Two revised Church of England safeguarding codes of practice have been made available this week.
They are both on the agenda for next month’s meeting of the General Synod as deemed business. This means that each will be deemed to be approved unless 25 members give notice in advance that they wish the code to be debated.
In addition to the codes themselves, the papers explain why the codes are required, what has changed, and give details of the consultation process.
If approved, these Codes will go live on the 1 September 2025 (Managing Allegations) and 1 March 2025 (Religious Communities).
I wonder about the potential breach of the Data Protection act 2018 which is required in GS2372. Whilst sharing data where an individual is a risk to themselves or others is reasonable, I wonder whether that risk, if it is to vulnerable adults, within the meaning of the Church of England, rather than the statutory definition, would be sufficient cause to breach GDPR? Would they then pose a risk in a statutory sense?
GDPR is quite broad in its conditions whereby information about children or vulnerable adults can be shared without consent, when it is in the public interest to prevent harm or criminal activity. In what way do you believe the Church’s definition of “risk” differs from the statutory one?
It’s the definition of vulnerable adult within the C of E which is different from the statutory one. GS2372 refers to that, and references spiritual abuse for example.
On p133 there is the following text. with a link..”The Safeguarding Officer must use the Church’s approved standard risk analysis and risk management form when carrying out a risk assessment.”
I can not see that form on the linked page. https://www.churchofengland.org/safeguarding/policy-practice-guidance/templates-and-resources
can anyone else see it?
No.
These proposals are a waste of time. There is no trust or confidence in the NST, Synod or Archbishops’ Council to get anything right. All consistently demonstrate their utter incompetence with no capacity to exercise responsibility in power. This farce will end in tragedy. The people who are drafting this garbage are dangerously stupid. Independence in safeguarding is the only viable possibility.
The poachers trying to control the gamekeepers. The Archbishop of York’s Epiphany letter was also saying, in effect, he and the church leaders needed to take action. They want more power not less. Nonsense. The church leaders at all levels are beyond any trust and should completely walk away from safeguarding leaving it to people who are independent in the sense they have no ulterior motive.
How different was the message from the Russian Orthodox bishop of London and Western Europe focussing on the Incarnation.
I agree with your comments but I doubt that even independent safeguarding will work. So called “safeguarding professionals” are human beings with human motivations and allegiances and if the same people are transferred to an independent organization I doubt much will change. What the Church of England needs is a cultural shift, a shift from regarding victims as a problem to be processed to a genuinely Christian love for the vulnerable. If you set up an independent safeguarding organization who is going to make the senior appointments ? My abuse didn’t cross the threshold for any kind of legal penalty… Read more »
It is surely inappropriate to speak about what is happening in Gaza as genocide. We don’t use that word to describe the indiscriminate bombing of the Second World War, or of the massive ethnic cleansing that followed the war. What evidence is there that the Israelis intend to kill all the inhabitants of Gaza? None at all. The fighting and the killing would end tomorrow if Hamas fighters laid down their arms and released the hostages. Genocide is not happening in Gaza – unless we re-define the term. And what is Israel expected to do? Pay any price demanded to… Read more »
Wasn’t it a certain Austrian Corporal? Unfortunately Hamas are not likely to lay down their arms while they consider the injustices against Palestinian people remain unaddressed – and those injustices go back to at least 1948 if not earlier, when people were forcibly driven from their land, and in some cases killed, to make room for the ‘new’ nation of Israel. In no way whatever do I approve of Hamas, or their actions, or their puppet masters over in Iran, but neither can I approve of the Israeli military’s behaviour which, if not genocide, is a pretty good imitation. They… Read more »
Tom Kitten, it’s a bit sad to see a number of inaccurate assertions and slippery thinking here. The current government of Israel is accountable for its actions in the present, and historically since 1948. It is deeply unsavoury to absolve the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza by reference to the Holocaust. Palestine had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and it is misguided to equate Hamas with the Nazi regime. International tribunals have determined that what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocide according to the definitions of international law. Would that such a framework and the tribunals that give… Read more »
This is just about the most perfect piece of hasbara I have seen for a good long while. It hits all the buttons, and in just one paragraph.
