VARIATION in maternity policies across the the Church of England’s dioceses signifies that a pregnant cleric may very well be entitled to no diocesan pay in a single diocese and nine months’ full stipend in one other, a latest audit has revealed.
Four years after publication of National Ministry Team guideline (News, 30 March 2020), only five dioceses are meeting them. Only eight have policies promising paid provision no matter length of service.
The Clergy Babies Maternity Policy Audit, which took a bunch of ladies priests two years to finish, includes an evaluation and comparison of maternity provision, and makes greater than 100 recommendations.
It also brings to light examples of “immoral and illegal” practices. In more that one instance, the authors report, a lady occurring maternity leave has been encouraged to pay for her cover because she is “receiving pay for a job she isn’t doing”.
The national guidelines are clear that clergy remain entitled to remain of their provided accommodation, freed from charge, during their leave. But the authors report instances where a family with a baby has been made “effectively homeless by the church”. They also write of “quite a few reports of unfair or bullying behaviour by training incumbents towards curates who’re pregnant or have recently had a toddler”. The report describes clergy as having to “fight for and protect their rights, from a vulnerable position of difficult those with power and authority over them”.
The three authors all have pre-school and primary-school-age children, born or adopted during training, curacy, or incumbency. They are the Revd Dr Rae Caro, Priest-in-Charge of St Mark’s, Shiremoor (Newcastle); the Revd Chantal Noppen, Team Vicar of North Wearside (Durham); and the Revd Caroline Taylor, Vicar of Marton-in-Cleveland with Easterside (York).
In a summary, they write of their hope that “uncovering the disparities in provision will act as a catalyst for reform and more equitable practices”. The report, endorsed by five bishops, is devoted to “women clergy who’ve been denied leave, mistreated, or encouraged to depart ministry on account of having a toddler within the Church of England”.
On Tuesday, Dr Caro said that the audit was prompted by the “terrible stories” shared on the “Clergy Babies” Facebook group, which she had her fellow authors founded in 2019. Accounts shared through the group suggest that “prejudice is widespread,” the brand new report says.
Work on the audit began two years ago (Features, 10 March 2023). Collating the policies was a “mammoth task”, the authors write. Sophie Hudson, their “data support”, spent many hours looking for information. While the 2020 guidance states that policies needs to be freely available to all, many were “very difficult to locate and lots of took us an inordinate period of time to unpack and understand.” Only 29 dioceses had policies accessible on a diocesan website. Four — Leicester, Norwich, Peterborough, and Sheffield — had no information that the group could study.
The report is critical of the choice by some dioceses to direct people to talk to the diocesan office, HR, or their archdeacon relatively than simply publishing the policy. “Many women in our network have been treated unfavourably on account of pregnancy and childbirth,” the authors write. “Although this shouldn’t be the case, we will see how a lady wouldn’t feel in a position to ask directly for this information out of fear of the treatment they could receive.”
Priests who’re office-holders — i.e. not working under an employment contract — have all the time been eligible for statutory maternity pay, provided they’ve accomplished 26 weeks of stipendiary service before the child is born. This is about at 39 weeks of statutory maternity pay (SMP), plus an extra 13 weeks of unpaid leave. SMP is 90 per cent of average weekly earnings before tax for the primary six weeks followed by £184.03 or the 90-per-cent figure (whichever is lower) for the subsequent 33 weeks.
The latest guidance on parental pay and leave for clergy and ordinands published in 2020 encouraged dioceses “to be as generous as possible in offering parental support”. It notes that the Archbishops’ Council has really useful that every one dioceses adopt a level of “minimum provision” for clergy officeholders on account of grow to be parents, no matter legal entitlement or whether or not they have held office within the diocese for any length of time. This includes enhanced maternity pay of 26 weeks on full stipend, plus 13 weeks at SMP. Other recommendations include extending curacies to take account of maternity leave.
The 2020 guidelines provide an “excellent baseline,” the brand new audit says. “But many dioceses fall wanting them, and a few appear to have not realised that the rules aren’t actually policies.”
