5 May press release: Independent audit report of the National Safeguarding Team
The first independent audit of the Church of England’s National Safeguarding Team (NST) has been published today.
The audit was carried out by the INEQE Safeguarding Group and commissioned by the Archbishops’ Council, following a recommendation from the National Director of Safeguarding. It assesses the work of the NST against the National Safeguarding Standards.
The report highlights areas of good practice as well as identifying 66 recommendations for further improvement. Some of these relate to the wider Church’s safeguarding structures, while others are specific to the NST….
You can read the full report here. It’s 142 pages long, and most of the 66 detailed recommendations relate specifically to the way the NST is currently organised (although that structure is not explained) and to the way it carries out its work.
There is a report in the Church Times: NST audit makes recommendations to expand Church’s national safeguarding capacity
…The audit has been conducted in parallel with work to establish, with the General Synod‘s backing, a new independent safeguarding authority into which the NST’s functions will be subsumed (News, 24 April). This evolution is one that INEQE “fully supports”, the audit says.
“The primary function of this new governance body must be to hold those operationally responsible for the delivery of safeguarding to account.”
Against this backdrop, a number of the audit’s recommendations are designed to deliver “immediate improvements as an interim measure under current structures”. These include a restructure to establish a secretariat, including a compliance unit; a “specialist safeguarding legal advisor to navigate the Church’s complex safeguarding landscape”; and an expanded data analysis, research, and evaluation unit (DARE). “Victim and survivor participation and engagement” would become a “dedicated service area”.
No costing or calculations on staffing are included…
See earlier TA article about the plans for the new independent safeguarding authority.
The earlier TA article didn’t inspire much comment did it-response to it was much lower in volume than those now praising (or otherwise) famous pews and our Victorian forefathers that sat upon them . Possibly the way being prepared for the election of a bishop who doesn’t believe in women having a vocation as priests to becoming London Diocesan has raised an even smaller ripple….
Now this- which has the full blessing of INEQUE… to misquote Mandy Rice -Davies’Well they would, Wouldn’t they?’
‘April is the cruellest month… ‘ or maybe in this case May is ?
I fail to see how this team can ever be independent unless it is created by an Act of Parliament with its funding guaranteed by law. bishops will always have the ability to put pressure on it otherwise.
Exactly! The telling phrase is ‘ a specialist legal adviser to navigate the Church’s complex safeguarding landscape’…
Which could be interpreted as maintaining the much criticised status quo at any cost, and ensuring there are still enough jobs for the boys to accompany it, instead of simplifying things and bringing them into line with those of the many other organisations where things work better.
Disappointing though unsurprising that this has prompted so few responses. ENIQUE, so much lauded by Dioceses audited by them, make 66, repeat 66 recommendations. By contrast, the phrase ‘good practice’ features only 20 times in the 142 pages of report. Indeed ‘good’ appears only a handful of times otherwise, accompanied by ‘opportunity’, ‘intentions’, ‘place to work’, and ‘force for good’. The tone is one of need to improve. Given that General Synod, prompted by bishops, voted against clear ‘independence’ and for ‘marking its own homework’ this might have been expected. If the CofE is to continue its ‘exceptionalism’ that ‘Establishment’… Read more »