Well done you!
I remember hearing a Jewish Theologian Professor Marc Ellis at a Conference on the Holy Land I attended at the then Scottish Churches House in Dunblane in June 1990 during my time as a Monk at Roslin, and Marc Ellis said in one of his addresses as a Jew that he felt the Holocaust was being used by the State of Israel politically as a Blunt instrument to silence any legitimate criticism of the State of Israel and its policies in the same way today as the word Anti-Semitism is being weaponised as a blunt instrument to silence legitimate of… Read more »
And there you go using the word ‘pogrom’. What does that mean? The operation on 7th October was primarily to take hostages who could be exchanged for the thousand and more Palestinians being held without trial in Israeli prisons. The casualties were mostly caused by the Israeli occupation Force. The Al Qassem brigades did not have tanks or Apache helicopters, only motorcycles and a few motorised hang gliders. Numerous Israeli spokesmen have made no secret of their desire to remove the Palestinian population of Gaza.
The latest reported figures of those held by Israel (from September 2024) were 9,440, a large number of whom could not – by any reasonable or rational definition – be categorised as combatants. The treatment of many of these individuals has been well-documented: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/08/israels-escalating-use-torture-against-palestinians-custody-preventable; https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/07/israel-must-end-mass-incommunicado-detention-and-torture-of-palestinians-from-gaza/; https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/08/26/israel-palestinian-healthcare-workers-tortured, https://www.omct.org/site-resources/files/Submission_SR_Torture_final-15.2.24.pdf, etc. Some of the perpetrators have obligingly recorded their ‘treatment’ of some of these prisoners, including on camera, and these recordings have long been available on social media, though the acts they record have not usually been reported in heavily [self-]censored Western MSM. The minister responsible for prisons has also called for the… Read more »
I hesitate to contradict the learned Froghole, but I can assure him that I am not Antony Blinken, and neither am I a spokesman for the Israeli government. I suppose that if I were to sum up what I was trying to say in a few words it would be that the word ”genocide” is being thrown around to such an extent that it is losing all meaning. War is hell – but it isn’t genocide. But on a more sinister level, I cannot but feel that there is an antisemitic edge to the way that some seem positively to… Read more »
The current Tear Times mentions a prayer campaign for Gaza which they instigated with the aid of the 24/7 organisation in October 24. As of yet I haven’t heard of any effective answers to all those prayers. Where is the charismatic ‘all powerful God’ in the midst of all this? The one who provides parking spaces and material goodies for his Western favourites, but seemingly turns his back on the suffering of others in the rest of the world? I struggle to cope with the God of Tidy Answers…….
And are you not praying for Gaza? And if you are how would you know if your prayers are being answered there? How any of us know, at a distance, where God’s grace and mercy is at work in all that appalling suffering and violence? This is rather nasty, mocking of a significant force for renewal in the church of my ministry lifetime. I owe a real debt to the charismatic movement. It has, in significant ways, deepened my faith not cheapened it. Please let’s engage with the best of a tradition, not its imagined worst.
These documents are 170 and 90 pages long respectively. Very few will be able to read and comprehend. I have no idea whether the Alexis Jay reports have been actioned or not. I have no idea whether the forthcoming discussions and decisions on independence are a pre requisite. I have no idea whether proposed government leglislation has been accounted for. I am not going to spend the rest of this week reading this stuff. I, like almost everybody else, have work to do. The bigger policies and procedure manuals are, the less they are read. Ten pages should be a… Read more »
I’m used to calling the approach a ‘snow job’; probably a lot of good work put into the preparation and ‘honing’ of the documents but resulting in TLDR (too long; didn’t read). Documents MUST be capable of being read in the limited time available if ‘assent’ is truly to be received. What has become of the ‘simplification’ agenda?
Exactly. Reminds me of the old joke:
Question: “Why did you make this all so long & complicated?”
