The paper surveys the quantitative evidence relating to sexual abuse committed by welfare personnel in a variety of settings. From this, it is concluded that other welfare settings are just as sexually unsafe for child ren as resident care .Moreover, mainstream responses designed to reduce sexual abuse in welfare agencies are seen to be ineffective largely because they ignore the crucial role of gender in the genesisofmost of that abuse. The second half of the paper adopts a more qualitative approcach to consider the implications of this analysis for male workers in the caring services . It is suggested that it may be necessary to radically delimit the role of males if the levels of sexual abuse in this sphere are to be signifi cantly reduced.
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