Intercept, Barnardo’s Better Futures project, and Rape & Sexual Abuse Support Centre North Wales’ (RASASCNW) Don’t Steal My Future initiative.

Our second cross-party group event was held in October. We conducted a review and made recommendations on the proposed mandatory reporting duty for child sexual abuse in Wales. We hope to revisit this again later in the year.

In February, the CPG meeting took place at the Senedd. It reflected on the Welsh Government’s peer-on-peer sexual harassment action plan, amplifying the voices of young people affected by this issue. Joyce Watson MS stood in for Buffy Williams MS to chair the meeting, led by Members of the Young Wales Feeling Safe (Online and in Relationships) Advisory Group, and joined by cabinet secretary for education, Lynne Neagle MS. Attendees included representatives from other youth advisory groups and youth representatives interested in tackling peer-on-peer harassment in Wales, as well as organisations and charities such as the NSPCC, Barnardo’s, and Platform. The meeting reviewed progress to date on the action plan and provided an opportunity for the audience, particularly young voices, to highlight their priorities to help shape delivery against the core actions in the plan. The young people’s voices captured as part of the event will now be collated into a blueprint to inform the minister’s considerations of next steps and CPG members will continue to monitor progress. A big thank you to all the young people that were involved in this

event. The group continues to highlight issues, call for action, and play their part in consultations. It will continue to monitor the delivery of the new Welsh Government Delivery Plan.

Working with partner agencies

We hosted four Lucy Faithfull Foundation Wales Action Group meetings to facilitate information sharing, good practice and reflection on current trends and concerns, meeting on a quarterly basis with 13 key partners, including Wise Kids, Survivors Trust Cymru, Children’s Society, Crime Stoppers UK, EYST, Cardiff University, NSPCC Cymru, Archdiocese of Cardiff, Wales Police School Programme and Barnardo’s. Members have engaged in discussions on important topics, for example, children’s online safety, young people’s online behaviour trends and family safety planning.

We were pleased to attend the launch event hosted by Betsi Cadwaladr and Amethyst, the Sexual Assault Referral Centre for North Wales, showcasing powerful new films and resources that share the real stories of parents - particularly fathers - whose children have experienced sexual violence.

We also presented at the Domestic Abuse Safety Unit (DASU) team meeting, highlighting our work on the Keeping Children Safe and Early Intervention projects. This included an introduction to the Shore resource for young people concerned about their own or a friend’s sexual behaviour, as well as information about the Stop It Now helpline.

Additionally, we shared our services with safeguarding specialists at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board and took part in the STAND (Stronger Together for Additional Needs and Disabilities) event in Llandudno, where we connected with over 1,000 attendees and provided information about our support for individuals with additional needs.

LFF Wales ay £ Last year This year we said we would… we will…

Deliver year five of our Keeping Children Safe project to build the knowledge, confidence and skills of parents and carers in preventing child sexual abuse. We will recruit more parent consultation groups to ensure we continue to meet the needs of those we seek to reach. We conducted 10 consultation sessions with 40 parents and three consultation sessions with 22 professionals to help review and refine our child sexual abuse prevention resources. We also launched two new youth consultation groups with 11 young people.
Continue delivery of our Keeping Children Safe project and extend our reach to help more parents, caregivers and professionals.
We will conduct a deep dive into the data we have collected to understand our impact better and inform service development.
We will work with the Welsh Government and regional safeguarding boards to implement the new national action plan for preventing child sexual abuse.
Deliver year five of our early intervention project for vulnerable or at-risk families. We will use insight from the work to date to support our holistic approach with families. We provided support to 59 families this year and expanded our services for young people, working directly with nine individuals under the age of 18 who required tailored support.
Continue with the Cross-Party Group steering groups, and work with the Welsh Government and key partners on the second national action plan in responding to and preventing child sexual abuse. We continued to serve as joint secretariat for the Saving Futures Cross-Party Group on Preventing Child Sexual Abuse and played an active part in the development of the Welsh Government’s next national action plan which will go out for public consultation in 2025.

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Supporting professionals: training and consultancy

Our training builds knowledge and confidence in responding to and preventing child sexual abuse, but it goes further than that – it has a real impact on how people do their jobs. Commissioned by organisations including local authorities, police, those in the health sector, faith communities and sports bodies, our inputs support frontline professionals to do the best they can for children and families. We work closely with people seeking our support to ensure our services meet their needs and have the greatest impact.

In response to a recognised lack of confidence among professionals in addressing child sexual abuse – both observed in our own practice and highlighted in the National Safeguarding Panel Review, which stated that “practitioners working with children and families have not been equipped with the knowledge, skills and practical guidance to identify and respond confidently when there are concerns of child sexual abuse in the family environment” – our training emphasises the importance of thorough, informed risk assessment, proportionate safeguarding, and treating all those affected by sexual abuse with compassion.

Participant feedback continues to be overwhelmingly positive, highlighting both the expertise of our trainers and the relevance of our content.

92% of attendees who complete our training say they would recommend it to their colleagues.

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Our reach in 2024/25

We delivered 76 training events to 1,043 professionals, a decrease compared to 2023/24 (86 events to 1,174 people). These included 12 Safer Recruitment events to 141 people, a decrease compared to 2023/24 (16 events to 159 people).

It’s difficult to identify a single reason for the continued reduction in our training output, which we have experienced over the past three years. We recognise that our sector partners are facing financial pressures and tightening training budgets. However, after a difficult three quarters, we were encouraged by a rebound in delivery at the end of 2024/25, with 20 courses delivered in March alone.

Who we delivered training to

What we delivered

We collaborate with a diverse range of sectors, including local authorities (accounting for 29% of our delivery), education (14%), and law enforcement (12%). Additionally, we provide training for the NHS, safeguarding children’s boards, foster carers, the charity sector, and others.

Popular topics included understanding child sexual abuse, harmful sexual behaviour in adolescents, online child sexual abuse, and assessing the protective capacities of non-offending partners. For schools, we provided specific sessions on safer recruitment and public education workshops for parents.

Impact is also demonstrated through the comments we receive from participants.

We make a difference to child protection practice

We shift practice in child protection assessments in a family context

Change frontline practice: 83% said our training will make a great deal or a lot of difference to the way they do their job.

Quotes from attendees of a ‘Preventing sexual harm; assessing risk and decision making in family context’ course:

Increase knowledge: 90% said their knowledge of the topic improved.

“I feel I will use the frameworks, and tools that were discussed in the training, which will improve the quality of my assessments.”

Increase skills: 86% said their skills had improved.

“I will consider [the training] in work with families, terminologies used, and how I speak to them.”

90% said
• Increase confidence: their confidence had improved.
“I will consider indicators of a powerful protector when assessing ability to protect.”

We develop skills in those who are investigating sexual crimes against children

Quotes from attendees of a ‘Sexual offender psychology’ course:

“I will consider the thought process of the offender and why they have committed the offence.”

“The schema input will be considered as part of investigations e.g., interview planning etc.”

“When formulating interview strategies for viewing sexual images of children offences, there are new considerations I will now include.”

We support improved practice in responding to harmful sexual behaviour in young people

Quotes from attendees of a ‘Responding to children’s problematic and harmful sexual behaviours’ course:

“I am more confident in my ability to use the appropriate language and to not shame.”

“I will prepare more instead of being scared to talk to the child.”

“I will remind myself of children’s backgrounds/traumas more.”

How we do this:

Quality delivery

Led by experienced practitioners who ground their training in evidence, research, and clinical insight, our courses are highly valued. This is reflected in the strong demand and repeat bookings from local authorities, police services, and other organisations.

A responsive and collaborative service

We have a suite of ready-to-deliver training programmes, and we always collaborate with commissioners to tailor content and delivery methods to meet their specific needs.

Up-to-date and evolving subjects and themes

This year, we expanded our training offer with several new courses. We introduced a new Child Sexual Exploitation course as part of our core programme; developed and piloted a half-day training package tailored for children’s care homes in partnership with a setting in West Yorkshire; and launched a Child Sexual Abuse Awareness course — an entry-level programme designed for those who may not work directly with abuse cases but need a foundational understanding of the subject.

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Case study

Being responsive to need

We were asked to deliver training to a children’s residential care home in West Yorkshire following an assessment we conducted on a 14-year-old boy, after concerns were raised about him displaying problematic and potentially harmful sexual behaviours. One of our specialist children and young people practitioners undertook a comprehensive assessment using the AIM framework, providing a detailed formulation of his behaviours, risk and needs assessment, and tailored recommendations for support and intervention.

During this process, residential staff highlighted a lack of confidence in recognising and responding to sexual behaviour concerns, revealing a clear training need. In response, we collaborated with the local authority and care team to develop specialist training focused on understanding and managing problematic and harmful sexual behaviours.

Feedback from two of the care home managers:

The practitioner was very considerate of the young person’s needs and provided a bespoke training package for the staff supporting him. She was experienced and knowledgeable and shared her experiences with the groups she trained giving them insight and confidence. 66 The course was good and was delivered well by the trainer. She engaged staff well and this supported staff engagement. 9

The training package included two half-day sessions where staff engaged with relevant theory and practical strategies, including approaches specific to the young person assessed. Positive feedback from the sessions led to two additional care homes in the area requesting and receiving the same tailored training to better support young people in their care.

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Case study

Improving frontline practice

A local authority in the West Midlands reached out to us requesting training on risk and protective capacity, with a view to improving practitioner’s decisionmaking within family settings.

We initially organised three training events which were delivered in person from September to November 2024, receiving positive feedback. Following this, a further seven training events were commissioned, all delivered by two of our expert trainers at in-person sessions. This proved to be our most popular training package over the year with other local authorities making repeat bookings. Delegates indicated that they are taking away tools and resources to use in their work with families, had increased knowledge and confidence in assessing and managing risk, and had an improved awareness of their own biases.

Feedback from delegates included:

“The content and pace of the training was great. The case studies/ models helped bring the theory to life.”

“This training has supported my assessment with parents of a young child/new parents who have been sexually abused in childhood and where there is an ongoing police investigation for a parent as a potential offender.”

“Can relate this to daily working - should be mandatory.”

Case study

Improving frontline practice

We received several enquiries from faith groups who were aiming to enhance their understanding of child sexual abuse.

In collaboration with one commissioner, we delivered bespoke training webinars to over 70 people in safeguarding teams, whose role involved supporting and supervising individuals with sexual offence histories in exercising their right to worship. The webinars covered topics such as context setting, models of sexual offending, minimisation and denial, warning signs of abuse, and situational crime prevention. We also offered additional followup support through consultation calls and group reflective practice.

Feedback from the commissioner was overwhelmingly positive:

“Brilliant, is all I have to say! The presenter was great – the presentation was spot on. Personable but impactful, which is exactly what we need. Thanks so much for your work on this, I am so excited to get this out to our supporters now (those who support sex offenders to safely attend church).”

Additionally, we worked with another faith organisation who have commissioned eight tailored in-person training sessions on ‘Understanding Men Who Sexually Abuse Children’. These will be delivered across England and have been tailored to address specific concerns and scenarios within the organisation.

Achievements and performance Training and consultancy —4 Last year This year we said we would… we will…

Deliver effective, responsive training courses tailored to frontline needs - including support for organisations in responding to reports, recommendations, and inspections that identify areas for improvement.
Establish deeper collaborations with those who require our training so we can understand their needs and respond accordingly, for example, by building longer-term relationships with partner organisations. This year, our new, more personal approach has resulted in repeat bookings, with commissioners thinking longer-term about the support we can offer.
Further refine our approach to organisational consultancy by clearly articulating and widely communicating the range of support we offer - from providing reactive assistance with specific issues to empowering organisations to implement proactive, preventative strategies.
Explore new methods of delivery so that we deliver training the way people want to receive it, for example, through bitesize formats or twilight sessions. We continue to learn how people prefer their training delivered, so we have developed flexible options - including half-day sessions, webinars, and twilight sessions for schools - to suit their needs and schedules.
Support the growth of our training team through a continuous learning cycle, peer learning events, and ongoing professional development opportunities.
Focus on evaluation and build on the data we already collect to help shape our training offer. We continuously refine our training packages based on feedback from both delegates and trainers.

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Research, evaluation, and international

A commitment to research is one of our three strategic pillars: in all our work, we strive to make the best use of our expertise, data and insights. We see our research as directly connected to better protecting children from harm.

Strengthening our research foundations

This year, we introduced a new structure for our research activity, allowing us to track our achievements in four key areas:

Research foundations – everything we do to ensure rigorous, scientific research within a culture of curiosity and service improvement, ranging from research ethics to data governance.

We have placed a major focus on strengthening our research and evaluation portfolio this year.

To support the growing volume of projects and themes, we have grown our team’s capacity and enhanced some key processes for the way we plan, conduct and govern research.

Understanding our impact – an extensive portfolio of evaluation showing a commitment to evidencing our services’ impact and understanding how they can improve.

This year, we recruited new researchers to our LFF Research team, including Dr Tom Fisher, our new director of research and impact. Tom is an evaluation specialist, joining us from an international social science research centre. His role focuses on bringing in new, important ways of evaluating the impact of our work and creating partnerships with research organisations in the UK and overseas. Tom’s support has already helped us to refocus our research portfolio and will help us to make an even more substantial contribution to the evidence on preventing child sexual abuse.

Research in partnership – working alongside universities and other research partners to add to a fast-growing body of evidence against a set of key themes.

Communicating our research – a commitment to ensuring our research is used by our team and impacts the practice and policy of our partners.

Our new approach allows us to see our progress more clearly and ensure that each element of our research work receives the best resources and attention. This year, our LFF research team has achieved some exceptional outcomes, set out in our four key areas.

Importantly, our team has started a review of our approach to research ethics, introducing a smoother, more rigorous process for approving and supervising research. The team has also been reviewing the use of data, looking for opportunities to use the Foundation’s information in new ways and build insights from across our programmes.

Understanding our impact

Understanding our adult programmes’ impact

We’ve placed a great deal of focus this year on strengthening the scientific rigour and credibility of our adult programme evaluation methods. Our head of research and evaluation, Erifili Efthymiadou, has designed new evaluation protocols, including the introduction of new, wellvalidated and standardised measures. These have been deployed through baseline, post-programme, and follow-up surveys. Our findings so far have been included in progress reports to our funders, allowing us to present scientifically backed, meaningful insights to those who support our work.

Our new protocols also provide more nuanced insights to help us tailor service delivery to individual needs. Alongside this, our expanded research and fundraising teams have embarked on a closer collaboration, aiming for more effective communication of the impact of our services to our wide range of audiences and stakeholders. With four adult programmes now using our new protocols, we are looking to expand these to our Inform Young People programme in the next few months.

Understanding Stop It Now’s impact

In December 2024, we formally launched the evaluation of our Stop It Now helpline, in collaboration with Professor Elizabeth Letourneau from John Hopkins University and Professor Michael Seto from the University of Ottawa. The evaluation is part of Prevention Global, an international initiative to evaluate and scale up perpetration-focused prevention that addresses child sexual abuse. Data collection is currently ongoing and progressing well, and the project is expected to be completed in mid-2026. Our team is exploring opportunities to launch an evaluation of Get Help, our online prevention resources.

Research in partnership

This year, we completed existing and started new research projects in key areas, all in partnership with leading authorities in our field.

Understanding intrafamilial abuse

Another project in collaboration with Professor Michael Seto has been completed and provided important insights on intrafamilial child sexual abuse prevention. The project looked at whether - online self help resources may be able to contribute to the prevention of child sexual abuse within families. The project involved a literature review, a survey for individuals currently using our self-help resources and interviews with adults who have offended against children in their own family, exploring what might have prevented the abuse from happening in the first place. The project has provided important new evidence, and a range of key messages related to self-help. The team is now developing a proposal to fund further work over the next three years into messaging to those who present a risk of harm in families, developing a specific resource for those who do not identify as having a sexual attraction to children generally but who may present a risk to children in their own family. Our director for Lucy Faithfull Foundation Scotland, Stuart Allardyce, delivered a webinar on the findings to the World Childhood Foundation, which funded the project.

LFF and Cardiff University

Our ongoing collaboration with Professor Pamela Taylor’s team at Cardiff University has allowed us to further develop our understanding of key aspects of our Stop It Now helpline this year.

A team of researchers from the Foundation and Cardiff University designed and launched new research on the experiences of people who contact us when worried about the behaviour of friends or relatives in relation to child sexual

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abuse, aiming to learn more about their needs and role in preventing abuse. The research uses anonymous Stop It Now data together with interviews with our service users.

The team has also completed a literature review on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and sexual offending alongside an analysis of helpline data in relation to callers with ASD.
The Cardiff team are also publishing an article based on work with our helpline team: “You don’t do this for the money, do you? A qualitative study of experiences of call responders working on the Stop It Now helpline supporting prevention of sex offending against children.”
A paper exploring the implementation and evaluation of our helpline chat service has been submitted to the Journal of Sexual Abuse by the team in Cardiff and is awaiting final review.

International Consortium: Protech

Our partnership with the European Commissionfunded Protech Project consortium is concluding in April 2026. The project aimed to design and evaluate an app called ‘Salus’, which blocks sexual images of children, and optionally pornography, for people who have offended online against children or who are at risk of doing so. The app is downloaded voluntarily and anonymously. The pilot indicated that Salus was a feasible and valuable tool in reducing child sexual abuse material offending and can be deployed alongside existing service provision. There will be ongoing work to share insights from the project publicly in the year ahead through publications, conferences, and media communications.

Partnerships for postgraduate research

We have supported and finished the year facilitating the following doctoral research projects:

Our research team worked with Leeds Beckett University to supervise a project on how people who have been investigated, arrested, or convicted for child sexual abuse offences experience the criminal justice system. The research looked at the support they received, including through our services, and how that support affected the impact of being involved with the criminal justice system.
A unique piece of participatory action research project which explored the experiences of family members affected by a loved one’s online sexual offending has also been completed.
Working with the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science and the University of Edinburgh, we recruited a PhD student who will use a doctoral process to develop a risk assessment tool for under-18-year-olds who display harmful sexual behaviour, both offline and online. During the first year of the funding, the student will complete an MSc in Psychological Research, undertaking preliminary work in preparation for her PhD commencement, projected to be in September 2025.
We are also currently supporting the identification of participants for a project aiming to investigate desistance pathways for people committing sexual images of children offences, focusing on motivations underlying desistance efforts, as well as facilitators and barriers to desistance.
Finally, we will be facilitating a project exploring the link between early exposure to online explicit and violent content, adverse childhood experiences and online child sexual offending.

Communicating our research

This year, our team have been particularly busy writing up, publishing and sharing our research across the UK and around the world.

