A new sexual safety hub has today been launched by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), which regulates 15 different health and care professions.
The HCPC has created this online resource to provide further support to victims, survivors and witnesses of sexual misconduct, harassment and abuse.
The hub draws together new and existing resources to support members of the public, those working within health and social care, education providers and employers. The new materials build on the existing support provided by the HCPC over previous years and are the result of work with victims and survivors.
Christine Elliott, Chair of the HCPC said:
“Everyone has the right to feel safe and have their boundaries respected. Sexual violence and misconduct perpetrated by health and care professionals must not be tolerated, and we should all call it out. Every dreadful experience must be investigated to understand what more can be done to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
“Health and care professionals have a duty to speak up and act on concerns about safety and when they witness behaviours that are wrong. Employers must show leadership and be role models to create the right culture and safer environments.
“As a regulator, we have a significant part to play in informing behaviours, through setting clear standards and dealing with concerns reported to us. We should also encourage better collaboration across the whole health and care system.”.
The new hub and additional support materials have a specific focus on individual victims and survivors and have been shaped by those with lived experience.
The new materials help reinforce the expectations placed on registrants including specific elements of the HCPC’s revised standards of conduct performance and ethics, which came into effect this month.
The additional support being provided by the HCPC comes alongside recent analysis of its fitness to practise data from 2023-24 which shows:
• 1 in 12 concerns raised with the HCPC about health and care professionals mentioned sexual misconduct or sexual offences.
• 13 out of 15 professions regulated by the HCPC had concerns about sexual misconduct or criminality.
• There is a higher risk presented by male practitioners and that risk generally increased with age.
The hub also includes details on how anyone can raise concerns directly with the regulator and signposts existing resources provided by other organisations.
Bernie O’Reilly, Chief Executive and Registrar of the HCPC said:
“Any form of sexual misconduct is unacceptable. The vast majority of our registrants act appropriately and will be rightly horrified at the reports of sexual misconduct or criminality.
“Our data shows that there are a small number of reported incidents of this nature among the health and care professionals we regulate, but even one case is one too many.
"People don't behave poorly because they weren't sure of the standard or policy. They behave poorly because it has gone unchallenged. People drive behaviour and leaders must create an environment where people feel safe to speak up.
“We hope the new hub will help raise awareness of the impact of sexual misconduct, encourage people to come forward and help improve the safety of service users, those working within health and social care, and those joining the professions we regulate.”
The approach taken by the HCPC has been shared widely across the health sector in recent months.
The new hub and existing support provided by the HCPC was positively received in a Professional Standards Authority webinar on sexual safety in the ambulance sector earlier this week.
Notes to editors:
- The new sexual safety hub brings together existing and new materials for service users, members of the public, registrants, employers and education providers.
- The HCPC’s hub approach is something adopted across other parts of the health sector including by other health regulators.
- The Health and Care Professions Council is the largest multi-profession health and care regulator in the UK. We regulate 15 health and care professions in the UK and over 340,000 professionals, working in the NHS and broader health and care settings.
Our role is to protect the public and support high quality care.
We do this by:
• setting standards for professionals' education and training and practice;
• approving programmes which professionals must complete to register with us;
• keeping a Register of professionals, known as 'registrants', who meet our standards; and
• taking action if professionals on our Register do not meet our standards.