©️ By Sophie Lewis | The Grooming Files
Each time a major safeguarding scandal erupts, the response follows a familiar script.
A review is commissioned.
A failure is acknowledged.
A new body is proposed.
The latest response is the creation of a Child Protection Authority, a national body intended to address what ministers describe as “persistent systemic failures” in safeguarding.
On paper, it sounds decisive.
In practice, it risks repeating the same mistake that has defined child protection reform for decades.
Fixing the Aftermath Instead of Preventing the Harm
The stated aim of the new authority is to improve oversight, information-sharing, and accountability once things have already gone wrong.
It will:
- review serious cases
- analyse failures
- identify lessons
- issue recommendations
All of this happens after harm has occurred.
What it does not address is the moment where safeguarding systems fail most often, early escalation.
The Risk Phase We Don’t Know How to Handle
Across grooming gang cases, school abuse scandals, and care system failures, the same pattern appears:
Children were known to services.
Warning signs were present.
Professionals were uneasy.
But no decisive action followed.
This is the phase safeguarding systems struggle with most, when harm is suspected, patterns are emerging, but no single incident has crossed a clear prosecutorial threshold.
So systems wait.
They monitor.
They review.
They defer.
By the time intervention is triggered, the abuse is no longer preventable, only punishable.
When Predators Volunteer Their Risk — And There’s Still No Response
I have documented three cases of men who came to me.. a journalist and voluntarily confessed that they were dangerous to children.
Not vague admissions.
Direct statements:
“I am a danger to children. Only jail, constant monitoring and public shaming would stop me.”
These men were in escalation. Their fantasies were intensifying. Their control was slipping.
They weren’t caught in stings. They weren’t triggered by enforcement. They presented themselves as high-risk before offending.
And the system had no mechanism to respond.
No pathway from “I’m dangerous” to containment.
No framework for escalation-phase risk.
No authority to intervene before a crime was committed.
A new Child Protection Authority reviewing these cases after harm occurs wouldn’t change that.
What’s needed isn’t better oversight of failures, it’s the capacity to act before failure happens.
This is the Exposure Spiral.. a predator typology the system isn’t built to recognise, let alone prevent.
Oversight Bodies Don’t Intervene. They Observe.
Creating new authorities may improve consistency and accountability on paper.
But oversight bodies don’t remove children from harm.
They don’t stop offenders early.
They don’t override institutional hesitation.
They explain failure.
Safeguarding collapses don’t usually happen because nobody knew what to do.
They happen because acting early felt too risky.
The Illusion of Reform
There is comfort in structural reform.
New bodies give the appearance of action without forcing a confrontation with institutional culture.
They allow us to say:
“We’ve learnt lessons.”
“We’ve strengthened oversight.”
“We’ve improved coordination.”
But none of that guarantees earlier intervention.
And without earlier intervention, the same patterns will repeat, under new names, in new reports.
What Actually Needs to Change
If safeguarding reform is to be meaningful, it has to address what oversight bodies rarely touch:
- Clear escalation pathways when risk is emerging
- Authority to intervene before evidential thresholds are met
- Protection for professionals who act early
- A shift from reputation management to child-centred risk tolerance
In short: systems need permission and obligation to act before harm becomes undeniable.
Why This Matters Now
The creation of a Child Protection Authority will be presented as progress.
And it may be, in limited ways.
But unless it confronts the same avoidance mechanisms that enabled grooming gangs, abusive teachers, and care home scandals to operate unchecked, it will simply catalogue the next failure more efficiently.
Children don’t need better explanations of why they weren’t protected.
They need systems that act whilst protection is still possible.
The Lesson We Keep Refusing to Learn
Safeguarding failures are rarely caused by ignorance.
They are caused by hesitation.
Until reform addresses that not just through structure, but through culture. Britain will keep creating new safeguarding bodies whilst missing the same threat.
And the next inquiry will ask the same question we already know the answer to:
Why didn’t anyone act sooner?
Sophie Lewis | NUJ-Accredited Investigative Journalist
The Grooming Files
Read the full series: “Grooming Gangs: The Questions Nobody Wanted Answered”
Sources:
- Department for Education Child Protection Authority consultation (2025)
- Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham 1997-2013 (Jay Report, 2014)
- National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (Casey Report, 2025)
- The Exposure Spiral research (thegroomingfiles.com/the-exposure-spiral)
- Serious Case Review documentation
The Grooming Files 
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