Faithfull papers

Published academic papers

Our flagship publications series has expanded again this year, with the publication of three new Faithfull papers, offering a range of key insights for policy, practice and research on what works to protect children.

This year, we published three academic articles, with two more submitted for peer review:

Acceptability of a Self-Help Programme to Address the Use of Indecent Images of Children[9]
Understanding and Deterring Online Child Grooming: A Qualitative Study[10]
’
• What s porn got to do with it? The link between viewing adult pornography and online sexual offending against children
Accessing child sexual abuse material: Pathways to offending and online behaviour[11]
Chatbots and warning messages: Innovations in the fight against online child sexual abuse
Trends and insights from a unique helpline preventing child sexual abuse

This year, our Faithfull Papers webpage was visited nearly 5,000 times, alongside a range of interactive presentations and webinars on these themes.

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9 Wefers, S., Bailey, A., Rasooli, N., Findlater, D., & Allen, L. (2024). Acceptability of a Self-Help Programme to Address the Use of Indecent Images of Children. Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention, 19, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.5964/sotrap.11159

10 Wefers, S., Dieseth, T., George, E., Øverland, I., Jolapara, J., McAree, C., & Findlater, D. (2024). Understanding and Deterring Online Child Grooming: A Qualitative Study. Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention, 19, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.5964/sotrap.13147

11 Wortley, R., Findlater, D., Bailey, A., & Zuhair, D. (2024). Accessing child sexual abuse material: Pathways to offending and online behaviour. Child Abuse & Neglect, 154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2024.106936

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Sharing insights and international collaboration

This year, we had a strong presence in advocacy and knowledge exchange activities nationally and internationally, contributing to discussions and conferences across a wide range of topics.

Our chief executive, Deborah Denis, attended the WeProtect 2024 Global Summit in Abu Dhabi, participating as a panel member on a plenary session focused on perpetrator-focused prevention initiatives delivered internationally.
In June, at the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse’s Envision Conference in Washington, Deborah was part of a panel considering the role that the tech industry can take in prevention. She shared insights from our chatbot project and discussed the participation of our Stop It Now helpline in the Prevention Global evaluation.
Stuart Allardyce, director of LFF Scotland, co-delivered a plenary session on tackling sibling sexual abuse in the UK and beyond at the NOTA 2024 Birmingham conference. At the NOTA Scotland conference, Stuart delivered a presentation discussing artificial intelligence and child sexual abuse materials.
Stuart presented the reThink prevention chatbot at the ATSA 2024 Conference in Texas. He also attended the Netherlands ATSA 2024 Conference in Antwerp presenting on current research into young people who have displayed harmful sexual behaviour. He further delivered the keynote presentation at the 3rd Chilean Congress on child maltreatment.
Erifili Efthymiadou, head of research and evaluation, and Sarah Wefers, practitionerresearcher, presented our two NOTA-funded research projects at the NOTA 2024 Conference in Birmingham. The projects aim to explore the essential components of designing and delivering online child sexual abuse material prevention programmes by surveying experts and

interviewing Lucy Faithfull Foundation service users with a child sexual abuse material offending history respectively.

A range of staff delivered a variety of workshops during the NOTA 2024 Conferences, on the delivery of the Shore website as a safe space for teenagers worried about sexual behaviours; and the challenges of carrying out risk assessments on those with alleged or unproven harmful sexual behaviour (presented at the Birmingham Conference); and a research project exploring service users’ experiences of our Breaking the Links programme (presented at the Scotland Conference).
Ida Oeverland, our programmes project worker, attended the Protech conference organised by our Protech partners at the University Hospital of Antwerp (UZA) to present our work with adults who have engaged in child sexual abuse material and grooming offences online through the delivery of our Inform Plus and Engage Plus programmes.

Our research and evaluation activities are supported by funding from Porticus UK, Fidelity, Oak Foundation, The Indigo Trust, World Childhood Foundation, The Samworth Foundation, and an anonymous trust. We are incredibly grateful for their support.

LFF Research and evaluation ———— Last year This year we said we would… we will…

Recruit a new member for our research team to strengthen our capabilities in data analysis and data science, aiming to make the best use of the wealth of data available across the Foundation.
Work with our partners Elizabeth Letourneau from Johns Hopkins University and Michael Seto from the University of Ottawa on the independent evaluation of our helpline and online resources. The evaluation of our helpline is underway, and we’re exploring opportunities to launch an evaluation of Get Help, our online prevention resources.
Take new, creative approaches to evaluating the impact of a set of our services, including our Early Intervention project in Wales, Project Intercept’s collaboration with technology companies, and our assessment and intervention services.
Continue to improve the evaluation of our services. By next year we will be able to share insights relevant to the effectiveness of our psychoeducational programmes, as drawn from the implementation of our new programme evaluation protocols. Our new evaluation protocols, including the introduction of new, well-validated and standardised measures have been deployed through baseline, post-programme, and follow-up surveys. Findings so far have been included in progress reports to our funders, allowing us to present scientifically backed, meaningful insights to those who support our work.
Develop new research proposals to work with partners in the UK and overseas on our priority research areas, such as harmful sexual behaviour, the future of abuse and technology and supporting and equipping families to prevent abuse.
Recruit a PhD student, in partnership with The University of Edinburgh and co-funded by the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, to co-produce a strengths- and needs-based assessment framework for children and young people who display harmful sexual behaviours — working alongside our practitioners and young people with lived experience. We have recruited a PhD student who will now use a doctoral process to develop a risk assessment tool for under-18-year-olds who display harmful sexual behaviour, both offline and online.

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Fundraising

Fundraising to support our work

Fundraising is a strategic priority, overseen by our senior management team, board of trustees, and dedicated fundraising trustee subcommittee. We are committed to driving growth, embracing innovation, and ensuring we remain ahead of

regulatory and sector developments. Our ambition is to build a resilient, diverse income base that enables us to deliver greater impact year on year.

Thank you

We would like to wholeheartedly thank our wonderful supporters.

The generous support of all those involved is invaluable, and contributes significantly in our mission to prevent child sexual abuse. This year we have raised nearly £140,000 from the generosity of donors, with just over £38,000 coming from regular givers, who have grown in numbers by 25% this past year.

Individual fundraisers support us for a variety of reasons, with some donors expressing their gratitude or reasons when they donate:

Thank you for protecting children and helping to make the world a safer, better place for the newer generation. I’m glad something such as this is out here, I have hope for the safety of my niece and nephews.

Thank you for the work you do, I hope this helps and I will increase the size of my donation in the future. Thank you.

Hopefully, my donation helps make a difference.

Fundraising events raised just over £27,500, not including gift aid. We’ve celebrated an array of individuals who took on various challenges, including a long trek along the West Highland Way and climbing Ben Nevis, to name but a few.

We are especially grateful for those who continuously support us, including the family of Billy Seymour who once again ran a Celebration of Life Golf Day in July, raising £1,671 (£9,000 to date), The Bulls Head Pub in Wootton Wawen who, for the fourth year running, hosted a Summer Garden Party in June raising a huge £2,600 (£9,000 in total) and Damon Packer, who once again ran the Bristol half Marathon raising just under £1,000 with gift aid. Thank you, everyone!

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Other fundraisers from across the nations

Katy Scott

‘Percy Pud’ 10K run Sheffield Raised £1,500

Jess Elkington

10K run every day up Wolstonbury Hill, West Sussex for 30 days Raised £2,396

Accompanied by different colleagues each day, secondary teacher, Jess Elkington ran the 10km round trip up Wolstonbury Hill every day of September. She said:

“As the new school term continues at pace, this will be a significant challenge (absolute slog) and is designed to represent the ceaseless trudge ‘back to the top of the hill’ faced by those burdened with the legacy of abuse.”

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• [Claire: West ]
Highland Way
£410.00
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•[ Katrina: Peak district ] half marathon £425.00

Katy Scott, a steadfast supporter and courageous ambassador, undertook her first 10K run this year – dressed as a Christmas pudding! She was also featured in the Sheffield Wire explaining why she was raising money for us, and helping to raise awareness in her community. Katy said:

“The charity means a huge amount to me, and I am very proud to be raising money for and to be talking openly about this cause... Had I been more aware of child sexual abuse, 30 years ago, when my two children were young, perhaps I could have prevented my own daughter from being sexually abused for four years as a child by someone within our own family. Or at least I could have recognised it was happening and stopped it... I find other charities, perhaps ones that make us feel less uncomfortable, seem to get a lot more public airtime. People are just very uncomfortable talking about child sexual abuse. For me, to prevent child sexual abuse, we need to start talking about preventing it.”

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Neil S Partrick
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Damon Packer

Bristol ½ Marathon Raised £820

•[ Emma: Cardiff ]

comedy evening £105.00

•[ Natasha: Great ] Bristol run £114.00

•[ Alice: London ] Marathon £918.00

Ben: Whitstable and Herne Bay Half Marathon £50.00 •

Hastings ½ Marathon Raised £690

Neil S Partrick ran the Hastings half marathon. Unperturbed by the race being cancelled due to the discovery of an unexploded bomb, Neil ran the route the very next day! He said:

“I decided to raise money for the Lucy Faithfull Foundation because in recent years I’ve become more acutely aware of the psychological damage that being sexually abused as a child caused me and its implications in adulthood. Since childhood running has been a go-to escape of mine, and so it seemed appropriate to push myself on the Hastings halfmarathon course for such an important charity.”

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Friends of the Foundation

Sincere thanks to our Friends of the Foundation. Those signed up for regular giving are invited to become a Friend. We have a much-valued group of ‘friends’ whom we see as an essential part of our community. All those joining the scheme receive regular updates, including newsletters, as well as a lapel pin, a pen, and a copy of our annual report. We remain grateful for their ongoing support and welcome new joiners.

~~——_____===~~ | : Thanks to your

French Movie Club

A dedicated supporter of the charity, Eleonore, has generously embarked upon an ambitious fundraising challenge for 2025, to host a regular French Movie Club at the Everyman Cinema, Chelsea with all funds raised donated to us.

Two entertaining movie evenings took place in January and March, raising a phenomenal £7,283. New audiences of up to 80 filmgoers have been ‘mind blown’ when hearing about us and many have expressed their desire to learn more about us. We are incredibly thankful to Eleonore, for her magnanimity and commitment to our cause. We look forward to supporting future film events.

Helpline campaign

We are delighted that our first digital fundraising campaign exceeded its £10,000 target, with £9,661 raised directly from donations and a further £1,528 in gift aid. Every penny will support the vital work of the Stop It Now helpline. This success has laid a strong foundation, and we are now planning future online appeals to build on this momentum. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who donated and helped make this possible – thank you.

Grants and Donations

We must express enormous gratitude towards the English, Scottish and Welsh Governments, all the charitable trusts and corporate foundations and partners who support our work through charitable grants. Their support enables us to further our mission, deliver our services, innovate and advance into the future. We continue to appreciate the advertising credits donated to us by Google, Meta, Microsoft and Snapchat, which were this year worth £97,588.

Our funders often share feedback which we are always grateful to receive. Quotes include:

“I have read LFF’s annual report and accounts for the year ended 31 March 2024. They’re some of the most informative and transparent accounts I have read (and I have read quite a few...!). I understood from them that you had been successful in building your unrestricted reserves and had met your ambitious reserves target. That’s no mean feat - congratulations.”

The Indigo Trust

“We were all very impressed by the report, which demonstrated the breadth and depth of your important work, and your responsiveness to suggestions about improving your services.”

Emmanuel Kaye Foundation

“This is such an important cause - keep up the fantastic work!”

Campaign supporter

“Important work that deserves widespread support”

Campaign supporter

We are also grateful to our anonymous donor who match-funded this campaign, donating 30p per pound. Thank you.

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Our supporter commitment

We make every donation count

Looking ahead

How you can help us protect future generations: The Lucy Faithfull Foundation is evolving. As we look ahead, your support is more important than ever in helping us prevent child sexual abuse and build a safer future for every child.

Here are some meaningful ways you can get involved:

1 We take our responsibility to the public seriously. All assets and donations are managed with care, honesty and transparency. We ensure that supporters understand our work and exactly how their money makes a difference. All fundraising is carried out by our in-house team, never by external agencies.

We celebrate your impact

2 We deeply value every donor and supporter. Strong financial controls ensure funds are used how and when they were intended for, or where they are needed most. With your permission, we proudly share your efforts and celebrate your contribution to our mission.

Donate

Every gift supports our vital work. Add Gift Aid if you’re a UK taxpayer.

Join our appeals

Support upcoming digital and public campaigns.

Leave a gift in your will

Create a legacy that protects future generations.

Nominate us at work

Choose us for payroll giving or charity of the year.

We keep in touch in the ways you want us to

3 We only contact those who have opted in. There is no pressure, no intrusion, just meaningful communication with your consent. We are registered with the Fundraising Preference Service and have never received a complaint.

Fundraise for us

Host an event or run a community fundraiser.

Shop to support

Use Easyfundraising or Give as You Live when shopping online.

We keep your data safe

4 Your data is secure, private and never shared. We strictly follow GDPR and the Data Protection Act, with robust systems to keep your information safe.

Take on a challenge

Walk, run, swim, or cycle in support of our cause.

Share your skills

Volunteer your expertise through CSR or pro bono support.

We keep to the highest fundraising standards

5 Our fundraising is ethical, respectful and fully compliant. We are proud members of the Fundraising Regulator and follow sector guidance and codes of practice in all that we do.

Give regularly

Monthly donations provide stable, long-term impact.

Become a corporate partner

Align your business with our mission and drive real impact.

We are here to listen

6 We offer a warm, personal approach to every supporter. We are especially careful and compassionate when engaging with vulnerable people and anyone affected by child sexual abuse. Our opt-in approach ensures communication is always appropriate and respectful.

Become a friend

Join our growing network of committed supporters.

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Structure

Governance, structure and management

Governing document

The trustees, who are also directors of The Lucy Faithfull Foundation (“the charity” or “The Foundation”) for the purposes of the Companies Act, submit their annual report and the audited financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2025. The trustees have adopted the provisions of the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) “Accounting and Reporting by Charities” and Financial Reporting Standard 102 (FRS102) in preparing the annual report and financial statements of the charity. The Lucy Faithfull Foundation is a company limited by guarantee (company no. 02729957) incorporated on 09 July 1992. It was registered as a charity in England and Wales (charity no. 1013025) on 20 July 1993. On 23 September 2008, the charity was registered with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) (Scottish registered charity no. SC039888). The charity is governed by its Memorandum and Articles of Association which set out the charity’s legal objectives.

Our strategic plan

Our 2020-2025 strategic plan came to an end this year with huge progress being made across our three strategic pillars: reach, research and advocacy. A range of delivery plans helped deliver on our ambitions and turned our aspirations into tangible outcomes that are detailed in this report. Our strategy was reviewed annually across its lifespan, to ensure we continued to meet the changing needs of our beneficiaries – a diverse population with complex needs.

Between August 2024 and March 2025, we conducted a strategic planning process that involved the board of trustees, the whole staff team as well as key stakeholders. We developed an organisational theory of change, conducted surveys and hosted thematic workshops and strategy days. Our 2025-2030 strategy was launched on 25 March 2025 and can be found on our website.

PF

Our key ambitions 2020-2025

Reach

To ensure that everyone knows we are here for them - whether they need help for themselves or for someone they know.

Research

To make the best use of our expertise, our data and our insights to develop new strategies and interventions that make prevention real both independently and in partnership with others, sharing our learning about effective practice with agencies and the broader public.

Advocacy

To drive forward the preventing child sexual abuse agenda, shape the debate in constructive ways and contribute to domestic and global developments.

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Structure

Our key objectives 2025-2030

Practice

We will run and develop inclusive, innovative and flexible clinical services grounded in evidence, responsive to our beneficiaries and those with lived experience, and we will reach more people in more ways.

Places

We will focus on making places safer for children and young people wherever they are.

Partnerships

We will build broader partnerships, collaborate with more people and organisations and harness the power of strength in numbers to develop and deliver prevention.

People

We will ensure we attract a diverse group of people into the LFF family and create an organisational culture where everyone can grow and thrive, driven by the shared passion to keep children safe.

Performance

We will embed excellence, efficiency and sustainability across the charity.

Leadership

The board of trustees, listed on page 182, is responsible for governance, providing strategic direction and overseeing our performance. The board ensures that all activities are undertaken to further our charitable purposes.

The trustees use and implement Charity Commission guidance including public benefit and comply with the requirements of the OSCR. The trustees confirm that they have complied with the duty in section 17 of the Charities Act 2011 to have due regard to public benefit guidance published by the Charity Commission. The annual report highlights the significant activities undertaken to carry out our aims for the public benefit.

The board of trustees meets on a quarterly basis, and at such other times as considered necessary. In summary, they lead by example and support the chief executive in the delivery of our strategic plans and activities, regularly monitoring our performance against agreed aims and outcomes.

The board has a governance, finance and general purposes committee, which meets quarterly and at such other times as considered necessary and reports back to the board. The committee was renamed this year to the governance, finance, operations and risk committee. This year we also implemented a number of additional subcommittees each chaired by a trustee with a membership of trustees and staff. We launched a tech and data subcommittee, an equality, diversity and inclusion subcommittee, and have plans to introduce a policy and advocacy committee and a research committee. Our fundraising subcommittee which has been active for some years is undergoing a review by our new head of fundraising and will recommence in 2025.

Potential trustees are most commonly identified through existing trustees’ or staff networks. All potential new trustees are formally appointed by the full board. The balance of trustees is kept under review regarding skills and diversity. The board places particular emphasis on appointing individuals who bring specific identified skills, and an induction pack is in place for new trustees to ensure complete familiarity with the duties of a charitable trustee and the work of the charity.

Some trustees carry specific areas of responsibility including diversity, safeguarding and fundraising. There are currently eight male trustees and four female trustees. The trustees have ensured that all safeguarding policies and procedures are of a high standard, up to date and embedded within the charity. This has included the annual review of our safeguarding policy and practice.

The senior leadership team

The board delegates responsibility for operational management to the chief executive, who leads an executive team. Together they are the charity’s senior leadership team responsible for the organisation’s plans, policies and processes, and their implementation, following the board’s advice and approval. Their names can be found on page 181. As a team, they are committed not only to focusing on the delivery of our core child protection activities, but also looking forward to ensuring we remain sustainable as an organisation, and able to respond to changing trends and external factors. There are four women and four men on the senior leadership team. This year we strengthened the team with the addition of a director of research and impact who joined in January. Our interim director of people services took on a permanent position and we created a new role of deputy director of operations to support the growing operations department. See Staffing Changes below.

Risk management

The board of trustees is responsible for ensuring that there are adequate and effective risk management protocols and systems of internal controls in place to manage the charity’s major risks and support the achievement of our strategic objectives. The board reviews and assesses the risks facing the charity on an ongoing basis. This year we developed a risk appetite framework and reviewed our risk register.