Answer: “I did not have the time to make it short & simple”
Good joke, and it neatly explains why the documents are so long and convoluted. This is another attempt by the leadership to keep control of an area that the CofE are provenly useless at. It is far too late to come up with a new building plan when every previous structure built has collapsed with multiple casualties. Even if these documents were half decent, the time has come for the CofE to accept once and for all that its leaders are not to be trusted, and that independent delivery and oversight of safeguarding, and with fully professional independent scrutiny regulation,… Read more »
There’s another old joke:
Editor: I like your book except for the ending
Author: What is wrong with the ending?
Editor: It should be closer to the beginning.
on page 164 of the first document (GS 2372) (which itself is in separate parts, and I am looking at page 9 of the part titled Recognising, Responding, Recording Title of Safeguarding Code of Practice and Referring Safeguarding Concerns and Allegations – it may be an appendix, but not marked as such) it states: If 1.2.1 does not apply, i.e. there is no immediate risk of harm or urgent medical intervention needed, the matter must be referred to the police or social services and the relevant PSO or Safeguarding Officer within one working day. This is very confusing. Should it be… Read more »
The passive tense “the matter must be referred”. Well so, perhaps, it must. But the onus should be on a particular identifiable person or group. What do they mean by one working day? What days do they work?
If the parish PSO must do something what consequences will he or she face for not doing it?
My fear is that in order to clarify this, another ten pages will be added. As ever, I jumped to one particular page and found these basic problems. So I can but assume that every one of the over 200 pages has similar issues. Maybe more seriously, we have examples in Makin of multiple people all thinking somebody else has done something. I don;t see these codes of practice helping at all to avoid this. If it said ‘the person shoudl report to the PSO, who, after discussion and contact with the vulnerable person, should document and report to the… Read more »
Here is the simple plain easy to read safeguarding procedures for my athletics club, which is a copy of the UK athletics procedures, which almost certainly have a lot in common with other sports federations.
https://www.hernehillharriers.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/child-safeguarding-procedures-2023.pdf
fencing has much the same approach. I may add that safeguarding courses for sports coaches are far better than CofE, not least because they put the coach squarely in the frame for many scenarios, whereas in the courses for the lay-folk in my Dio you would never guess that it has such an appalling clergy abuse track record.
You may be correct in detail, but I remain unconvinced overall. OK, they define relevant person elsewhere, but what about a normal parishioner? What do they do? What are the respective responsibilies of the relevant person v. the safeguarding officer? If the relevant person reports to the safeguarding officer, are their responsibilities ended? It explicitly states that any person should follow these steps. So what exactly is the difference between any person and a relevant person, and how do their responsibilities vary? Section 1.4 has A or B and C or D. Bad confusing grammar. Would not pass any review… Read more »
I think (unless it has changed) that PSO means Parish Safeguarding Officer. So yes, it’s saying the PSO should be involved – unless, of course, they are the person about whom concerns are being raised.
The diocesan safeguarding officer is usually termed DSO or DSA.
Being involved is not the same as being responsible. As somebody else said, active verbs should be used and simple clear language. It is all too vague. Not the correct skills. Unprofessional.
Whilst there is much that is wrong with the Church of England, I am not sure that the cited example is one of them – it seems very clear to me: If I am a relevant person (the definition of which is referenced on the previous page), and I become aware of a safeguarding concern or allegation, then I must either (a) if there is present risk, immediately report it to the police or (b) if there is no immediate risk, report it to the police (or social services) and the PSO or, which applies in cathedrals and some other… Read more »
This example is a classic example of the lack of competence within the CoE. Any important document should be subject to a peer review. The purpose of a peer review is not to rubber stamp, it is to find problems and suggest improvements. It should avoid egos and defensive reactions. These kinds of reviews, formal and informal, are normal in industry. A talk at a conference, you give the talk beforehand to colleagues who make suggestions. If you go to a doctor and say I have a pain and thre doctor does a few checks and says everything is OK,… Read more »
If you think: the matter must be referred to the police or social services and the relevant PSO or Safeguarding Officer you must have some supernatural powers that can understand the mind of the author. It is really really terrible drafting. If it said the (relevant) person must refer it to the police or social services, and also to the relevant PSO or Safeguarding Officer it would be much clearer, but I hesitate to suggest corrections to the author, the author should be responsible for corrections. I have done much process documentation, it usually needs a diagram to make clear.… Read more »
“How can anybody approve such a poor document?” – Need you ask? It’s the CofE after all!
