SARC & Safeguarding

Reference: 25-26107

Date response sent: 26/06/2025

Details of enquiry

a. The number of staff employed at your Trust’s sexual assault referral centre (SARC) for the years 2010 – 2024

b. The number of children aged under 18 years old who have been received support by your Trust’s SARC between the years 2010 – 2024 and, if possible, the number of these who are identified as having been victims of gang-based CSE.

c. The number of victims of CSE who received mental health support from your trust between 2018 and 2024.

d. The number of children identified by your Trust as requiring safeguarding measures as a result of CSE between the years 2010 and 2024

Response sent

1. The number of staff employed at your Trust’s sexual assault referral centre (SARC) for the years 2010 – 2024

Not applicable.  The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust does not have a SARC

1. The number of children aged under 18 years old who have been received support by your Trust’s SARC between the years 2010 – 2024 and, if possible, the number of these who are identified as having been victims of gang-based CSE.

Not applicable.  See our response to Question a) above.

2024. The number of victims of CSE who received mental health support from your trust between 2018 and 2024.

This data is provided in the table below, – please see accompanying explanatory note regarding masking of numbers equal to or less than 5*

1. The number of children identified by your Trust as requiring safeguarding measures as a result of CSE between the years 2010 and 2024

The Trust confirms that it does not hold this data prior to 2015 and has provided this data from 2015 onwards in the table below, – please see accompanying explanatory note regarding masking of numbers equal to or less than 5*

*         Explanatory Note re Substitution of the symbol ‘≤5’

The data we have provided in the table above, for the period, 2015 to 2024, contains the symbol ‘≤5’ which denotes the masking of low numbers which are equal to 5 or less than 5.

The Trust follows the NHS England standard, established to not provide exact data where the numbers are smaller than 6 as this may lead to identification of individuals.

The Trust has engaged exemption from releasing exact low numbers in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) Section 40(2) (Information which constitutes the personal data of any person other than the applicant, where disclosure would not be permitted under GDPR, thereby breaching GDPR Principle (a): Lawfulness, fairness and transparency.

As this is an absolute exemption, we do not have to apply the Public Interest Test when engaging this exemption

The Trust recognises a high level of interest from public in how the public purse has been spent on services, and must balance this against disclosure of any small numbers and the years in which these instances occurred, which – whilst not directly identifying individuals, would nevertheless give rise to a disclosure of personal data, as follows:

• Although the year alone is not personal data, we have also to consider whether other information that is already available, or may become available, to any member of the public, could be combined with the data requested so as to enable identification of the individual(s) concerned.
• There is a high chance of recognition/identification of particular individuals/patients by fellow patients/colleagues and/or others from the low numbers.
• This masking of low numbers is not a just a question of considering the means reasonably likely to be used by general public, but also the means likely to be used by a determined person with a particular reason to want to identify individuals from data in the public domain now or in the future, and/or gained from other sources.