The risk register is maintained and updated by the senior leadership team. The board reviews the register of key risks and puts in place plans

to mitigate and manage risks appropriately. The register is reviewed at each board meeting to ensure that we, as an organisation, manage risks within a changing environment. Each risk has an identified director or trustee with lead responsibility for oversight of it.

Projects are regularly reviewed with attention to risk management, and a project review process ensures ongoing oversight. Quarterly reports are provided to trustees showing the progress of longer-term contracts, grant-funded projects, grant applications in progress and short-term contract activity. Internal control risks are minimised by procedures for the authorisation of all transactions and projects. Procedures are in place to ensure compliance with health and safety, and for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of children and adults. Particular attention has been given to the potential risk around fraud. Policies relating to anti-fraud and bribery as well as whistleblowing were reviewed this year with the anti-bribery policy being strengthened in relation to gifts and hospitality.

Principal risks facing the charity include the variable nature of grants and the uncertainty of timing of renewal (see section ‘Reserves policy reflecting principal risks’ on page 153).

Staffing changes

As we grow we need to ensure that our infrastructure keeps pace and that includes our staffing. This year, we had two staffing updates within the senior leadership team. In February we were pleased to offer Alison Dexter the role of director of people services on a permanent basis, 3 days per week. We also appointed Dr Tom Fisher, in the new role of director of research and impact who joined us in January 2025. Tom joined us after 15 years in academia, where he led largescale programmes of research and evaluation for governments, international bodies and charities on a range of complex and contentious issues. We also recruited to three new roles of research assistant, policy officer and head of fundraising who joined to reinforce our work. We also created a new deputy director of operations role to support our growing operations department and finished the year recruiting for our first apprentice within our IT team.

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Structure

HR, Employment Rights Bill and Pay

This year we continued to strengthen and engage with the workforce on updating policies, procedures, working practices. This year saw the introduction of The Employee Rights Bill by the Department for Work and Pensions on behalf of the Labour Government pledge to ‘Make Work Pay’, a manifesto commitment and a core part of one of the Government’s five mission-led priorities is to grow the economy. Once implemented, the Bill will represent the biggest upgrade in employment rights for a generation. We will make sure we are well aligned as changes progress.

The board of trustees holds overall responsibility for our pay policy and the salaries of executive directors. This responsibility is delegated to the governance, finance, operations and risk committee, which conducts an annual review of employment terms and conditions. Based on this review, the committee makes recommendations to the board. It also benchmarks executive pay against comparable roles within the sector and approves salaries and any annual pay awards, ensuring alignment with recognised best practice standards.

Information security

Cybersecurity remains a threat to our sensitive data and we fully recognise the importance of defending our IT systems from malicious cyberattacks and protecting the personal data we hold from unauthorised access and misuse. This year, we have continued to promote vigilance amongst our staff, reminding them of how our technical measures can support them to keep data safe.

We have embedded our system security measures to prevent unauthorised access to our systems and guard against phishing attacks. These system security measures have allowed us to maintain our cyber essentials accredited status. Our data protection training took our staff through the key principles of information security and had a particular focus on the importance of organisational and personal accountability. All our data security policies and procedures are established and our teams are briefed.

General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR)

We deal with very sensitive information and our trustees, managers and teams prioritise our compliance with UK GDPR. This year, we have continued to implement a second phase data protection plan for the charity. Our bi-monthly UK GDPR committee oversees the delivery of that plan and is chaired by our deputy director of operations who now acts as our Data Protection Officer. The committee receives a report on any data breach and subject data requests, ensuring our systems work both to learn from any breach but also to ensure we share information in line with data protection legislation. We have created Records of Processing Activity (RPAs) which records our departmental data flows and assets. We have carried out legitimate interest assessments on any high-risk areas to evidence our reliance on that lawful basis. Work has continued to utilise cloud-based systems to store data where appropriate and plan to extend our use of such systems through 25/26.

This year, we had 40 personal data breach incidents reported on our internal system, all of which were assessed as either low or medium risk, the majority of which involved data breaches within the charity.

Our commitment to safeguarding

We are committed to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of all those we come into contact with. All staff have gone through an annual safeguarding training programme, raising awareness of the principles underpinning good safeguarding practice and raising awareness about social care and police procedures. Our safeguarding system is led by a director alongside a team of five safeguarding leads, ensuring our teams have access to safeguarding advice when they need it. Safeguarding reports are monitored by the safeguarding leads with regular reporting to the senior leadership team and trustees.

Our commitment to staff wellbeing

We recognise that our staff are our most important resource in preventing child sexual abuse. Our

Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) is in place with Health Assured which gives our staff a confidential service able to assist with personal and professional issues that could be affecting home or work life, health or general wellbeing. This service includes a 24-hour helpline and counselling support.

We are committed to listening to staff views in shaping the future of LFF and throughout 2024/25 we held a bi-monthly staff engagement forum to listen to our staff’s ideas, discuss future changes and how they could be implemented, make improvement recommendations to the senior management team, and communicate key messages. This year we have reviewed our engagement approach and implemented a system where our staff shape the topics discussed at the forum. We also started an internal communications review process which will continue into the year ahead. Protecting children from harm motivates all our staff in delivering the best service they can. Operating in this area brings its own challenges and we remain committed to supporting all our staff and ensuring all have access to regular and responsive supervision.

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)

Our commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion is fundamental to our mission of protecting all children from sexual abuse. Children who are sexually abused, and the adults and young people who harm them, come from all backgrounds, communities and walks of life – and it is important this is recognised in our work and how we develop and deliver services. It is imperative that our services are accessible and inclusive to everyone who needs them. We are committed to fostering an environment where all individuals are treated with fairness, respect, and dignity. We recognise the value of diverse perspectives and experiences, and strive to create an inclusive environment regardless of background, identity, or circumstances.

Inclusive service delivery:

Accessible support channels: we provide multiple support channels, including a helpline, chat service, email, and online resources, to help individuals concerned about child sexual abuse. To eliminate language barriers, we use

LanguageLine, which allows non-English speakers to access support through calls, emails, and chat. Additionally, our self-help modules are available in multiple languages on our website. Our chat and email services also ensure accessibility for individuals who are deaf, enabling them to receive the support they need.

Data collection: collecting data about people who access our support is vital in ensuring our service is fully inclusive. We use a standard data collection tool across all departments to ensure comprehensive monitoring and regular reporting. This includes demographic and diversity data on age, gender, disabilities, and neurodiversity.
Staff training: all staff undergo annual, mandatory EDI training to enhance their understanding and capability to serve diverse populations.
Inclusive recruitment: We follow safer inclusive recruitment practices, to ensure we attract diverse applicants.
Lived experience: we champion lived experience, using feedback from service users to inform our practice, service development and advocacy activities.
Policies and procedures: we regularly review our policies and procedures and have in place policies including menopause, maternity, parental leave, flexible working, mental health and wellbeing, disability and reasonable adjustments, bullying and harassment, recruitment and selection, diversity and inclusion, religion and belief and sexual harassment.

While the charity demonstrates strong female leadership, with women holding key roles including chair, chief executive officer, and four of seven director positions, we recognise the importance of broader representation both within the charity and on the board, and are actively working to strengthen diversity and inclusion at all levels of the organisation. Our equality, diversity, and inclusion sub-committee – chaired by trustee Martin Kersey and supported by our director of people services – comprises five staff members from across the organisation. The committee meets quarterly and reports regularly on its progress to both staff and trustees.

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Structure

LFF governance and management structure

Service delivery

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Helpline staff Practitioners Psychologists Administrators Project workers Volunteers

Headquarters and offices

Finance; Human Resources Advocacy and Communications Fundraising, IT Referrals Training Administration

Bromsgrove Epsom Edinburgh Cardiff

Senior leadership and delivery leadership teams

Strategy implementation Operational delivery Governance Risk management Safeguarding Quality and compliance

Chair and trustees

Governance, Strategy Safeguarding, Finance Remuneration, Audit Risk Management, Diversity

Governance, Finance, Operations and Risk Committee

EDI subcommittee Tech and Data subcommittee Fundraising subcommittee

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Financial review

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Financial review

Overview

Note: The year references refer to the financial year ended March of that year.

In 2025 we spent £4,597,397 (2024: £4,467,642) and achieved income of £5,169,183 (2024: £4,827,719) resulting in a £571,786 increase in funds held.

£414,450 of the increase in funds relates to our restricted grants which we successfully increased during the year. We secured some substantial new grants, most of which were unspent at the year end. £95,000 from Porticus UK to support Research and programmes that tackle online sexual offending, £84,525 from Oak Foundation for the helpline evaluation and £98,943 from the Fidelity UK Foundation to support a director of research and impact post. We also received year three of the Nominet grant for our Intercept project amounting to £300,000.

Whilst our restricted income increased by 15% in 2025, our unrestricted income reduced by 2% to £2,328,522 (2024: £2,366,810) as a result of our professional services experiencing a tough year. In spite of reductions in the use of sessional staffing on assessments and interventions, our unrestricted expenditure increased by 3% to £2,171,186 (2024: 2,106,613), after by a general pay award of 3.5% in April 2024 and price increases from all our suppliers.

We ended the year with an unrestricted surplus of £157,336. Although this is below the budget of £180,000 and well below the surplus of £260,197 in 2024, it is a good result given the challenges. We still need to grow our reserves so we sit more comfortably within the target range of 3 to 6 months expenditure and we are pleased to report that our unrestricted free reserves amount to £1,260,689 at the 31st March 2025 which provides us with 3.36 months cover (2024:3.01).

To achieve a surplus in 2025, we had to make changes mid-year to compensate for the downturn in our professional services income. We were in the fortunate position of having substantial unrestricted

grant funding of £542,000 which gave us the flexibility to do this. Expenditure plans for a new fundraising database and a cyber security review were moved forward to 2026 and we kept our research and advocacy activity to a minimum in the 2nd half of the year so that funding was available to cover some central overheads and the majority of the media and communications activities, of which a substantial portion is normally funded by the surplus on professional services.

Generating a surplus is heavily dependent on our assessments and interventions service. As the financial problems in local authorities increased, we saw a reduction in commissioning that impacted in the second and third quarters of the year, and understanding and addressing this was a management priority in 2025. The family court work is of vital importance to safeguarding children and the impact of the budgetary constraints on so many local authorities should be of great concern to everyone with responsibilities for child protection. We are pleased to report that referrals picked up in the fourth quarter giving us some cause for optimism and we ended the year with assessment and intervention income of £1,030,404, 11% down on 2024.

The other part of the suite of professional services is our training and consultancy service which declined for a third year in a row. We acknowledge the need to focus on building our professional services in the year and years ahead – they have reduced to 54% of our unrestricted income from 60% in 2024, and in terms of our overall income, they account for only 24% compared to 29% in 2024. The ad hoc nature of this work can result in fluctuations in demand, as occurred this year, but the fact that referrals come from a large number of individual referral agencies also makes us less vulnerable to factors outside our control. This, taken alongside our grant funding, helps to provide a good balance of risk as well as being one of the few areas where we can generate a surplus.

As we mark the end of our 2020-2025 strategy period it is helpful to reflect on the many positive changes we have achieved:

2020-2025 strategy period achievements

We have made surpluses each year since 2020
We achieved our minimum target on reserves in 2024 and maintained it this year
Staff numbers have grown from 97 to 135 (89 FTE)
Income has grown by 75% since 2020
Services for young people have increased 10-fold since Esmée Fairbairn Foundation provided us with a multiyear grant in 2018 to develop this area of work
Activity measured by expenditure on our key strategic pillars of Reach, Research and Advocacy has increased by 271% since 2020
We have invested substantially in better infrastructure – more HR resource and more management time. We have improved processes, policies and systems to guard the wellbeing of our staff, support skills development, monitor service quality, and provide a strong foundation for further growth.

We can be justifiably proud of these achievements.

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Financial review

Restricted income

Income

Restricted income in 2025 was £2,840,661 (2024: £2,460,909). The year-on-year increase of £379,752 was attributable to both government and charitable trust funding which grew by 16% and 14% respectively.

Growth in restricted income over 5 years 2020-2025

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In 2025, total income grew by 7% to £5,169,183 (2024: £4,827,719). £3m
Growth this year has been driven by restricted grant income which is
up 15% year-on-year, whilst unrestricted income has reduced by 2%. £2.5m
£2m
With the 2020-2025 strategy ending in 2025, it is interesting to see our progress over that time span.
Overall income has increased by £2.2 million from £2,969,648 in 2020. The growth over the 5 years
came from restricted income which increased by £1,122,899 (65% up) as well unrestricted income that £1.5m
increased by £1,076,636 (86% up).
£1m
ot
Income growth 2020-2025
£0.5m
0
£3m
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
£2.5m
Government grants Charitable trust grants
£2m
£1.5m Government grant income 2025: Charitable trust grant income 2025:
£1,876,130 (2024: £1,615,942) £964,531 (2024: £844,967)
£1m
Whilst we saw a £20,000 reduction in support for Following a reduction in charitable grant income in
the Stop It Now helpline from Police and Crime 2024 of 17%, it is particularly good to see the level
£0.5m Commissioners (PCCs) this was more than made recover by 14% this year, ending up just 5% behind
up for by the Home Office increasing their grant to the high level of £1,016,277 in 2023.
£800,000 (2024: £660,000). The Home Office also
0 We benefited from two significant new funding
provided a one-off grant of £100,000 to support
streams in 2025. A grant from Oak Foundation
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 the development of a new follow-on service for of £84,525 in support of the helpline evaluation
young people who have accessed the Shore chat
being conducted as part of the Global Prevention
and need more in-depth support.
Unrestricted income Restricted income project, and year one of the three-year Fidelity UK
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Following a reduction in charitable grant income in 2024 of 17%, it is particularly good to see the level recover by 14% this year, ending up just 5% behind the high level of £1,016,277 in 2023.

We benefited from two significant new funding streams in 2025. A grant from Oak Foundation of £84,525 in support of the helpline evaluation being conducted as part of the Global Prevention project, and year one of the three-year Fidelity UK Foundation grant to support our new director of research and impact amounting to £98,943.

The rest of the growth in government grants came from the Scottish Government in support of our activities in Scotland.

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Annual report and financial statements 2024/25 135

Financial review

There were a number of smaller new grants in 2025 from Garfield Weston, the 29th May 1961 Charitable Trust, Spring Impact and Changing Ideas as well as an extra £50,000 from Dawes that helped offset the decrease of £100,000 in KPMG Foundation income in 2025 as the final year 3 income for our education project came through at the end of 2024.

Considering the level of competition for charitable trust grants and the challenges associated with government finances we are particularly pleased with our restricted grant achievements in 2025.

In 2025 our income split was 55% restricted and 45% unrestricted.

Unrestricted income

Unrestricted income in 2025 amounted to £2,328,522 having reduced by £38,288 (2%) year-on-year. (2024: £2,366,810).

The gains we made in unrestricted charitable trust grant income, participant fees and bank interest were not sufficient to offset the fall in professional services income in 2025.

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Unrestricted income 2024 vs 2025
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Income split restricted vs unrestricted 2020-2025

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58% 56% 47% 55% 51% 55%
42% 44% 53% 45% 49% 45%
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
Unrestricted income Restricted income
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sources keep pace with growth in projects funded from restricted funds.

We remain committed to implementing mixed funding models across our projects and services to provide resilience and reduce risks to service continuity and we aim to increase our overall unrestricted sources to 50% of funding, in line with restricted.

While we have successfully secured funding to support key areas such as advocacy, research, and evaluation, unrestricted income remains essential to fully capitalise on emerging opportunities, sustain our media and communications efforts, strengthen our infrastructure and skills development. We also need to keep growing our unrestricted income to generate a surplus and build reserves so we can keep pace with organisational growth.

Complying with grant funder requirements and expectations on overhead allocations leaves us with substantial unrecovered central costs and core activities to fund each year. We need our unrestricted income to close this gap and therefore we have to ensure that our unrestricted income

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£1,200,000
£1,000,000
£800,000
£600,000
£400,000
£200,000
0
Assessments Training & Circles Gifts in kind Participant Donations Investment Unrestricted
& intervention consultancy fees & legacies income charitable
trust grants
2024 2025
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Professional services - assessments and

resume a growth trajectory for this very important part of the child protection system.

interventions income declined by 11% to £1,030,404 (2024: £1,158,746) with the demand for services from local authorities substantially reduced in Quarters 2 and 3 of 2025 as funding constraints curtailed their ability to commission work.

Professional services - training and consultancy

income that had declined by 16% in 2024 reduced again by a further 7% in 2025 to £224,105 (2024: £240,841 & 2023: £286,214). Given the fee increases since 2020 when income was £238,774, the decline in the last five years is quite marked.

We managed to reduce the impact on the bottom line by standing down the cohort of sessional staff who provide a flexible and invaluable resource to delivering our assessments and interventions work each year.

We continue to review promotion opportunities and develop our courses to better meet commissioner needs. A quarter of the year’s income was concentrated in March 25, partly fuelled by preyear-end rush to clear funds but nevertheless an indication of the potential for the service and the demand for our quality offering.

However, demand did rally during the fourth quarter and we remain cautiously optimistic that funds will be found by local authorities and legal aid agency to enable us to get back on track and

Professional services income 2020-2025

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£1,200,000
£1,000,000
£800,000
£600,000
£400,000
£200,000
0
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
Assessments & intervention Training & consultancy
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Unrestricted grant funding made up 23% of our 2025 unrestricted income (2024: 19%). In 2025, with professional services income and the surplus this generates reducing substantially compared to budget, we were fortunate to be able to turn to our unrestricted grant income to plug the gaps.

We were very grateful to receive £542,000 in 2025 (2024:£455,000) an increase of £87,000. This income source has grown significantly since 2021.

Unrestricted charitable trust grants

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£600,000
£400,000
£200,000
0
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
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Achieving our 2020-25 strategic goals to grow the pillars of Reach, Research and Advocacy was made possible by the unrestricted grant funding. Our total expenditure in these areas has grown from £114,422 in 2020 to £495,629 in 2025 (refer the total bars by year in the graph over the page).

£84,401 (16%) was utilised to support organisational development, strengthening our practitioner skills and increasing management capacity (2024: £22,822 - 5%).

£127,182 (23%) provided funding for direct delivery of services with allocations to a number of projects including the helpline, Inform for Young People, our work in schools, circles of support and accountability and family work in Scotland. (2024: £234,879 – 52%)

Unrestricted grant funding (UGF) covered a substantial portion of these core costs supporting 37% of the costs in 2023, 46% in 2024 and 67% in 2025. (Refer the Unrestricted Grant Funding - UGF bars in the graph over the page).

