£15.00
This Lunch and Learn session will share the findings of my article recently published in Child Abuse Review: Cultural Sensitivity vs. Child Protection: The Opposing Pressures Failing Charedi Children. The presentation explores how well-intentioned efforts to respect cultural and faith contexts can sometimes conflict with child protection imperatives, leaving children at risk of harm.
Drawing on fictionalised case examples informed by recurring themes in professional and lived experience, I will examine the barriers Charedi children face when disclosing sexual abuse, and the role community structures can play in restricting their safety. The session will highlight how policies built around “cultural sensitivity” can inadvertently silence children and reinforce systemic failings.
Participants will: - Gain insights into the specific safeguarding challenges faced by children in the Charedi (ultra-orthodox Jewish) community. - Reflect on the tension between cultural sensitivity and child protection, and how this plays out in practice. - Consider practical ways practitioners and policymakers can centre children’s rights while working with faith and minority communities.
Yehudis Goldsobel is a safeguarding specialist, researcher, and policy leader with over a decade of experience in child protection, sexual violence, and victim services. She is the Founder and former Chief Executive of Migdal Emunah, a pioneering support organisation for Jewish victims of sexual abuse and has chaired the Metropolitan Police’s Independent Advisory Group on Rape and Serious Sexual Offences.
Her professional background spans senior roles across policing, local government, and the voluntary sector, including advising Police and Crime Commissioners on safeguarding, crime, and victim policy, as well as embedding a Child First approach within the Criminal Justice System. Yehudis guest lectures on safeguarding and minority communities at London Metropolitan University and has recently completed an MA in Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Her recent publication in Child Abuse Review — Cultural Sensitivity vs. Child Protection: The Opposing Pressures Failing Charedi Children — highlights the risks posed when cultural sensitivity and safeguarding come into conflict and introduces a critical perspective on protecting children in faith-based settings.
It has improved my knowledge and understanding about the range of harms caused to children and their impact as I have been able to network with a wide range of experts from the UK and beyond. There is no other multidisciplinary association for child protection professionals focused on learning to support and improve practice and policy
