Conditions of Safety: A Systematic Review of Safeguarding Models and Concepts for Preventing Organizational Child Sexual Abuse

Trauma Violence Abuse. 2026 Feb 19:15248380251408373. doi: 10.1177/15248380251408373. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Over the past 40+ years, a range of frameworks and models have emerged to support the prevention of child sexual abuse (CSA) in organizations. Existing implementation resources and guides often address key dimensions of CSA, including prevention and response, relevant people (victims and perpetrators), varied environments, and organizational processes. However, it remains unclear whether these resources reflect the core constructs common to existing frameworks and models, and whether any reflect all the key dimensions. We aimed to identify constructs related to organizational CSA prevention to assess strengths and gaps in current approaches. We searched across six databases, supplemented by grey literature, and conducted a systematic scoping review of documents-including frameworks, models, books, guidelines, and journal articles-related to preventing CSA in institutional or organizational settings. Documents were included if they discussed multi-dimensional approaches to CSA prevention. We extracted relevant concepts and used thematic analysis to identify overarching conditions of safety. We identified 25 documents that met our inclusion criteria. We extracted 50 prevention-related concepts and thematically coded these, resulting in 6 overarching conditions of safety. Drawing on the concepts related to organizational CSA prevention which we identified, we created six conditions of safety. These conditions offer a synthesized foundation for understanding the core elements of contemporary frameworks and models. They are intended to support researchers, policy makers, families, practitioners, and organizational leaders in developing, implementing, and evaluating strategies to prevent and respond to CSA.

PMID:41712222 | DOI:10.1177/15248380251408373