Donations including fundraising and service user donations totalled £142,300, an increase of 13% on the prior year income of £127,509. In addition, we received a legacy of £2,000 (2024: £23,161).

£330,417 (61%) of our unrestricted grant funds was spent in support of the core activities in 2025 (2024: £197,299 - 43%). 2025 was a particularly high contribution as the downturn in professional services income reduced funding available for our media and communications work. We were grateful to be able to avoid cutbacks in these important awareness raising activities by changing the planned allocations for the unrestricted grants in 2025. In the end, 99% of all the media and comms costs for the year were covered by the unrestricted grant income.

Gifts in kind totalled £97,588 (2024: £81,538) and relate to advertising credits from Google, Meta and Microsoft. This is still well below the level of support in 2023 when this free advertising was valued at £150,538. Whilst we continue to encourage more support from the tech industry, we recognise that our own staff capacity constraints have reduced opportunities in 2025 and these are now being addressed.

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Growth in core activities total 2020-2025 showing level
Unrestricted Grant Funded Core Activities (UGF)
£600,000
£400,000
£200,000
0
Total UGF Total UGF Total UGF Total UGF Total UGF Total UGF
2020 2020 2021 2021 2022 2022 2023 2023 2024 2024 2025 2025
aa R&D ukhh Advocacy Reach
Circles was supported with contract payments Maintaining Circles through to the end of January
from HMPPS that amounted to £19,280 in 2025. 2025 for three core members was costly, as was
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Maintaining Circles through to the end of January 2025 for three core members was costly, as was exiting the work, and the contract income was supplemented by an allocation of £25,619 from our unrestricted grant funds in 2025.

Last year the Circles contract income was £50,706 and although we had a £10,000 grant from Circles UK we still needed to subsidise the service with £26,634 from our unrestricted grants. Whilst we would have weathered a loss position as an investment in a new service, HMPPS was unable to provide any commitment to the long term, and as a result trustees agreed in May 2024 to honour any commitments but not take on any further referrals.

Investment income totalled £59,111 up 56% on the prior year (2024: £37,792) and now accounts for 2.5% of our unrestricted income. The increase is attributable to the increase in funds held with many funders paying us in advance. Our cash holding has increased during the year by £504,139 from £2,087,971 (31st March 2024) to £2,592,108 (31st March 2025).

Raising funds

In 2025 the cost of raising funds was £138,924 (2024: £120,102). The appointment of a head of fundraising was made in February 2025 increasing costs, but the full impact of the staffing increase will not be felt until 2026.

Fundraising expenditure includes the cost of the new postholder for 2 months, the fundraising manager and the part time administrator plus the cost of time spent by other key staff in writing, costing and contributing to funding bids and applications, as well as developing strong relationships with our funders.

Expenditure on charitable activities

made up within the financial year, steps were taken to reduce unrestricted costs across the organisation.

During 2025, charitable activity expenditure amounted to £4,458,473 (2024: £4,347,540).

Expenditure provides a measure of the level of activity taking place in the charity and it is good to see expenditure steadily increasing. Since 2020 when charitable expenditure was £2,780,316 we have grown by 60% well ahead of inflation for the period. However, the % increase in 2025 expenditure compared to last year is only 2.55% which is less than inflation and does not represent any overall growth in activity in the last year.

The slowdown in growth in 2025 follows 3 years of considerable change with new staff, new posts and new projects resulting in expenditure increases of 17% in 2022, 15% in 2023 and 11% in 2024. In 2025, some breathing space from growth and change has been beneficial to enable us to strengthen the management capacity, improve practitioner skills, monitor the quality of work delivered and develop the 2025-30 strategic plan, all of which provide us with a sound foundation for expanding our reach in the future.

Having decided in October 2024 that the fall in demand for professional services could not be

Expenditure on charitable activities 2020-2025

----- Start of picture text -----
£5m
£4.5m
£4m
£3.5m
£3m
£2.5m
£2m
£1.5m
£1m
£0.5m
0
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
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The investment in raising funds is still relatively low at 4% of our grants and donations income excluding gifts in kind that totals £3,754,889 (2024: 4% of £3,064,810).

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Average headcount was 136 in 2025 compared to 139 in 2024. We do offer flexible and part time working which is popular with staff so our full time equivalent (FTE) at year end was 89 compared to 86 in 2024. We welcomed 25 new hires with 28 staff leaving (2024: 27 starts and 25 leavers).

We also need to recognise that expenditure is not a good measure of impact. Efficiency gains through changes such as remote working means that a decrease in delivery costs can be supporting an increase in beneficiary numbers.

Over the last five years we have also seen a significant shift in focus from being an organisation primarily engaged in face-to-face delivery which is in depth and expensive, to an organisation that is using its expertise more strategically and at scale through advocacy, communications and campaign work as well as investing in the future through research and evaluation.

We have invested in two new additional roles and we are very grateful to Fidelity UK Foundation who have funded our director of research and impact and to the Oak Foundation who have funded our policy officer.

Other costs

Other costs increased by £24,176 to £936,873 (2024: £912,697). This increase of only 2.6% is below inflation and reflects efforts made during the year to reduce the budgeted expenditure to compensate for the reduced income and surplus coming from professional services.

Staff costs

Staff salaries are our biggest cost and made up 79% of our charity’s expenditure in 2025. We have added a new head of fundraising role and our fundraising investment accounts for 3% of our staff costs. Staff costs rose by 2.5% to £3,521,600 in 2025 (2024: £3,434,843), which includes an April 2024 pay award of 3.5%.

Looking at the expenditure by activity stream, we saw increases in most areas of our work, driven more by inflation than growth.

Expenditure on activity growth 2024 vs 2025

----- Start of picture text -----
Stop It Now helpline
Assessments & interventions
Tackling online sexual abuse
Working with young people
and families
Advocacy, communications
and campaigns
LFF Scotland
LFF Wales
Training & consultancy
Research and evaluation
Circles
0 £0.2m £0.4m £0.6m £0.8m £1m £1.2m £1.4m
2024 2025
----- End of picture text -----

The Stop It Now helpline

Costs increased by 7% to £1,159,368 (2024: £1,086,593). 3.5% is related to pay awards and substantial inflation in telephone and IT costs. There has not been any appreciable increase in capacity other than adding an additional shift to the chat service from July and overall beneficiary numbers are slightly down with frontline services affected by a number of frustrating technical challenges during the year.

Increasing the helpline reach remains a priority and media activity was stepped up during the year. In addition, the helpline team developed a new callback service focusing on protective parenting skills and linking to our Parents’ Protect website. The team was also involved in the Prevention Global led helpline evaluation project, though the bulk of the costs for this are reflected in our research and evaluation work and covered by the Oak funding coming to us via John Hopkins University.

Professional services

Assessments and interventions

Having been expecting to be impacted by the budgetary constraints on local authorities for several years, we were not surprised when we saw enquiries reduce and our conversion rate to referrals also down in the second and third quarters of 2025. Steps were taken early to reduce our use of sessional practitioners and ensure that our permanent staff were fully occupied on the available work or allocated work on other projects.

This is important work for child protection and we are relieved to report that at the beginning of 2025 the flow of work resumed, though we still ended the year with assessments down 19% year-on-year from 270 to 218 and intervention cases down 33% from 84 to 56.

However, costs for delivering this work only reduced by 3% to £812,248 (2024: £840,498) and the gap is attributable to a number of factors.

The April 2024 pay award of 3.5% affected 87% of costs
The move away from sessional to permanent staff for most of the delivery increased costs
The lower volume of work meant a lower recovery of the administration and management overhead
Time spent investigating and gathering information on the causes for the downturn in referrals and establishing options for recovery
Time spent putting in place plans to build up the referral customer base

Training and consultancy

Training and consultancy declined again for a third year. Safer Recruitment events reduced by 25% and our other training courses by 12%. Costs remained relatively high at £146,423, up 7% on 2024 at £136,215.

Covering the fixed administration and management cost overheads with the relatively low volume of work has been challenging and we have been adding further to costs as we implement the recommendations from the 2024 review of the service done by a consultant. Media and communications activity increased and having identified training gaps we developed three new courses in 2025.

Tackling online sexual abuse

The cost of tackling online sexual abuse totalled £298,999 up only 1.5% on the prior year (2024: £294,669). We continue to gain efficiencies and the cost per beneficiary fell again this year thanks to a stable team of sessional staff delivering programmes, experienced administrators, and the use of a dedicated project worker.

62% of the costs relate to delivery of our Inform Plus and Engage Plus programmes. Having seen substantial 22% growth in the beneficiaries last year it is good to see this level of delivery being maintained with 302 participants in 2025, a modest uplift of 2% (2024: 296).

We also deliver Inform courses to the partners, family members and friends of those who have committed online offences and these account for 26% of the costs. We increased beneficiary numbers by 9% this year on top of 52% last year.

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The remaining 12% of the cost of tackling online child sexual abuse is spent on the Family and Friends Forum. Here too, beneficiaries are increasing well ahead of costs with web visitors up 128% to 104,425 in 2025 and active users up by 6.5% from 957 in 2024 to 1019 for 2025.

In 2025, we ran 64 Inform programmes for young people in England and Wales compared to 84 in the prior year and costs were down by 19%. With so many competing demands for our young people practitioners, this core service has suffered from lack of staff resource. We hope this pressure will ease in 2026 with the appointment of a project worker for the young people services.

Working with young people and their families

£25,954 of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation grant to extend the reach of Inform Young People by training practitioners was utilised in 2025 with part of the funding being allocated to evaluating the programmes. The £8,699 still remaining on this fund will be spent in 2026.

We have come a long way since 2018 when we spent £34,671 on running Inform Young People and secured a multiyear grant from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to develop services to address the needs of young people. Our expenditure on young people services excluding assessments and interventions totalled £323,229 in 2025 (2024: £336,528).

The trustees approved an allocation of £40,000 from unrestricted grants to cover costs on the Everyone’s Safer project in schools. This reduced the drawdown on the KPMG Foundation grant for

Growth In Young People Services 2018 to 2025

----- Start of picture text -----
£350,000
£300,000
£250,000
£200,000
£150,000
£100,000
£50,000
0
2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
Inform YP Development of YP website
funded by Charles Haywood
Inform YP Train the Trainer & Evaluation
Shore
funded by Paul Hamlyn
YP Service Development
Shore Plus
funded by Esmee Fairbairn
Everyone’s Safer - work in schools
funded by KPMG Foundation and unrestricted grants in 2025
----- End of picture text -----

the project down to £52,626 enabling us to reserve the final balance on the 3-year grant for use in 2026. The trustees recognised the importance of maintaining momentum in the education sector whilst we seek new grant funding from charitable trusts and hopefully succeed in securing government support from the DfE.

The original grants from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Charles Haywood Foundation laid the essential foundations for Shore, our service supporting young people. Thanks to a significant £100,000 investment from the Home Office for 2024 and 2025, we were able to further develop the website, which now provides a much-needed and valued resource for young people navigating complex issues.

In March 2025 work started on a follow-on service for young people who have accessed Shore chat but need more specific support. Only £591 of a £100,000 grant from the Home Office was spent in 2025 and so the bulk of the project will be delivered in 2026.

Advocacy, communications and campaigns

After growth of 32% last year we are pleased to have increased advocacy, communications and campaign activities in 2025 by a further 10%, spending £746,094 (2024: £676,241).

This area of our work includes free advertising from Google, Snapchat, Meta and Microsoft. We had seen a significant decline in 2024 from £150,538 to £80,038 and it is good to see these levels increase with 2025 advertising valued at £97,588. Plans are now in place to capitalise further on the opportunities here and increased levels are expected in 2026.

Our campaign to deter child sexual abuse offending online, which is supported by the Home Office, continues but we had a very slow start and expenditure for the year was down by 27% to £140,734 compared to £193,709 in 2024. Delays occurred with the Home Office processes impacted by the election and we also had capacity issues with vacant posts in our media and comms team.

Project Intercept, funded by Nominet UK, to develop and expand warning messages online went into its third year but in terms of expenditure we have only used a third of the £932,000 awarded and the project is expected to run for another two years. We have made good progress in developing tech partnerships and new interventions in 2025, utilising £151,383 of the grant (2024: £130,234). We have also made significant progress in driving systems change – one of the project’s core objectives.

We had a very busy year in terms of advocacy activities with costs increasing by 69% to £109,537 (2024: 64,723). Activities included:

Collaborating with the Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse and the Marie Collins Foundation to grow our collective influence, part of a project funded by the Indigo Foundation.
Contributing to the debate relating to the Online Safety Act, the Independent Pornography Review and a legislative mandatory reporting duty to ensure that safeguards to child protection services are recognised.
Attending and speaking at conferences nationally and internationally.

We also expanded our resources with a policy officer joining the team in late January 2025, an appointment made possible by funding from Oak Foundation.

The balance of the expenditure relates to media and comms activity in 2025. In spite of staff vacancies for part of the year a considerable amount was achieved with website developments and a strong presence across press, radio and social media. 2025 expenditure of £246,852 (2024: 207,537) was supported by funding of £207,944 from our restricted grants and the remainder of costs is funded from donations and surpluses generated through professional services.

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LFF Scotland

Vacant posts for part of the year kept costs down but the demand for services is increasing and even with service delivery supplemented by students and volunteers the staff are under considerable pressure. In 2025, the cost of LFF Scotland activities was £516,245 (2024: £496,729).

With only a 4% cost increase in spite of inflation, a significant increase in delivery was achieved across the four main projects in Scotland.

Working with families reached 145 families (2024:97), a 49% increase.
Working with individuals who present a risk to children benefited 71 participants (2024:58), a 22% increase.
Working with young people reached 33 young people (2024: 15), a 120% increase.
The Everyone’s Safer schools project involved 11 schools (2024: 2), a significant increase.

Managing the Scotland budgets has become increasingly challenging with multiple restricted grant funding streams as well as the need to develop unrestricted income streams. In 2025 the costs were covered by the following funding sources:

£275,784, amounting to 53% of the total costs were covered by three Scottish Government grants and one from City of Edinburgh.
£143,110, 28% of costs was supported by seven charitable trust funds and Baillie Gifford, a corporate sponsor.
£28,000, 5% of Scotland’s costs required an allocation by trustees from the unrestricted grant funds.
£31,224, 6% of costs are covered by a mix of donations, income from reports to the court for programme participants, student placement fees from universities and delivering paid for training and consultancy.

LFF Wales

The Welsh Government grants were originally agreed for 2021 to 2023 and have been extended for a further three years taking us through to March 2026. Whilst the funding for the last two years has presented some challenges and required us to reduce staffing hours to contain costs at 2023 levels we have still achieved year-on-year output increases.

Keeping Children Safe, a grant of £94,612 for primary prevention activities, reached 4,697 beneficiaries, an increase of 17% on the prior year (2024: 3,998).
Early Intervention, a grant of £97,153, enabled us to work with 54 families and nine young people compared to 60 families in 2024.

Wales has also had the benefit of funding from Conwy County Borough Council since 2015 to deliver child sexual abuse prevention awareness sessions to parents and carers across the borough, with a focus on families with children who have additional needs. The grant amount was £7,500 for a second year and we delivered 16 sessions to 120 participants (2024: 15 sessions to 103).

These grants did not fully cover all the costs, and the balance was made up with £602 from unrestricted reserves and a further allocation from other central unrestricted income to cover the final allocation of central overheads not recouped in the standard 10% applied to project expenditure.

Research and evaluation

Our investment in research and evaluation increased significantly between 2020, when it amounted to £17,341, and 2024 when our costs totalled £180,997. The uplift this year is relatively low at 5% taking expenditure up to £190,837, but we expect growth to resume again in 2026.

The helpline evaluation grant of £84,525 from Oak Foundation coming to us via John Hopkins University was received in 2025 impacting on income but only £11,579 was utilised in 2025 leaving £72,946 for costs in 2026.

In addition, we aim to recruit a data scientist in 2026 to be funded by the Fidelity UK Foundation and we will have the full 12 months cost of our new director of research and impact who only joined us late in January 2025.

A substantial portion of our costs in 2025 (£70,444) relate to our head of research and evaluation post and the work she undertakes across the Foundation which has been funded in part by Porticus UK and partly by our unrestricted grant funding.

Other significant activity includes the work on the Salus app which blocks sexual images of children online costing £28,938 in 2025. This was funded by the European Commission-funded Protech Project consortium but they only cover about 74% of the costs and the balance is supported from our unrestricted grant funds.

The remaining £79,876 of research expenditure in 2025 relates to the recruitment and cost of the new director, our partnership work with post graduates on doctoral theses, the Faithfull Papers, the project on understanding intrafamilial abuse funded by the World Childhood Foundation and evaluation work being done across all our projects and services.

Circles

Expenditure on Circles in 2024 included the setup of this service which was costly at £91,140. Sadly, the constraints on HMPPS that prevented them being able to commit funds for the long term made the service unviable for us. As a consequence of this we paused acceptance of new referrals in February 2024 and in May 2024 the trustees approved the decision to wind down the service.

During 2025 we honoured our responsibility to three core members. In January 2025, when the last circle completed, we closed the service with costs incurred of £48,660. The HMPPS contract covered £19,280 of the costs and the trustees allocated £25,619 of the unrestricted grant funding. The £167 balance was made up from a small grant for volunteers’ costs, with the remaining central overhead cost allocation covered from our other unrestricted income.

The £38,127 cost that remains relates to the allocation of central unrecovered overheads that are apportioned across all the charity’s activities but recovered from central unrestricted income.

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Where our funding came from in 2025

What we did with our funding in 2025

----- Start of picture text -----
• [ 36% Government grants]
----- End of picture text -----

[ 24% Professional services]
[ 19% Restricted charitable trusts]
[ 10% Unrestricted charitable trust grants]
[ 4% Participant fees]
[ 3% Donations]
[ 2% Gifts in kind]
[ 1.1% Investment income]
[ 0.4% Circles]
[ 26% Stop It Now helpline]
[ 18% Assessments and interventions]
[ 7% Tackling online sexual abuse]
[ 7% Working with young people and families]
[ 17% Advocacy, communications and campaigns]
[ 12% LFF Scotland]
[ 5% LFF Wales]
[3% Training and consultancy]
[4% Research and international work]
[ 1% Circles]

How each area of work was funded 2025

----- Start of picture text -----
Research and
international work
Circles
LFF Wales
LFF Scotland
Advocacy,
communications and
campaigns
Working with young
people and families
Tackling online
sexual abuse
Stop It Now helpline
Professional services
0 £200,000 £400,000 £600,000 £800,000 £1,000,000 £1,200,000
Government grants Charitable trust
Invoiced Gifts in kind
Donations Participant fees
Allocation of unrestricted funds Allocation of professional services surplus and sundry income
----- End of picture text -----

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Looking ahead to 2026

of their commitment of £300,000 for the next 3 years, with £140,000 for 2026, and £80,000 in both 2027 and 2028.

