Child Sexual Abuse Images Online: Implications for Social Work Training and Practice

The phenomenon of child sexual abuse images online (CSAIO) presents new and daunting challenges for social workers who work in the field of child sexual abuse (CSA), particularly in relation to assessment and treatment approaches. This paper reports on a grounded theory study that examined the views of CSA practitioners about online abuse images. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with fourteen social work practitioners and other helping professionals in child protection and CSA treatment services from Ontario, Canada, to explore their perspectives about effective assessment and treatment for the children in the online images. All participants felt inadequately prepared in terms of their training and experience to effectively respond to these children, particularly regarding the perceived permanence of the abuse images distributed online and their global accessibility. Implications for social work training and practice are provided and the paper concludes with a call for the recognition of CSAIO as a new area in social work practice requiring additional research and specialised training.