Remember, I only came on this site last November, and I have had no involvement or experience of the organisation of the CoE as an organisation beforehand. I feel a sermon coming on, it is a Sunday. Wait a second…..
When you say you have had no experience or involvement with the C of E as an organisation, do you mean you’ve had no connection with parishes or chaplaincies?
I have had plenty pf involvement in CoE as parishioner organist and pcc member but no experience of synods
It seems clear enough to me..
It is not clear. You are reading it with your own preconceptions. A or b and c or d can never be unambiguous. You have failed. You have not identified the problem. You have not reviewed. Actually I have a story. My boss told it. He was working at a top consultancy and his own boss gave him a document and asked him to review it and get back to him the next day. The next day he said it looks fine. His boss told him he didn’t want to be told it looked fine he wanted him to suggest… Read more »
It’s unusual to find myself defending the C of E’s safeguarding efforts (as regular TA readers will attest). But one of the difficulties with drafting safeguarding policies for the C of E is that (unlike eg a sports club) it has to cover such a wide range of situations. Churches; parish activities; home visits to the sick and elderly; schools; holiday clubs; Scouting activities; involvement in the wider community; chaplaincies in schools, universities, hospices, hospitals, and prisons, and the armed forces; retreat houses, conference centres, and spiritual direction for people possibly coming from a wide distance – and vulnerable adults… Read more »
See my ‘sermon’. The lack of care results in these poor documents and the poor reputation of the CoE and the resignation of Welby and, most importantly, the abuse of victims. Let me take another example of lack of clarity. There is a long section defining the ‘relevant person’. Then the procedures describe what a relevant prerson should do. Then, my assumption, some bright spark said, when reviewing a draft, what about a regular person? So somebody added a paragraph saying ‘relevant person’ also means ‘any person’. Then the document becomes completely incoherent. It is well known that correcting errors… Read more »
I am trying to connect with Alex Kubeyinje the ‘owner’ of these documents. Not to bash, but to try to help in any way.
He is on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-taylor-kubeyinje-a082a3ab/
He comes from local government (Lambeth, my borough).
‘Relevant person’ would actually be less clear, because it would lead to doubt as to which person was relevant. We all have a responsibility to refer safeguarding concerns on.
I agree.This is another opportunity for confusion.
What I take from this is that all that can be done is being done to avoid independent safeguarding provision for the Church of England.
If you have small grandchildren you’ve probably watched Debbie Doo ( with purple hair ) singing ‘round and round and round we go….’ This is exactly what is happening here.
Wouldn’t it be amazing to upend things and start with – there are x numbers of survivors of Smyth, Pilavachi etc etc ( fill in name to taste). How is the Church of England going to make things right for them?
Today’s sermon. Text: Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers. The idea that Jesus was always meek and mild is, of course, a myth. God gave us all the gift of thinking, and to abuse that gift by not using it to the best of our abilities is an insult to God. It is the rasion d’etre of… Read more »
‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’, the statutory guidance for all teachers and school governors, is published annually. It covers safeguarding law, safe recruitment, responding to allegations, roles and responsibilities, basically everything that every school in the country needs to know. The latest version runs to 185 pages. These two documents run to 260 pages between them, and only cover a portion of the same ground. It’s also mandatory for school governors and school leadership to read the updated KSIE document each year, but I couldn’t see where in GS2372 it explains who needs to read the document in full, and… Read more »
The audience for any document should, of course, be on the first page. I do see on page 3 that this is version 5. The scope of consultation was admirable, but the amount of feedback was small. The authorship and approval process was not obvious – who signed it off? The problem with a very wide consultative process is that nobody reads it all in detail – life is too short – and there is a presumption that it is all clear. It is not. It would be interesting to share the feedback they received. Ideally a small team of… Read more »