Budget 2026

Our budget for 2026 expects income of £5,435,070 (2025 Actual: £5,169,183) and expenditure of £5,335,070 (2025 Actual: £4,597,397).

An anonymous donor renewed their three-year grant in 2024, and we will receive year three funding of £25,000 in 2026.

The expenditure increase is 16%. This rise reflects a 3% pay award to staff, inflation across other costs and the full year impact of organisational development in 2025 with additional HR, fundraising, advocacy, research, impact and evaluation resource as well as growth in service delivery.

We were particularly pleased to receive an award of £30,000 from The Dulverton Trust having been nominated for a valedictory grant from their previous director.

We are aiming to increase our professional services income by 10%, and that is without raising our fee rates, and we have set a high target of £200,000 donations for our fundraising team, which is 40% up on 2025.

Restricted grant income: secured funding for 2025-2026

At the end of March 2025, we held £1,374,611 of restricted grant funding to support our activities. Refer to note 19 for the full details. In addition to this, we have £2,107,051 secured for 2026 and £87,296 for 2027.

Our grant funders support our projects and core activities and we have secured over 95% of what we need to grow these services by 18% next year.

Home Office funding is confirmed of £1,286,727 for 2026 made up of £170,000 for the online child sexual abuse deterrence campaign, £100,000 for Shore, our website and chat service for young people, and £1,016,727 for our Stop It Now helpline – of which £216,727 is the contribution from the Ministry of Justice.

Unrestricted grant income: secured funding for 2025-2026

We have secured unrestricted grant funding of £432,000 for 2026, £327,000 for 2027, £285,000 for 2028.

The Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner have committed £5,000 for a third year in support of the helpline.

2026 is the second year of our four-year grant commitment from Oak Foundation providing us with £237,000 for 2026, £247,000 for 2027 and £205,000 for 2028. We are incredibly grateful for their continued support and confidence in our work to protect children from harm. This funding provides much needed support across all our activities including frontline delivery, media and communications, research and advocacy, as well as organisational development.

The Welsh Government’s support for our early intervention project and the Keeping Children Safe project has been extended for a sixth year with a total of £191,764. In addition, Conwy Borough Council has awarded us a further grant of £7,500 for the year ahead.

Our advocacy work in 2026 will be supported by £40,000 from John Ellerman Foundation, being year three of a three-year commitment.

The prevention of child sexual abuse remains a focus for Indigo Trust and we are very appreciative

A two-year grant from The Emmanuel Kaye Foundation goes into its second year in 2026 with funding of £50,000 to support the Inform courses and a project worker who works across our Family and Friends Forum, Inform, Inform Plus and Engage Plus.

The 29th May Charitable Trust awarded us a threeyear grant in 2025 and £6,000 is expected for 2026 and the final £6,000 for 2027.

The balance of year one funding from the Fidelity UK Foundation of £40,318 is due as soon as the data scientist post is filled. Year two of the threeyear grant funding amounts to £109,443 and is expected before the end of 2026, and a further £81,296 is committed for 2027 to support the post of the director of research and impact as well as a data scientist.

Paul Hamlyn Foundation has agreed to support us with a two-year grant of £100,000 split evenly between 2026 and 2027 to develop a youth engagement and advocacy programme.

The Scottish Government has committed funding for 2026 as follows: £114,000 to support LFF Scotland core costs and other activities, £151,668 for the Inform Plus and Breaking the Links programmes and £19,950 for prevention activities.

RS Macdonald’s grant for work in schools is now in its third and final year with £15,000 awarded for 2026. This is match funded by the City of Edinburgh Council.

Baillie Gifford funding of £25,000 is secured for partnership work in Scotland in 2026, being year two of a three-year grant with the final £25,000 due in 2027.

Fundraising plans

Including the carry forward from 2025 of £1,374,611, we have secured a total of £3,946,480 in restricted and unrestricted grant funding for 2026. However not all of these grants will be fully utilised on their respective projects and some of this funding will be carried forward into 2027.

We look forward to the impact of our expanded fundraising team who are tasked with diversifying our income and building our unrestricted income from donations, legacies and fundraising events as well as expanding our grant funding and corporate support.

Priorities

The helpline benefits from substantial government support but keeping up with inflation and plans for future growth are dependent on fundraising campaign work in 2026.

The multiyear funding from the Welsh Government comes to an end in March 2026 and securing new funding is vital to ensure continuity of service provision in Wales.

While we continue to urge the DfE to recognise the needs for specialist support on tackling harmful sexual behaviour in schools, we need to secure other funding to maintain the momentum achieved through our KPMG Foundation funded project that started in 2022, as this funding will be fully utilised mid-way through 2026.

Scotland funding pressures continue, exacerbated by an office move in June 2025, service demand outstripping current staffing level and staff changes in the Scotland post that supports their fundraising. There is much work to be done here to ensure we can not only maintain but grow our service delivery.

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Reserves

Over the last five years we have increased our reserves by £1.6 million, increasing from £1,157,626 on 1st April 2020 to £2,747,595 by 31st March 2025.

Restricted reserves

Restricted reserves at the end of March 2025 totalled £1,374,611, up 43% on the prior year (2024: £960,161).

Unrestricted reserves are up by £874,415 (175%) which is attributable to the surpluses achieved over the five-year period and restricted reserves are up £715,554 (109%). Whilst the year-on-year increase in the restricted fund balance at 31 March can simply reflect the timing of when grants are signed and paid to us, this sustained growth since 2020 in our restricted reserves also reflects our success in securing new grant funders and our ability to retain their support over the long-term.

The increase of £414,450 is partly attributable to three new grants received late in the year and therefore only a small portion had been spent by the year end. We are holding £99,409 of funding from the Home Office to develop our Shore follow-on service, £82,918 of year one of the grant for our director of research and impact post from the Fidelity UK Foundation and £72,946 of funding for the helpline evaluation funded by Oak Foundation through John

Growth in reserves 2020-2025

----- Start of picture text -----
£3m
£2.5m
£2m
£1.5m
£1m
£0.5m
0
2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
Unrestricted reserves Restricted reserves
----- End of picture text -----

Hopkins University. In addition, the full three years of funding from Nominet for the Intercept project has been paid to us increasing the balance held by £148,617 from £470,488 in March 2024 up to £619,105 at the end of March 2025.

This level of restricted grant funding secured for the year ahead enables us to budget and plan more confidently, though it will be difficult to sustain at quite this level once the spending of year 2 and 3 Nominet funding is underway in 2026 and 2027. It will take a substantial new project and grant funding to replace the Nominet levels in reserve at the year end.

Unrestricted reserves

Our surplus of £157,366 for the year increased our unrestricted reserves to £1,372,984 (2024: 1,215,648).

Designated reserves

Included in the unrestricted reserves are designated reserves totalling £112,195 (2024: £116,584).

On an annual basis, the net book value of LFF’s fixed assets is designated so that the cost of future years’ depreciation charges is set aside. In 2025, this amounted to £30,782 (2024: £43,084).

The trustees have also set aside £81,413 for the following commitments and planned expenditure in 2026.

£39,113 to complete the first year of the new policy officer post
£8,000 to fund a cyber security review
£15,000 to invest in a new fundraising database
£10,800 for the Windows 11 upgrade
£8,500 for a practitioner team development event

Reserves policy reflecting principal risks

The trustees keep the reserves under regular review and have set the target for unrestricted and undesignated funds to fall within a range of threeto-six months of total expenditure (excluding gifts in kind). This equates to £1,124,952 to £2,249,904 in monetary terms (2024: £1,096,527 to £2,193,054).

This reserves policy results from the trustees’ review of risk in light of the following issues.

Working capital required for growth
Working capital is required to enable us to increase our fundraising capacity and undertake other initiatives to increase unrestricted income.
Developing existing and new services
Investment is needed to ensure services stay relevant and their impact is maximised. In addition, we need to develop new services responding to technological change, research and beneficiary demands.
The short-term nature of grants
We have a high investment in retaining our staff whose specialist skills are vital to our future. We need time to secure replacement activities, retrain staff where necessary and switch staff into new areas of work.
The price rises and additional pressures on local authority budgets
Risk of cuts in professional services income (assessments and interventions, training and consultancy) leading to losses.
The variable nature of grants and the uncertainty of the timing of renewal
It is often the case that we are not told whether some grants will be renewed until the previous year’s grant has come to an end. The final signing off of government grant paperwork can also take months and political uncertainty can result in delays of six months plus.
Grant payment cash flow
We have to be able to fund the costs of grantfunded projects for up to four months before payments are received as some grant funders pay only quarterly in arrears.

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There can also be a significant time lag between grant-funded projects starting and the payments being finalised and received, so we need to be able to fund our work in the interim period.

Consideration of the adequacy of current reserve levels

At the end of March 2025, we achieved unrestricted, undesignated, free reserves of £1,260,689 equivalent to 3.36 months expenditure and ahead of the minimum three months’ target by £135,737. (2023: £1,098,964 – 3.01 months - ahead of target by £2,437).

Whilst we are pleased to be within the target range, the trustees are mindful that with organisational growth the target increases as expenditure increases. Therefore, the financial objective to make surpluses and build reserves remains until such time as our free reserves sit more comfortably within the range of three to six months.

The budget for 2026 expects expenditure of £5,250,070 excluding gifts in kind, and we plan to make a surplus of £100,000. This will keep us within the target range but reserves measured in months expenditure cover drop back to 3.18 months.

Going concern

The trustees have reviewed LFF’s financial resources and are satisfied that these are sufficient to ensure its ability to continue as a going concern for the foreseeable future, therefore the financial statements have been prepared on this basis.

Risks are regularly reviewed by the senior leadership team and the trustee board, with mitigation steps put in place and monitored on an ongoing basis.

Treasury policy

Funds are held in cash and deposit accounts, access to which reflects our operational needs and the interest rates obtainable. We maximise interest earned whilst minimising the risk and staying fluid enough to meet any eventualities, as authorised by the Governance, Finance, Operations and Risk committee.

Related party transactions

There were several related party transactions in the year ended 31 March 2025 (2024: several). Details are set out in note 24 to the financial statements.

Statement of trustees’ responsibilities

enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006, the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005, the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (as amended) and the provisions of the Charity’s constitution. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the Charity and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities. Insofar as each of the trustees of the Charity at the date of approval of this report is aware, there is no relevant audit information (information needed by the company’s auditor in connection with preparing the audit report) of which the company’s auditor is unaware. Each trustee has taken all of the steps that they should have taken as a trustee in order to make them self-aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the company’s auditor is aware of that information.

The trustees (who are also directors of The Lucy Faithfull Foundation for the purposes of company law) are responsible for preparing the Trustees’ Annual Report and financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (United Kingdom Accounting Standards).

Company law requires the trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year. Under company law, the trustees must not approve the financial statements unless they are satisfied that they give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charitable company, and of the incoming resources and application of resources, including the income and expenditure, of the charitable company for that period. In preparing these financial statements, the trustees are required to:

select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently

Auditor

observe the methods and principles in the Charity statement of recommended practice (SORP)

Crowe U.K. LLP is the auditor of the Foundation and will be proposed for reappointment in accordance with section 485 of the Companies Act 2006. In preparing this report, the trustees have taken advantage of the small companies’ exemptions provided by Section 415A of the Companies Act 2006.

make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent
state whether applicable UK accounting standards have been followed, subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements

The trustees’ report was approved by the board of trustees on 19 September 2025 and signed on its behalf by:

prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the charitable company will continue in business.

The trustees are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records that are sufficient to show and explain the charitable company’s transactions, disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charitable company and

Jane Leach BSc FCA

Chair

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Financial review

Independent auditor’s report to the members of The Lucy Faithfull Foundation

the Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the charitable company in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC’s Ethical Standard, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of The Lucy Faithfull Foundation (‘the charitable company’) for the year ended 31 March 2025 which comprise the Statement of Financial Activities, the Balance Sheet, the Statement of Cash Flows and notes to the financial statements, including significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the trustees’ use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate. Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue. Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

In our opinion the financial statements:

give a true and fair view of the charitable company’s affairs as at 31 March 2025 and of its incoming resources and application of resources for the year then ended;
have been properly prepared in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice; and
have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 and the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 and Regulations 6 and 8 of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (amended)

Other information

Basis for opinion

The trustees are responsible for the other information contained within the annual report. The other information comprises the information included in the annual report, other than the

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in

financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.

Our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements, or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether this gives rise to a material misstatement in the financial statements themselves. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact. We have nothing to report in this regard.

Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion based on the work undertaken in the course of our audit:

the information given in the trustees’ report, which includes the directors’ report and the strategic report prepared for the purposes of company law, for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and
the strategic report and the directors’ report included within the trustees’ report have been prepared in accordance with applicable legal requirements.

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In light of the knowledge and understanding of the charitable company and the environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the strategic report or the directors’ report included within the trustees’ report.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Companies Act 2006 and the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

adequate and proper accounting records have not been kept or returns adequate for our audit have not been received from branches not visited by us; or
the financial statements are not in agreement with the accounting records and returns; or
certain disclosures of trustees’ remuneration specified by law are not made; or
we have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit

Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the trustees’ responsibilities statement set out on page 155, the trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

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Financial review

Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

We have been appointed as auditor under section 44(1)(c) of the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 and under the Companies Act 2006 and report in accordance with the Acts and relevant regulations made or having effect thereunder.

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

Details of the extent to which the audit was considered capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations are set out below.

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities ~~OO~~ This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

Extent to which the audit was considered capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of noncompliance with laws and regulations. We identified and assessed the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements from irregularities, whether due to fraud or error, and discussed these between our audit team members. We then designed and performed audit procedures responsive to those risks, including obtaining audit evidence sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

We obtained an understanding of the legal and regulatory frameworks within which the charitable company operates, focusing on those laws and regulations that have a direct effect on the

determination of material amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. The laws and regulations we considered in this context were the Companies Act 2006, the Charities Act 2011 and The Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 together with the Charities SORP (FRS 102) (2019). We assessed the required compliance with these laws and regulations as part of our audit procedures on the related financial statement items.

In addition, we considered provisions of other laws and regulations that do not have a direct effect on the financial statements but compliance with which might be fundamental to the charitable company’s ability to operate or to avoid a material penalty. We also considered the opportunities and incentives that may exist within the charitable company for fraud.

Auditing standards limit the required audit procedures to identify non-compliance with these laws and regulations to enquiry of the Trustees and other management and inspection of regulatory and legal correspondence, if any.

We identified the greatest risk of material impact on the financial statements from irregularities, including fraud, to be with the completeness and timing of grant income and the override of controls by management. Our audit procedures to respond to these risks included enquiries of management, and the Governance, Finance, Operations & Risk Committee about their own identification and assessment of the risks of irregularities, sample testing on the posting of journals, reviewing accounting estimates for biases, reviewing regulatory correspondence with the Charity Commission, Scottish Charity Regulator, designing audit procedures over the completeness and timing of grant income, and reading minutes of meetings of those charged with governance.

Owing to the inherent limitations of an audit, there is an unavoidable risk that we may not have detected some material misstatements in the financial statements, even though we have properly planned and performed our audit in accordance with auditing standards. For example, the further removed non-compliance with laws and regulations (irregularities) is from the events and transactions

reflected in the financial statements, the less likely the inherently limited procedures required by auditing standards would identify it. In addition, as with any audit, there remained a higher risk of non-detection of irregularities, as these may involve collusion, forgery, intentional omissions, misrepresentations, or the override of internal controls. We are not responsible for preventing non-compliance and cannot be expected to detect non-compliance with all laws and regulations.

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company’s members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006, and to the charitable company’s trustees, as a body, in accordance with Regulation 10 of the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company’s members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company’s members as a body and the charitable company’s trustees as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

Helin Brunell Helen Blundell LLB FCA FCIE DChA

Senior Statutory Auditor For and on behalf of Crowe U.K. LLP Statutory Auditor Black Country House, Rounds Green Road, Oldbury, B69 2DG

[Date] 14 November 2025

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Financial review

Statement of fnancial activities

for the year ended 31 March 2025

		Unrestricted	Restricted	Total	Unrestricted	Restricted	Total
		Funds 2025	Funds 2025	Funds 2025	Funds 2024	Funds 2024	Funds 2024
		£	£	£	£	£	£
Income from:
Donations and legacies	2	241,888	-	241,888	230,439	-	230,439
Charitable activities	5	2,027,523	2,840,661	4,868,184	2,098,579	2,460,909	4,559,488
Investments	3	59,111	-	59,111	37,792	-	37,792
~~Total Income~~		~~2,328,522~~	~~2,840,661~~	~~5,169,183~~	~~2,366,810~~	~~2,460,909~~	~~4,827,719~~
Expenditure on:
Raising funds	4	138,924	-	138,924	120,102*	-	120,102
Charitable activities	6	2,032,262	2,426,211	4,458,473	1,986,511*	2,361,029	4,347,540
~~Total Expenditure~~		~~2,171,186~~	~~2,426,211~~	~~4,597,397~~	~~2,106,613~~	~~2,361,029~~	~~4,467,642~~
Net income (expenditure) and
movement in funds		157,336	414,450	571,786	260,197	99,880	360,077
Reconciliation of funds
Total funds brought forward		1,215,648	960,161	2,175,809	955,451	860,281	1,815,732
~~Total funds carried forward~~	~~18, 19~~	~~1,372,984~~	~~1,374,611~~	~~2,747,595~~	~~1,215,648~~	~~960,161~~	~~2,175,809~~

*2024 comparatives have been restated to reflect the change in overhead allocations implemented in 2025. Refer Note 1g) in accounting policies.

The notes on pages 163 to 182 form part of these financial statements.

Financial review

Balance sheet

as at 31 March 2025 Registered number: 02729957

		2025	2024
	Note	£	£
Fixed assets
Intangible assets	11	23,993	33,591
Tangible assets	12	6,789	9,493
Investments	13	100	100
		30,882	43,184
Current assets
Debtors	15	673,127	551,438
Cash at bank and in hand		2,592,108	2,087,969
		3,265,235	2,639,407
Creditors
Amounts falling due within one year	16	(548,522)	(506,782)
Net current assets		2,716,683	2,132,625
~~Net assets~~		~~2,747,595~~	~~2,175,809~~
Funds
Unrestricted funds	18	1,372,984	1,215,648
Restricted funds	19	1,374,611	960,161
~~Total funds~~	~~18, 19~~	~~2,747,595~~	~~2,175,809~~

The notes on pages 163 to 182 form part of these financial statements.

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the provisions applicable to small companies within Part 15 of the Companies Act 2006.

The financial statements were authorised for issue and approved by the trustees on 19th September 2025 and signed on their behalf by:

Jane Leach BSc FCA

Chair

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Financial review

Statement of cash fows

Financial review

Notes to the fnancial statements

for the year ended 31 March 2025

		2025	2024
	Note	£	£
Cash flows from operating activities
Net cash provided by operating activities	25	446,330	276,316
Cash flows from investing activities
Interest received	3	59,111	37,792
Purchase of tangible fixed assets	12	(1,302)	(9,707)
Net cash used in investing activities		57,809	28,085
Change in cash and cash equivalents in the reporting period		504,139	304,401
Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the reporting period		2,087,969	1,783,568
~~Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the reporting period~~		~~2,592,108~~	~~2,087,969~~

The notes on pages 163 to 182 form part of these financial statements.

1. Accounting policies

(a) Basis of accounting

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice (FRS 102) applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with FRS102 the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland 2019, the Charities Act 2011, the Companies Act 2006, the Charities and Trustee Investment (Scotland) Act 2005 and the Charities Accounts (Scotland) Regulations 2006 and UK Generally.

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102.

Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant accounting policy note(s).

Under section 405 of the Companies Act 2006, consolidated accounts have not been prepared as the inclusion of the dormant subsidiaries is not material for the purpose of giving a true and fair view. Therefore, the financial statements present information on the parent entity as an individual undertaking only.

(b) Company Information

The Charity is a private company limited by guarantee (company no. 02729957) and a registered Charity in England and Wales (Charity no. 1013025), and in Scotland (Scottish registered Charity no. SC039888), which is incorporated and domiciled in the UK. The address of the registered office is 2 Birch House, Harris Business Park, Hanbury Road, Stoke Prior, Bromsgrove B60 4DJ.

(c) Going concern

The trustees believe that the Charity’s financial resources and contingency planning are sufficient to ensure the ability of the Charity to continue as a going concern for the foreseeable future, being at least twelve months from the date of approval of these financial statements and therefore have prepared the financial statements on a going concern basis. The cash balance at the yearend was £2,592,108 (2024: £2,087,969) of which £1,429,256 was unrestricted (2024: £1,222,931 unrestricted).

Demand for our professional services remains high as measured by the trend on enquiry levels and the pipeline records of booked work, and although we expect it to be very challenging to achieve the full budgeted surplus of £100,000 for 2026, we are confident that we will get to a surplus position.

(d) Financial instruments

The Charity has financial assets and financial liabilities of a kind that qualify as basic financial instruments. Basic financial instruments are initially recognised at transaction value and subsequently measured at their settlement amount. Financial assets held at amortised cost comprise cash at bank and in hand, together with trade and other debtors and accrued income. Financial liabilities held at amortised cost comprise trade and other creditors. Investments in subsidiary undertakings are held at cost less impairment.

(e) Fund accounting

General funds are unrestricted funds that are available for use at the discretion of the trustees in furtherance of the objects of the Charity.

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Designated funds comprise general funds, which have been set aside at the discretion of the trustees for specific purposes.

Restricted funds are to be used in accordance with specific restrictions imposed by the donors or which have been raised by the Charity for particular purposes. The aim and use of the restricted funds are set out in note 19.

(f) Income

Income is recognised when the Charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions attached to the item(s) of income have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and the amount can be measured reliably.

Donations are recognised on a receipt basis.

Legacies are recognised at the earlier of estate accounts or receipt.

When funding has been specified by the funder as being for a future period, or the Charity has not yet demonstrated entitlement to the income, through performance conditions not having been met, then the income is deferred.

Work in progress at the year-end is accrued for and valued based on detailed timesheets indicating the level of work completed.

All other income is accounted for on an accrual basis.

(g) Expenditure

All expenditure is accounted for on an accrual basis and has been classified under headings that aggregate all costs related to the category. Where costs, including support costs, cannot be directly attributed to particular headings they have been allocated to activities on a basis consistent with the use of the acquisition, the proportion of staff time spent, or as a percentage of the total direct expenditure on each type of activity.

Restatement of expenditure comparatives

In 2025, we have made a change to the allocation of unrecoverable overheads so that all the charity’s activities bear a fair and proportionate amount of the cost. Previously assessments and intervention and training and consultancy carried these costs. The change affects note 4, 6 and 7 and comparatives have been restated to reflect the new allocation policy.

Dilapidation provision – the Charity has provided for its possible liability in relation to its leasehold property which has been estimated as disclosed in note 22.

Governance costs comprise constitutional and statutory requirements incurred in the general running of the charitable company. Redundancy and termination payments are made in line with the terms of settlement agreements and accrued at the point of commitment when the amount of the payment can be reliably measured.

(h) Recognition and valuation of donated goods and services

Where material, the Charity value of donated services as gifts in kind (refer to note 2) and records expenditure at the same value in the appropriate expenditure heading.

The valuation of these services is calculated at the normal rates applied by the donor for these goods and services, which is the price the Charity would pay in the open market for the item.

(i) Intangible fixed assets

Identifiable non-monetary assets (in excess of £10,000) without physical substance are valued at a realistic replacement cost and amortised over the expected useful economic life as follows:

Website and films 33.33% straight line Business system implementation 20% straight line

Amortisation is included in charitable activities expenditure.

(j) Tangible fixed assets

Tangible fixed assets are depreciated at rates calculated to write off the cost on a straight-line basis over the expected useful economic lives of the assets as follows:

Computer equipment 33.33% straight line Furniture and fittings 20% straight line Office refurbishment 25% straight line

The Charity has a policy of capitalising fixed assets where expenditure on such assets is in excess of £1,000. The amounts capitalised are net of recoverable VAT.

(k) Debtors and creditors

Debtors, with the exception of prepayments, are those amounts that satisfy the income recognition policy in note (f) above, and are recognised at the settlement amount due, where funds have not been received at the yearend. Prepayments are expenditure amounts in excess of £1,000 that have been paid in the current financial year relating to costs to be incurred in a future accounting period. These are valued at the amount prepaid net of any trade discounts due.

Creditors with the exception of deferred income are recognised where the Charity has a present obligation resulting from a past event that will probably result in the transfer of funds to a third party and the amount due to settle the obligation can be measured or estimated reliably. Creditors are normally recognised at their settlement amount after allowing for any trade discounts.

Deferred income relates to income received in the current financial year for future events post-yearend where the terms and conditions imposed on this income have not been met.

Therefore, the income is not recognised but deferred as a liability until it is probable that the terms and conditions can be met.

(l) Cash at bank and in hand

Cash at bank and cash in hand includes petty cash, and cash in bank accounts.

(m) Operating leases

Rentals applicable to operating leases, where substantially all the benefits and risks of ownership remain with the lessor, are recognised in the SOFA over the period of the lease.

(n) Investments

Fixed asset investments are stated at market value at the Balance Sheet date. Investments in subsidiaries are valued at cost less provision for impairment.

(o) Recognition of liabilities

Liabilities are recognised once there is a legal or constructive obligation that commits the Charity to the obligation.

(p) Taxation

The company is a registered Charity, and as such is entitled to tax exemptions on all its income and gains properly applied for its charitable purposes.

(q) Volunteers

Volunteer time is not recognised in the accounts (as per the Charity SORP) as they cannot be reliably valued. We had twelve Circles volunteers and benefited from the support of another seven volunteers, and students who supplement our staffing resource with specialist clinical skills or administrative support.

(r) Pensions

With effect from May 2014, the Charity automatically enrols all qualifying new employees into the NEST contributory pension scheme. Employer contributions are accounted for when they fall due. Pension costs are apportioned to projects and services based on the allocation of staff time between activities.

The costs are split between restricted and unrestricted in line with the related income and funding for the activity.

(s) Critical accounting judgements and key sources of estimation uncertainty

In the application of the Charity’s accounting policies, which are described above, trustees are required to make judgements, estimates, and assumptions about the carrying values of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. The estimates and underlying assumptions are based on historical experience and other factors that are considered to be relevant. Actual results may differ from these estimates.

The estimates and underlying assumptions are reviewed on an ongoing basis. Revisions to accounting estimates are recognised in the period in which the estimate is revised if the revision affects only that period or in the period of the revision and future periods if the revision affects the current and future periods.

The key sources of estimation uncertainty that have a significant effect on the amounts recognised in the financial statements are described in the accounting policies and are summarised below (as applicable):

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Grant income recognition - The grant income is recognised at the point when the charity has full entitlement to the income and for multi-year grants, has met any performance delivery requirements.
Intangible assets – The Charity estimates the value of the non-physical assets based on their original cost and replacement cost.
Depreciation and amortisation – The Charity depreciates and amortises its assets at rates calculated to write off the cost on a straight-line basis over the expected useful economic lives.
Project expenditure allocation – where there are alternative funds supporting expenditure the trustees make judgements about the most appropriate restricted funding source to utilise and opt to allocate against unrestricted funds on occasion so that restricted funding can be reserved for the next year.
Impairment of debtors - The Charity makes an estimate of trade debtors and other debtors. When assessing the impairment of trade debtors and other debtors, management considers factors including the credit rating of the debtor, the ageing profile of debtors and historical experience.
Dilapidation provision – The Charity has provided for its possible liability in relation to its leasehold property which has been estimated as disclosed in note 22.

2. Income from donations and legacies

Unrestricted
Restricted
Total
Unrestricted
Restricted
Total
Funds 2025
Funds 2025
Funds 2025
Funds 2024
Funds 2024
Funds 2024
£
£
£
£
£
£
Donations
110,572
-
110,572
110,697
-
110,697
Gifts in kind
97,588
-
97,588
81,538
-
81,538
Service users’ donations
4,151
-
4,151
1,530
-
1,530
Fundraising events
27,577
-
27,577
13,513
-
13,513
Legacy income
2,000
-
2,000
23,161
-
23,161
~~Total income from donations and legacies~~
~~241,888~~
~~-~~
~~241,888~~
~~230,439~~
~~-~~
~~230,439~~
Gifts in kind includes the value of Google, Snapchat, Meta, and Microsoft advertising, which was £97,588 (2024: £80,038.) The
balance of £1,500 in 2024 is the value of training marketing consultancy provided pro bono by Felicia Willows.
Unrestricted
Restricted
Total
Unrestricted
Restricted
Total
Funds 2025
Funds 2025
Funds 2025
Funds 2024
Funds 2024
Funds 2024
£
£
£
£
£
£
~~Bank interest from monies on deposit~~
~~59,111~~
~~-~~
~~59,111~~
~~37,792~~
~~-~~
~~37,792~~
3. Income from investments

4. Expenditure on raising funds

	Staf costs Support costs Total Costs Staf costs Support costs Total Costs 2025 2025 2025 2024 2024 2024 £ £ £ £ £ £ ~~Fundraising costs~~ ~~115,576~~ ~~23,348~~ ~~138,924~~ ~~101,086~~ ~~19,016~~ ~~120,102*~~

5. Income from charitable activities

Unrestricted
Restricted
Total
Unrestricted
Restricted
Total
Funds 2025
Funds 2025
Funds 2025
Funds 2024
Funds 2024
Funds 2024
£
£
£
£
£
£
Government funding for:
Stop It Now helpline
-
1,030,463
1,030,463
-
886,727
886,727
Young people services including Inform
-
204,464
204,464
-
107,500
107,500
Tackling online child sexual abuse
-
1,800
1,800
7,500
7,500
Online CSA deterrence campaign
-
170,000
170,000
-
170,000
170,000
LFF Scotland
-
270,138
270,138
-
244,950
244,950
LFF Wales
-
199,265
199,265
-
199,265
199,265
~~-~~
~~1,876,130~~
~~1,876,130~~
~~-~~
~~1,615,942~~
~~1,615,94~~
Charitable trust grant funding for:
Stop It Now helpline
22,587
-
22,587
65,160
-
65,160
Tackling online child sexual abuse
5,000
132,669
137,669
30,803
75,891
106,694
Young people services including Inform
45,374
89,189
134,563
68,252
172,109
240,361
Advocacy and communications
266,997
356,239
623,236
126,901
340,000
466,901
LFF Scotland
28,000
148,836
176,83642,998
160,000
202,998
LFF Wales
602
-
602
-
-
-
Research and evaluation
63,420
237,850
301,270
71,430
86,548
157,978
Circles
25,619
(252)
25,36726,634
10,419
37,053
Strategic development & core activities
84,401
-
84,401
22,822
-
22,822
~~542,000~~
~~964,531~~
~~1,506,531~~
~~455,000~~
~~844,967~~
~~1,299,967~~
Other income generated from:
Assessments and intervention for the family
court, local authorities, DBS, faith groups
and individuals
1,030,404
-
1,030,404
1,158,746
-
1,158,746
Participant fees Inform, Inform Plus,
Engage Plus, Inform Young People and
other contributions
207,762
-
207,762
182,049
-
182,049
Training and consultancy activities for local
authorities, statutory agencies and other
organisations
224,105
-
224,105
240,841
-
240,841
University contributions to Research
3,972
-
3,972
11,237
-
11,237
Circles Contract
19,280
-
19,280
50,706
-
50,706
~~1,485,523~~
~~-~~
~~1,485,523~~
~~1,643,579~~
~~-~~
~~1,643,579~~
~~Total income from charitable activities~~
~~2,027,523~~
~~2,840,661~~
~~4,868,164~~
~~2,098,579~~
~~2,460,909~~
~~4,559,488~~

2024 comparatives have been restated to reflect the change in overhead allocations implemented in 2025. Refer Note 1g) in accounting policies.

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6. Expenditure on charitable activities 2025

Staf costs
Other costs
Total Costs
Staf costs
Other costs
Total Costs
Staf costs
Other costs
Total Costs
£
£
£
£
£
£
£
£
£
Stop It Now helpline
96,739
32,166
128,905
859,714
170,749
1,030,463
956,453
202,915
1,159,368
Assessments and interventions
709,228
103,020
812,248
-
-
-
709,228
103,020
812,248
Tackling online child sexual abuse
167,928
43,412
211,340
75,847
11,812
87,659
243,775
55,224
298,999
Working with young people and families
55,934
19,332
75,266
191,020
56,942
247,962
246,954
76,274
323,228
Advocacy and communications
233,263
180,385
413,648
227,597
104,849
332,446
460,860
285,234
746,094
LFF Scotland
75,916
21,435
97,351
346,013
72,881
418,894
421,929
94,316
516,245
LFF Wales
12,281
4,825
17,106
170,894
28,371
199,265
183,175
33,196
216,371
Training and consultancy
111,026
35,397
146,423
-
-
-
111,026
35,397
146,423
Research and evaluation work
65,047
16,435
81,482
87,873
21,482
109,355
152,920
37,917
190,837
Circles of support & accountability
35,159
13,334
48,493
121
46
167
35,280
13,380
48,660
~~1,562,521~~
~~469,741~~
~~2,032,262~~
~~1,959,079~~
~~467,132~~
~~2,426,211~~
~~3,521,600~~
~~936,873~~
~~4,458,473~~
Unrestricted expenditure 2025
Restricted expenditure 2025
Total expenditure 2025

6. Expenditure on charitable activities 2024

Unrestricted expenditure 2024
Staf costs
Other costs
Total Costs
Staf costs
Other costs
Total Costs
Staf costs
Other costs
Total Costs
£
£
£
£
£
£
£
£
£
Stop It Now helpline
89,132
26,039
115,171
804,434
166,988
971,422
893,566
193,027
1,086,593
Assessments and interventions
737,168
103,330
840,498
-
-
-
737,168
103,330
840,49
Tackling online child sexual abuse
174,313
39,667
213,980
67,698
12,991
80,689
242,011
52,658
294,669
Working with young people and families
67,639
16,031
83,670
180,530
72,328
252,858
248,169
88,359
336,528
Advocacy and communications
187,901
144,395
332,296
237,946
105,999
343,945
425,847
250,394
676,241
LFF Scotland
67,259
16,371
83,630
347,982
65,117
413,099
415,241
81,488
496,729
LFF Wales
5,965
2,700
8,665
162,974
36,291
199,265
168,939
38,991
207,930
Training and consultancy
96,688
39,527
136,215
-
-
-
96,688
39,527
136,215
Research and evaluation work
73,779
17,467
91,246
66,055
23,696
89,751
139,834
41,163
180,997
Circles of support & accountability
59,965
21,175
81,140
7,415
2,585
10,000
67,380
23,760
91,140
~~1,559,809~~
~~426,702~~
~~1,986,511~~
~~1,875,034~~
~~485,995~~
~~2,361,029~~
~~3,434,843~~
~~912,697~~
~~4,347,540~~
Restricted expenditure 2024
Total expenditure 2024

2024 comparatives have been restated to reflect the change in overhead allocations implemented in 2025. Refer Note 1g) in accounting policies.

168 Annual report and financial statements 2024/25

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7. Support costs 2025

Finance
IT
HR
Total
2025
2025
2025
2025
£
£
£
£
Stop It Now helpline
65,101
29,174
36,954
131,229
Assessments & intervention
45,610
20,439
25,890
91,939
Tackling online child sexual abuse
16,789
7,524
9,530
33,843
Working with young people and families
18,150
8,134
10,303
36,587
Advocacy and communications
47,343
21,216
26,873
95,432
LFF Scotland
28,988
12,990
16,455
58,433
LFF Wales
12,150
5,445
6,896
24,491
Training & consultancy
8,222
3,684
4,667
16,573
Research and evaluation work
10,716
4,802
6,083
21,601
Circles of support and accountability
2,732
1,224
1,551
5,507
Fundraising
7,801
3,496
4,428
15,725
~~263,602~~
~~118,128~~
~~149,630~~
~~531,360~~

7. Support costs 2024*

Finance
IT
HR
Total
2024
2024
2024
2024
£
£
£
£
Stop It Now helpline
43,648
17,807
14,154
75,609
Assessments & intervention
92,574
37,767
30,020
160,361
Tackling online child sexual abuse
11,064
4,514
3,587
19,165
Working with young people and families
12,635
5,155
4,098
21,888
Advocacy and communications
50,092
20,436
16,244
86,772
LFF Scotland
18,651
7,609
6,047
32,307
LFF Wales
7,803
3,183
2,531
13,517
Training & consultancy
18,891
7,707
6,127
32,725
Research and evaluation work
6,796
2,772
2,204
11,772
Circles of support and accountability
3,422
1,396
1,110
5,928
Fundraising
4,509
1,840
1,462
7,811
~~270,085~~
~~110,186~~
~~87,584~~
~~467,855~~

2024 comparatives have been restated to reflect the change in overhead allocations implemented in 2025. Refer Note 1g) in accounting policies.

8. Net income is stated after charging

Staf
Support
2025
2024
costs
costs
total
total
£
£
£
£
Governance costs:
Auditor’s remuneration for:
for the audit of the annual fnancial statements
-
25,178
25,178
22,883
VAT advisory services
-
1,184
1,184
-
Trustees’ training & DBS checks
-
2,400
2,400
500
Trustees’ meetings
-
4,402
4,402
1,289
Governance Review
-
4,950
4,950
-
Company secretarial
6,537
102
6,649
6,732
Apportionment of management time
29,293
2,405
31,698
31,943
~~35,830~~
~~40,621~~
~~76,451~~
~~63,347~~
Depreciation and amortisation charges
13,604
11,877
Operating lease payments
111,270
117,613

9. Staff

2025
2024
full time
full time
equivalent no.equivalent no.
The average weekly number of persons employed by the group during the year was:
Charitable activities
88
83
Governance
1
1
~~Total staf~~
~~89~~
~~84~~
The average headcount for 2025 is 135 (2024: 138).
2025
2024
£
£
Staf costs for the group comprised:
Wages and salaries
3,246,379
3,178,256
Social security costs
305,292
279,482
Healthcare
12,579
10,702
Levy
2,181
-
Pension costs
70,745
67,489
~~Total staf costs~~
~~3,637,176~~
~~3,535,929~~

In 2025, one employee earned between £80,000 and £90,000 and three employees earned between £60,000 and £70,000 (2024: one employee earned between £70,000 and £80,000 and two employees earned between £60,000 and £70,000). The total employee benefits of the key management personnel of the Charity were £515,670 (2024: £424,065). There were no ex gratia costs in the year (2024: £11,075 ex gratia costs relating to two staff).

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10. Trustees

There was £376 of reimbursed expenses to two trustees in the year (2024: £332 reimbursed to four trustees). No trustees received remuneration during either accounting period.

11. Intangible fixed assets

Business system
Internally developed
Total intangible
implementation
website and flms
assets
£
£
£
At 1 April 2024
47,987
269,340
317,327
~~At 31 March 2025~~
~~47,987~~
~~269,340~~
~~317,327~~
Amortisation
At 1st April 2024
14,396
269,340
283,736
Charge for the year
9,598
-
9,598
~~At 31 March 2025~~
~~23,994~~
~~269,340~~
~~293,334~~
Net book value
At 31 March 2024
33,591
-
33,591
~~At 31 March 2025~~
~~23,993~~
~~-~~
~~23,993~~

13. Investments

	2025 2024 total total £ £ Unlisted investment in dormant subsidiaries 100 100 ~~Total~~ ~~100~~ ~~100~~

The charity holds unlisted investments at a net book value of £100 (original cost of £100) in the following subsidiary undertakings, both of which are dormant:

	Country of	Proncipal	Class of	% of share
	incorporation	activity	shares	capital held
Stop It Now UK & Ireland Limited: Company No: 4197678	England	Dormant	Ordinary £1	100%
Lucy Faithfull Foundation Trading Limited: Company No: 3540721	England	Dormant	Ordinary £1	100%

14. Taxation

The company is a registered charity, and as such, is entitled to tax exemptions on all its income and gains properly applied for its charitable purposes.

15. Debtors

12. Tangible fixed assets

Computer
Furniture
and equipment
and fttings
Total
£
£
£
At 1 April 2024
92,156
58,044
150,200
Additions
1,302
-
1,302
~~At 31 March 2025~~
~~93,458~~
~~58,044~~
~~151,502~~
Depreciation
At 1 April 2024
82,663
58,044
140,707
Charge for the year
4,006
-
4,006
~~At 31 March 2025~~
~~86,669~~
~~58,044~~
~~144,713~~
Net book values
At 31 March 2024
9,493
-
9,493
~~At 31 March 2025~~
~~6,789~~
~~-~~
~~6,789~~

	2025 2024 £ £ Trade debtors 267,401 261,166 Prepayments 78,470 87,323 Accrued income from charitable activities 35,497 52,826 Accrued grants income 291,759 150,123 ~~Total~~ ~~673,127~~ ~~551,438~~

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16. Creditors: amounts falling due within one year

2025
2024
£
£
Trade creditors
153,454
117,751
Amount due to group undertakings
100
100
Taxation and social security
93,262
103,510
Accruals
150,500
190,665
Deferred income
151,206
94,756
~~548,522~~
~~506,782~~
Deferred income is made up as follows:
Deferred income at 1 April 2024
94,756
71,476
Resources deferred in the year
142,512
94,756
Amounts released from previous years
(86,062)
(71,476)
~~Deferred income as at 31 March 2025~~
~~151,206~~
~~94,756~~

As on 31 March 2025, the Charity was holding funds received in advance for work that will be undertaken in the year ended 31 March 2026.

17. Financial instruments

	Assets that are debt instuments measured amortised cost 2025 2024 £ £ Trade debtors 267,401 261,166 Accrued income from charitable activities 35,497 52,826 Accrued grant income 291,759 150,123 Cash at bank and in hand 2,592,108 2,087,969 ~~3,227,083~~ ~~2,552,084~~

The impairment to trade debtors during the year was £7,741 (2024: £10,584).

18. Funds 2025

1 April 2024
Income
Expenditure/
31 March 2025
£
£
funds released £
£
Unrestricted
General funds
1,098,964
1,713,807
1,552,082
1,260,689
Funds held in Investments
100
-
-
100
Charitable trust grants
Oak Foundation
-
242,000
242,000
-
The Samworth Foundation
-
25,000
25,000
-
The Indigo Trust
-
250,000
250,000
-
Anonymous donor
-
25,000
25,000
-
Designated funds
Special projects in 2026
Policy ofcer
-
39,113
-
39,113
Cyber security review
-
8,000
-
8,000
Windows 11 upgrade
-
10,800
-
10,800
Fundraising database
10,000
5,000
-
15,000
Practitioner team development event
8,500
8,500
8,500
8,500
Digital investment to increase reach
30,000
- 30,000
-
Funds for advocacy assets e.g. materials and animations to
simplify and explain the public health approach to prevention
20,000
-
20,000
-
Conference with NWG Network
5,000
-
5,000
-
Future years depreciation
New business system
33,591
-
9,598
23,993
Scotland alarm system
1,404
-
481
923
Server
8,089
1,302
3,525
5,866
~~Total unrestricted funds~~
~~1,215,648~~
~~2,328,522~~
~~2,171,186~~
~~1,372,984~~
Total restricted funds(refer Note 19)
960,161
2,840,661
2,426,211
1,374,611
~~Total funds~~
~~2,175,809~~
~~5,169,183~~
~~4,597,397~~
~~2,747,595~~

The general funds represent the unrestricted funds of the Charity that are available for use at the discretion of the trustees in furtherance of the objects of the Charity.

The designated funds form part of unrestricted funds, and the trustees have specifically set aside £81,413 in 2026 to cover specific project expenditure (2025: £73,500), and a further £30,782 (2024: £43,084) to cover the cost of future years’ depreciation charges on fixed assets.

Restricted funds comprise funding received in relation to specified activities in furtherance of the objectives of the Charity. A breakdown of these is included in Note 19.

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18. Funds 2024

1 April 2023
Income
Expenditure/
31 March 2024
£
£
funds released £
£
Unrestricted
General funds
870,097
1,853,226
1,624,359
1,098,964
Funds held in Investments
100
100
Charitable trust grants
Oak Foundation
-
125,000
125,000
-
The Samworth Foundation
-
55,000
55,000
-
The Indigo Trust
-
250,000
250,000
-
Anonymous donor
-
25,000
25,000
-
Designated funds
Special projects in 2024
Digital investment to increase reach
40,000
5,377
15,377
30,000
Funds for advocacy assets e.g. materials and animations to
simplify and explain the public health approach to prevention
-
20,000
-
20,000
Fundraising database
-
10,000
-
10,000
Conference with NWG Network
-
5,000
-
5,000
Staf CFT training commitment
-
8,500
-
8,500
Future years depreciation
Ofce changes Epsom & Birch House
181
-
181
-
New business system
43,188
-
9,597
33,591
Scotland alarm system
1,885
-
481
1,404
Server
-
9,707
1,618
8,089
~~Total unrestricted funds~~
~~955,451~~
~~2,366,810~~
~~2,106,613~~
~~1,215,648~~
Total restricted funds(refer Note 19)
860,281
2,460,909
2,361,029
960,161
~~Total funds~~
~~1,815,732~~
~~4,827,719~~
~~4,467,642~~
~~2,175,809~~

19. Restricted Funds 2025

1 April 2024
Incoming resources Resources expended
31 March 2025
£
£
£
£
Government Funding
Ministry of Justice
for Stop It Now helpline - MOJ
-
216,727
216,727
-
Home Office
for Stop It Now helpline
-
800,000
800,000
-
for IIOC Deterrence Campaign
10,000
170,000
140,590
39,410
for Shore - Young people website
-
100,000
100,000
-
for Shore - follow on service
-
100,000
591
99,409
NHS
for tackling child sexual exploitation - NHS
144
-
144
-
The Scottish Government
for LFF Scotland activities
3,300
260,784
260,784
3,300
City of Edinburgh
for LFF Scotland schools’ activities
5,646
9,354
15,000
-
The Welsh Government
for LFF Wales early intervention
-
97,153
97,153
-
for LFF Wales primary prevention
-
94,612
94,612
-
Conwy County Borough Council
for LFF Wales Parent Protect
-
7,500
7,500
-
Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey
for Inform Plus, Engage Plus and Inform for young people
17,841
15,000
13,928
18,913
Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumbria
for Stop it Now helpline
-
5,000
5,000
-
~~Total Government funds~~
~~36,931~~
~~1,876,130~~
~~1,752,029~~
~~161,032~~
Charitable Trust Funding
Porticus UK
for Inform, the Forum, Inform Plus, Engage Plus
and Inform Young People
45,000
45,000
45,000
45,000
for head of research & evaluation
95,415
50,000
56,383
89,032
Nominet UK
for online CSA warning messaging
470,488
300,000
151,383
619,105
EU (Protech)
for monitoring ofenders’ IT devices
49,624
-
21,481
28,143
Oak Foundation
for helpline evaluation work with Prevention Global
-
84,525
11,579
72,946
World Childhood Foundation
for research
-
4,382
4,382
-
John Ellerman Foundation
for advocacy
20,000
40,000
30,000
30,000

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19. Restricted Funds 2025 (cont.)

1 April 2024
Incoming resources Resources expended
31 March 2025
£
£
£
£
Circles UK
for COSA delivery
419
(252)
167
-
The Dawes Trust
for Inform, the Forum, Inform Plus, Engage Plus & Inform Young People
-
100,000
38,000
62,000
Garfield Weston
for Inform Young People
-
15,000
-
15,000
Henry Oldfield Trust
for Inform Young People
10,000
-
10,000
-
Austin Hope & Pilkington
for Inform Young People
5,000
-
5,000
-
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
for Inform Young People partner training
34,652
-
25,953
8,699
29th May 1961 Charitable Trust
for young people online resources
-
6,000
-
6,000
Spring Impact
for young people services
-
5,858
4,697
1,161
Emmanuel Kaye Foundation
for Inform, the Forum, Inform Plus, and Engage Plus
4,726
50,000
48,562
6,164
Indigo Foundation
for collaborative policy work
-
16,239
10,329
5,910
KPMG Foundation
for work in Schools
99,166
-
52,626
46,540
The Fidelity UK Foundation
for Evaluation and Impact Directors & team roles
-
98,943
15,530
83,413
Anonymous Trust
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
-
55,000
38,462
16,538
Changing Ideas
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
-
16,836
3,311
13,525
The R S Macdonald Charitable Trust
for LFF Scotland Schools’ activities
5,646
15,000
16,337
4,309
Anonymous Trust
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
5,000
15,000
20,000
-
Baillie Gifford & Co
for LFF Scotland fundraiser
43,094
25,000
30,000
38,094
AB Charitable Trust
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
22,000
22,000
22,000
22,000
The Volant Charitable Trust
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
10,000
-
10,000
-
Souter Charitable Trust
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
3,000
-
3,000
-
~~Total Charitable Trust funds~~
~~923,230~~
~~964,531~~
~~674,182~~
~~1,213,579~~
~~Total Restricted Funds~~
~~960,161~~
~~2,840,661~~
~~2,426,211~~
~~1,374,611~~

19. Restricted Funds 2024

1 April 2023
Incoming resources Resources expended
31 March 2024
£
£
£
£
Government Funding
Ministry of Justice
for Stop It Now helpline - MOJ
-
216,727
216,727
-
Home Office
for Stop It Now helpline
-
660,000
660,000
-
for IIOC Deterrence Campaign
28,956
170,000
188,956
10,000
for Shore website
-
100,000
100,000
-
NHS
for tackling child sexual exploitation - NHS
4,899
-
4,755
144
Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner
for developing prevention approaches
11,349
-
11,349
-
The Scottish Government
for LFF Scotland activities
10,550
224,950
232,200
3,300
City of Edinburgh Council
for LFF Scotland schools’ activities
-
20,000
14,354
5,646
The Welsh Government
for LFF Wales early intervention
-
97,153
97,153
-
for LFF Wales primary prevention
-
94,612
94,612
-
Conwy County Borough Council
for LFF Wales Parent Protect
-
7,500
7,500
-
Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey
for Inform Plus, Engage Plus and Inform for young people
15,000
15,000
12,159
17,841
Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumbria
for Stop It Now helpline
-
5,000
5,000
-
Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for North Wales
for Stop It Now helpline
-
2,500
2,500
-
Warwickshire Police Community Fund
for Stop It Now helpline
-
2,500
2,500
-
~~Total Government funds~~
~~70,754~~
~~1,615,942~~
~~1,649,765~~
~~36,931~~
Charitable Trust Funding
Porticus UK
for Inform, the Forum, Inform Plus, Engage Plus
and Inform Young People
45,000
-
-
45,000
for International activity
3,462
-
3,462
0
for head of research & evaluation
68,887
87,623
61,095
95,415
Nominet UK
for online CSA warning messaging
300,722
300,000
130,234
470,488
EU (Protech)
for monitoring ofenders’ IT devices
67,945
-
18,321
49,624
Oak Foundation
for helpline evaluation work (with Seto & Letourneau)
2,948
(1,075)
1,873
-

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Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Financial review

19. Restricted Funds 2024 (cont.)

1 April 2023
Incoming resources Resources expended
31 March 2024
£
£
£
£
John Ellerman Foundation
for Advocacy
-
40,000
20,000
20,000
Circles UK
for COSA implementation
-
10,000
10,000
-
for COSA delivery
-
419
-
419
The Dawes Trust
for Inform, the Forum, Inform Plus, Engage Plus
and Inform Young People
-
50,000
50,000
-
Shanly Foundation
for Inform Young People
2,000
-
2,000
-
Henry Oldfield Trust
for Inform Young People
-
10,000
-
10,000
Austin Hope & Pilkington Trust
for Inform Young People
-
5,000
-
5,000
Paul Hamlyn Foundation
for Inform Young People partner training
19,522
30,000
14,870
34,652
for cost of living rises
-
3,000
3,000
-
Charles Hayward Foundation
for young people online resources
10,350
-
10,350
-
Emmanuel Kaye Foundation
for Inform, the Forum, Inform Plus, and Engage Plus
4,684
50,000
49,958
4,726
Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children
for online deterrence Chatbot
73,346
-
73,346
-
KPMG Foundation
for work in Schools
90,376
100,000
91,210
99,166
NOTA
for R&D
5,000
-
5,000
-
Anonymous Trust
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
4,191
55,000
59,191
-
The R S Macdonald Charitable Trust
for LFF Scotland Schools’ activities
-
20,000
14,354
5,646
Anonymous Trust
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
-
15,000
10,000
5,000
Baillie Gifford & Co
for LFF Scotland fundraiser
43,094
30,000
30,000
43,094
AB Charitable Trust
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
22,000
22,000
22,000
22,000
The Robertson Trust
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
16,000
-
16,000
-
The Volant Charitable Trust
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
10,000
15,000
15,000
10,000
Souter Charitable Trust
for LFF Scotland prevention activity
-
3,000
-
3,000
~~Total Charitable Trust funds~~
~~789,527~~
~~844,967~~
~~711,264~~
~~923,230~~
~~Total Restricted Funds~~
~~860,281~~
~~2,460,909~~
~~2,361,029~~
~~960,161~~

20. Analysis of net assets between funds for the year ended March 2025

	Fixed assets Net current assets Fund balances £ £ £ Unrestricted funds 30,882 1,342,102 1,372,984 Restricted funds - 1,374,611 1,374,611 ~~Total funds~~ ~~30,882~~ ~~2,716,713~~ ~~2,747,595~~

20. Analysis of net assets between funds for the year ended March 2024

	Fixed assets Net current assets Fund balances £ £ £ Unrestricted funds 43,184 1,172,464 1,215,648 Restricted funds - 960,161 960,161 ~~Total funds~~ ~~43,184~~ ~~2,132,625~~ ~~2,175,809~~

21. Members’ liability

The Charity does not have a share capital and is limited by guarantee. In the event of the Charity being wound up, the maximum amount which each member is liable to contribute is £5. There were 12 members at 31 March 2025 (2024: 15).

22. Commitments under operating leases

At 31 March 2025 the Charity had future minimum lease payments under non-cancellable operating leases as follows:

	Land & buildings 2025 Land & buildings 2024 £ £ Not later than one year 97,366 111,201 One to fve years 235,163 331,697 ~~332,529~~ ~~442,898~~

The Charity has provided for its possible liability for dilapidations in relation to its two leasehold properties in Epsom and Bromsgrove. This has been estimated at £11,400 (2024: £11,400). The dilapidations liability for the Edinburgh leasehold office is £3,300 held in restricted funds (2024: £3,300).

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Financial review

23. Related party transactions

During the year we had the following related party transactions.

Donations were received that are associated with trustee David Lundholm: £500 from Legal and General as a result of a nomination from David, plus donations of £752 from David Lundholm himself (2024: we received £500 from Legal and General, £455 from David Lundholm’s wife and a further £252 from David Lundholm himself).

Additional info

Ofcers and contacts

A donation was received from trustee Martin Kersey for £250.

In the prior year we paid Mills & Reeve LLP for legal work costing £4,227 and we received a donation from Mills and Reeve LLP of £500. These are deemed to be related party transactions as Jill Mason, one of our trustees, is a partner of the firm.

We also paid NOTA £13,624 (2024: £7,078) for membership, conference attendance, training courses and recruitment advertising. NOTA is deemed to be a related party as Lynn Saunders, one of our trustees is Chair of the training committee at NOTA and Stuart Allardyce, Director of LFF Scotland has been Chair of NOTA since May 2023 and prior to that he held the post of Vice Chair.

24. Reconciliation of net income to net cash flow from operating activities

		2025	2024
	Note	£	£
Net income/(loss) for the reporting period		571,786	360,077
Depreciation charges	8, 11, 12	13,604	11,877
Interest received	3	(59,111)	(37,792)
(Increase) in debtors	15	(121,689)	(43,909)
Increase (Decrease) in creditors	17	41,740	(13,937)
~~Net cash provided by operating activities~~		~~446,330~~	~~276,316~~

25. Analysis of changes in net debt
	1April 2024	Cashflow	31 March 2025
	£	£	£
Cash at bank	2,087,969	504,139	2,592,108

Life President

Dr Arnon Bentovim MB BS FRCPsych, FRCPCH, DPM

Patrons

Mr Martin Brewer BA (Hons) Mrs Hilary Eldridge

The Baroness Howarth of Breckland OBE (deceased 23 March 2025)

Mr Richard Monk CMG, OBE, QPM

Mr E M Nock OBE BA (Jt Hons) Dip IPD Ms Annie Shepperd OBE Sir Richard Tilt

Mr John Trotter LLB (Hons) Trustees

Mrs Jane Leach BSc FCA

Dr Mike Harris BSc MB BS MRCS LRCP FRC Psych Ms Joy Chamberlain FCA

Mr Martin Kersey BSc FCIPD

Dr Gopi Krishnan MRCPsych (resigned 16/04/2024) Mr Fred Langford (appointed 08/12/2023) Mr David Lundholm BA (Hons) MBA Dr Michael Marett-Crosby MA DPhil Mrs Jill Mason LLB (Hons)

Dr Paul Monks BA, MB. BChir, M.Sc. MRCPsych (resigned 06/12/2024)

Mr John O’Brien CBE

Professor Derek Perkins BSc MSc PhD CPsychol AFBPsS (resigned 24/03/2025) Ms Lynn Saunders OBE

Professor Alec Spencer BA (Hons) MA MRes Mr Paul West QPM DL

Senior management team

Ms Deborah Denis PGDip Dip CIPR, chief executive officer

Mr Stuart Allardyce MA (Hons) MSW, director of Lucy Faithfull Foundation Scotland Mrs Alison Dexter MInstLM MCIPD, director of people services

Mr Tom Fisher,

director of research and impact (appointed 20/01/25)

Mrs Frances Frost,

director of advocacy and communications Mrs Annabel Kroeger BAcc CA(SA), director of finance

Mr Adrian McNulty CQSW Diploma in Probation Studies (DipProbation), director of operations

Mrs Sian Meader deputy director of operations

Registered name

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Registration numbers

Registered company number 02729957 Charity number 1013025 Scottish registered Charity number SC039888

Registered office and principal address

2 Birch House, Harris Business Park, Hanbury Road, Stoke Prior, Bromsgrove, B60 4DJ

Independent auditor

Crowe U.K. LLP, Black Country House, Rounds Green Road, Oldbury, B69 2DG

Bankers

Company Secretary

Mrs Annabel Kroeger BAcc CA(SA)

HSBC Bank Plc Redditch Commercial Centre Church Green West, Redditch, Worcestershire, B97 4EA

Solicitors

Mills & Reeve LLP, 78-84 Colmore Row, Birmingham, B3 2AB

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Board of trustees

Jane Leach BSc FCA (Chair)

Jane is a chartered accountant and senior advisor at the Bank of England and has been a trustee of Lucy Faithfull Foundation since 2013, and our Chair since the end of 2023. She has over 30 years’ experience in finance and leadership, and spent much of her career at KPMG, where she qualified as an accountant and was a partner for 12 years.

She was part of the global finance leadership at HSBC before taking on a strategic change program there. Following HSBC, Jane joined The Bank of England as Senior Advisor, leveraging her finance skills to support the financial health of the UK. She has significant commercial board and leadership experience and currently chairs Jupiter Asset Management’s main fund manager Jupiter Unit Trust Managers, is on the board and chairs the Audit/ Audit and Risk Committees of payments firm Paypal (UK), the insurer AIG (UK), and asset manager J O Hambro Capital Management Ltd.

“It is an absolute privilege to chair this wonderful organisation. I never cease to be inspired by the people at Lucy Faithfull who bring such energy, commitment, bravery, and research based depth of understanding to tackling the tragedy of child sexual abuse. They work tirelessly in often painfully difficult circumstances to make change happen, whilst getting the maximum from every penny provided by our funders. As a long standing trustee I have seen the growing impact that the Foundation has, as well as seeing that there is so much more to be done.”

Dr Michael Marett-Crosby MA, D. Phil (Vice-Chair)

Michael leads a group of healthcare, education and refugee relief charities that work for the people of Myanmar (Burma) with the UN and other agencies to deliver humanitarian support, human rights monitoring, healthcare and education. This work focuses on alleviating the impact of the 2021 military coup and the 2025 earthquake, and supporting a new democracy in Myanmar.

His international and Burmese teams support scholarships, access to learning, healthcare and the relief of suffering across the country’s states and regions.

He was previously a Catholic priest and worked with young people in prison settings. He was interim CEO of The Lucy Faithfull Foundation in 2019.

“The Lucy Faithfull Foundation works to deliver on its promise to young people - a world in which they can live without the fear of abuse. To do this, our extraordinary staff show innovation and daily commitment to keep children safe, and to work with those who threaten young people’s safety. The charity is growing new ways of reaching those who need its help. Its work is vitally important in today’s world.”

Joy Chamberlain FCA (Treasurer)

As a Chartered Accountant by background, Joy initially worked with PwC before stepping into the healthcare sector in senior positions at Partnerships in Care in 1997 before becoming their CEO in 2011. In 2016, she led the formation of Elysium Healthcare as a result of the sale of 22 hospitals from Partnerships in Care and Priory. Joy also took the company through a sale process in early 2022 with global provider Ramsay Health Care purchasing the business. Elysium now supports over 2200 service users in 87 specialist services in the field of mental health, learning disabilities & autism, neurological and child & adolescent mental health services.

With over 20 years’ experience in the specialist healthcare sector, Joy is a strategic leader who delivers on the core objectives of the business whilst ensuring that people remain at its heart. With a passion for quality, she leads services to deliver outcome-focused treatment and care whilst always ensuring that her teams retain the core values that she stands for.

“In the past few years since being a trustee, I have seen the Foundation grow stronger, its strategy and leadership empowering the organisation to do everything they need to do in order to keep children safe and eradicate this social problem. ”

Dr Gopi Krishnan MRCPsych (resigned 16/04/2024)

Gopi is a psychiatrist who has worked clinically in secure psychiatry and prisons. He has held several leadership roles, including leading the development of personality disorder services in high security. He sits as a medical member on Mental Health Tribunals and consults as an independent expert to prisoners appearing before the Parole Board.

“Having worked in secure psychiatry and prisons for almost three decades, I have witnessed firsthand the pernicious consequences of child abuse. I have seen also how abuse permeates generations in a vicious cycle of destruction. The work of the Foundation is now more important than ever – preventive intervention before harm occurs.”

Dr Mike Harris

BSc MB BS MRCS LRCP FRC Psych

Mike is a consultant psychiatrist. He has previously been a medical director, operational director and chief executive in the NHS and the independent sector. He has been chair of Nottingham MIND, a sub-dean of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and treasurer of the International Association for Forensic Mental Health Services. He is currently chair of Improving Lives, a Nottingham-based mental health charity, and a governor of St. Andrews Healthcare. He is a Trustee of two local Jewish charities.

“It is a real privilege to be a trustee of this amazing organisation. The fantastic staff, led by an inspirational group of directors work with some of the most troubled people in the country, hearing their stories every day. They do this with grace, dignity and enthusiasm helping through their work to keep young people safe from sexual abuse.”

David Lundholm BA (Hons) MBA

David is an investment director, working in the Fintech team at Legal & General, where he has worked for the past four years. He serves as a non-executive director across portfolio investments. He is also the founder of Consistency Partners Ltd, a consultancy working with price comparison and private equity clients. David was formerly director, group corporate development, at BGL Group Ltd, owners of comparethemarket.com. Prior to that, David spent eight years at Aviva PLC in UK general management roles, after 10 years working in business development and marketing for Yum Brands across Europe. David has an MBA from London Business School.

“The work of the Foundation has never been more important. I’m delighted to be able to contribute to the essential work that the Foundation conducts in preventing and responding to child sexual abuse and exploitation.”

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Martin Kersey

BSc FCIPD

Martin is an experienced HR professional having held Global, European and UK roles for private and not for profit organisations. Most recently he worked for St Andrews Healthcare, one of the UK’s leading mental healthcare charities where he had responsibility for HR, Research and Education. He was a Charity Trustee and Board Member for nine years, Martin has also held senior HR roles for Rental Initial, Burger King and Hertz Car Rental. Martin is a graduate of the London School of Economics.

Outside work Martin can be found travelling with camera and back-pack, whilst following West Ham United.

Martin has been impressed with the caring and compassionate culture within LFF, the can-do attitude and the professionalism displayed by LFF employees:

“…it’s a workplace that staff are proud and passionate about the real difference they make to people’s lives everyday, and this is truly inspiring.”

Fred Langford

Fred is Director of Technology – Online Safety at UK Communications Regulator Ofcom, a Visiting Professor at the University of Suffolk and a member of the REPHRAIN (Bristol University) and INHOPE (International Hotline Association) Advisory Boards. He’s also a Non-Exec Director of the Games Rating Authority.

Previously, as Deputy CEO/CTO of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and President of INHOPE, Fred focused on Internet Policy, Cybersecurity, Child Protection, and Online Technologies. With 30 years of experience in Commercial, CSOs, Military, and Regulatory sectors, he has developed services to reduce the risk of illegal content online for billions of internet users. Fred has held leadership roles in various organizations, including Former Chair of the UK Council for Internet Safety and a Board Member of the UK Home Office Child Abuse Image Database Strategic Group. He serves as an expert advisor to governments, parliamentarians, law enforcement, and NGOs.

“As a technology leader with a deep commitment to using my skills for societal good, I am honoured to join the board of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. Their unwavering dedication to preventing child sexual abuse aligns perfectly with my passion for creating safe and secure digital environments. Together, I hope we will harness the power of technology to protect and empower the most vulnerable members of our society.”

Jill Mason

LLB (Hons)

Jill is a partner at national law firm, Mills & Reeve LLP, where she is head of the health and care sector. She is a healthcare lawyer with about 30 years’ experience advising NHS (commissioners and providers), independent sector providers, and not-for-profit organisations on all aspects of the law relating to the care of patients, service users and residents. This particularly relates to the Mental Health Act, Mental Capacity Act, public inquiries, inquests, and risk management. Jill advises, writes articles and blogs and delivers training in all these areas. Jill also sits on the Audit, Governance and Oversight Panel at Mills & Reeve.

“This is my fourth year as a trustee. I have been so impressed by the dedication of all the staff. Such vital work is undertaken by the Foundation and the issues seem to have been magnified this year. You can easily take for granted growing up without fear or exploitation, but one shouldn’t…”

Dr Paul Monks

BA MB BChir MSc MRCPsych (resigned 6/12/2024)

Paul is a consultant in general and forensic psychiatry. He has worked in low- and mediumsecure inpatient settings as well as prisons, treating adult and adolescent patient groups, including mentally disordered offenders. For much of the last two decades, he has treated young people, many of whom have suffered serious psychological trauma including sexual abuse, and adult offenders, some of whom have perpetrated sex offences. He has been the clinical director responsible for child and adolescent mental health services for two independent sector mental healthcare providers. Paul currently works as a consultant community forensic psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

John O’Brien

CBE

John joined the civil service in July 2002 as Director of the Criminal Records Bureau. In 2006, he moved to the Home Office to lead the response to the Bichard Inquiry and subsequently as Director of Safeguarding. In this role, he was responsible for policy on safeguarding and public protection, public order and the sponsorship of the Disclosure and Barring Service and the Security Industry Authority. He was seconded, as Secretary, to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse on its establishment as a statutory inquiry in 2015.

In this role, he was responsible for the effective management of the Inquiry and acted as the main contact between the Inquiry and the Home Office as the sponsor department. He also established the Truth Project to enable victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to share their experiences with the Inquiry and put forward suggestions for change.

“Having been involved in public protection policy for many years and hearing first-hand the accounts of victims and survivors during the Inquiry I have seen the lifelong impact of child sexual abuse. I have seen the work of the Foundation during my time in the civil service and its preventative work is critical to delivering a world free of such abuse. I am delighted to be able to support it in achieving this goal.”

“I am inspired by the Foundation’s overarching purpose of preventing child sexual abuse and the dedication and resilience of its staff in pursuit of it, particularly over recent years. The foresight and expertise of the team mean that the Foundation is very much at the forefront of tracking and tackling new challenges posed by digital technology.”

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Professor D Perkins

BSc MSc PhD CPsychol AFBPsS (resigned 24/03/2025)

Derek is a chartered clinical and forensic psychologist with West London NHS Trust, and Visiting Professor of Forensic Psychology at Royal Holloway University of London, School of Law and Social Sciences. He was head of psychological services at Broadmoor Hospital (high secure psychiatric service for the South of England) from 1986-2013, having previously worked in the UK Prison Service and Midland Centre for Forensic Psychiatry. He is the co-director of the online Protect research group on internet-related sexual offending. He has worked clinically, carried out research and published on the assessment and treatment of those convicted of sexual offending, including the interface between mental health and sexual offending, internet-related sexual offending, child sexual abuse, and sexual homicide.

“I have a long history with the Foundation, dating back to the 1980s with the establishment of the Gracewell Clinic, and then the Wolvercote Clinic, the only fulltime, residential UK facility at the time for the treatment of those who had sexually offended. From then, the Foundation has developed into a multifaceted and pioneering organisation at the cutting edge of child protection through the assessment and treatment of perpetrators, public information campaigns and most importantly its work on the prevention of child sexual abuse nationally and internationally.”

Dr Lynn Saunders OBE PhD MA BA CQSW

Lynn has been Professor of Applied Criminology at the University of Derby since 2021. She previously worked in the criminal justice system for 35 years, most recently as the governor of MHP Whatton, a large treatment site for people convicted of sexual offences. She qualified as a probation officer in 1986 and has a degree in Applied Social Sciences, an MA in Criminology, and a PhD from the University of Nottingham. She co-founded the Safer Living Foundation in 2014, a charity with the aim to help prevent sexual re-offending. She was appointed as an Independent Member of the Parole Board in England and Wales in 2024.

Lynn was awarded honorary doctorates from Nottingham Trent University in 2015 and Keele University in 2018, in recognition of her work with people with sexual convictions both nationally and internationally, to the ultimate aim of preventing further victims. She was also awarded an OBE in 2017’s New Year Honours list and received the Guardian Public Leadership award in 2018. Lynn has been a trustee of the Foundation since 2018. She says:

“The Lucy Faithfull Foundation’s innovation and commitment to research into the treatment of child sexual abuse is recognised across the world. Its initiatives in sexual harm prevention, the development of the research base and the support practitioners working in this area are considered to be an exemplar to others.”

Professor Alec Spencer BA (Hons) MA MRes

Alec is a former prison governor who established the first intervention programme for sexual offenders in Scottish Prisons (STOP). He later served as director of rehabilitation and care and was a member of the Scottish Prison Service Board. He was chairman of the Scottish Accreditation Panel for Offender Programmes, an adviser to the Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament on their Inquiry into Child Sexual Offending and, for a temporary period, chief officer of a Community Justice Authority.

He has published a book on working with sex offenders, and was Scottish chair of the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abusers (NOTA) and a member of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA). He founded and chaired the charity Families Outside to support families of prisoners and was Chair of Includem, a Scottish charity working with youngsters in trouble. He was chair of the Scottish Association for the Study of Offending and convener of the Scottish Consortium of Crime and Criminal Justice. He is an honorary professor at the University of Stirling, an expert member of their Ethics Panel, and a non-executive director of Community Justice Scotland and chair of its Audit and Risk Committee.

“My own links with the Foundation go back to 1992, the year LFF began. Since then, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation has built an enviable record in the research and treatment of child sexual abuse. In particular the Stop It Now helpline attempts to be proactive and help prevent child sexual abuse by reaching out to those worried about what they might do.”

Paul West QPM DL

Paul was a police officer for 32 years. His service included 13 years as a chief officer and eight years as the Chief Constable of West Mercia Police. Paul led nationally for the police service throughout England and Wales on all matters concerning the management of sexual offenders and violent offenders from 2007 until his retirement in 2011. He was an independent member of the Judicial Appointments Commission (2012-2024), a member of the Prison Service Pay Review Body (2016-2023), and since 2023 has been an Independent Member of the Parole Board.

Since retiring from the police service, Paul’s many voluntary roles have included significant involvement in school governance, as chair of governors at a large independent school in Worcestershire and as a trustee of a Worcestershire-based Church of England MultiAcademy Trust. In both settings he was also the board’s nominated safeguarding lead. He is an honorary fellow of the University of Worcester, where he previously was a member of the Board and vice-chair of governors.

Away from work, Paul’s passion has always been listening to and playing classical music. He is an accomplished amateur musician, and plays both violin and viola in several orchestras in Worcestershire and the wider West Midlands. In addition, he has been a member of a Worcestershire-based string quartet since 2005.

Paul was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant of Worcestershire in 2019.

“I have valued deeply my association with LFF throughout the last eleven years. Not only has it provided me with the opportunity to maintain an involvement in sexual offender management beyond the end of my police service, but in recent years it has also enabled me to apply the learning I have gained from experts in the field to help safeguard children in a wide range of educational settings. The Foundation really can and does make a huge and positive difference in so many young people’s lives.”

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With sincere thanks

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation would like to thank all of our supporters who make our work to protect children possible. Here are just some of them:

29th May 1961 Charitable Trust

The A B Charitable Trust

Austin Hope and Pilkington Trust Baillie Gifford & Co.

Charles Hayward Foundation

Circles UK

City of Edinburgh Council

Conwy County Borough Council

The Dawes Trust

The Dulverton Trust

The Emmanuel Kaye Foundation

EU Commission

The Fidelity UK Foundation Garfield Weston Foundation

Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children

Ministry of Justice

National Organisation for the Treatment of Abuse NHS

Nominet UK

Oak Foundation

Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumbria

Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for North Wales

Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey

Paul Hamlyn Foundation

Porticus UK

The Robertson Trust

The RS Macdonald Charitable Trust

The Samworth Foundation

The Scottish Government

Google

Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner

Henry Oldfield Trust

Home Office

The Indigo Trust

John Ellerman Foundation