Most of the diocesan policies (22 out of 36 available) offer 39 weeks of full-stipend maternity pay for many who meet the qualifying criteria. This is greater than many ladies in other organisations receive. Polling conducted by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in 2022 found that 21 per cent of organisations offered what was really useful by the National Ministry Team, while 33 per cent offered the statutory minimum.
The same variety of dioceses — 22 — say that curacy training may be prolonged to take account of maternity leave. Only eight, nonetheless, assure clergy of paid provision no matter their length of service, and variation within the qualifying criteria for the diocesan offer of maternity pay is “considerable”. In some instances, it’s crucial to have accomplished one yr’s continuous service 14 weeks before the expected week of childbirth.
Besides an absence of transparency about policies, and examples of broken links and inconsistent information, the audit reports “far too many instances” of dioceses which have “modified what is obtainable, or denied any earlier offers in subsequent conversations”, which has been a “huge source of hysteria, stress and pressure”.
Of training incumbents’ attitudes, it reports that some could be “definitely, deemed unacceptable in a secular work environment and grounds for legal grievance”.
In most dioceses, organising maternity cover falls to the lady preparing to take leave, a source of “an immense amount of stress and pressure, and infrequently hours of additional work”.
Among what the audit identifies nearly as good practice is the offer in Blackburn diocese of paid cover for 2 services per week, Occasional Offices, and essential meetings, for as much as 12 months. Exeter’s policy is “written in a pastoral tone, especially the section on miscarriage, premature birth, and stillbirth”, the report says. “This level of consideration has not been seen in lots of other policies.”
With regard to adherence to the national guidelines, it awards the “top spot” to Coventry (with the caveat that it doesn’t offer full stipend for 39 weeks), followed by Birmingham, Exeter, London and Oxford. The ideal, the authors conclude, could be the creation of a single policy, funded and supported nationally.
Dioceses not meeting the usual within the 2020 guidelines had argued that they might not afford to accomplish that, Dr Caro said this week. “There is a sense, especially for poorer dioceses, that these guidelines are set nationally, but there isn’t any resource given to make them a reality.”
Among those endorsing the report are the Bishops of London, Blackburn, Chester, Newcastle, and Gloucester. The Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Philip North, writes: “Thirty years after women’s priestly Ordination, the Church still
seems to seek out it incredibly hard to make ministry compatible with bringing up a family. The result’s that many ladies feel that answering God’s call is something that must be deferred with the result that years of precious priestly ministry are lost. . . I’m sure that I won’t be the one Bishop who can be swiftly reviewing our approach and the way we advertise it because of this.”
The report’s foreword is by Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, the Revd Dr Isabelle Hamley. “The default understanding within the Church still appears to be anchored in social mores from long before the ordination of ladies, when women cared for youngsters while men went out to work,” she writes.
“Civil society has recognised that specific provision must be made for them [women], and that this provision is legitimate and a social ‘good’ that every one profit from. It seems disturbing to think that the Church needs to be less caring, and fewer supportive of families, than secular workplaces. . .The Church of England shouldn’t be a ‘bare necessities employer’.”
Dr Caro, whose doctorate is in reproductive medicine, and who researched the postpartum period (six to eight weeks after childbirth), had her first child in her final yr of coaching, and was not entitled to maternity leave — so needed to “finish as if I hadn’t had a baby”. While her training institution was “amazing”, it was a “miracle that I got to the tip”, she said this week. Having been told that she could be unable to have children, she didn’t have the “luxury” of waiting to be eligible, she said. “Women who’re young enough to be having children have gotten a long time left of ministry; so to quibble about the correct variety of months firstly just seems insane.”
Ms Taylor had her first child through the first yr of her curacy within the diocese of London, where she had a “hugely supportive” incumbent and PCC, but had not served long enough to be entitled to the diocesan maternity pay. She had received a letter from the Church Commissioners stating that she was entitled to the total stipend, which turned out to be a “clerical error”. She had spent per week’s price of hours arranging cover, and had been told that appointing a lady of childbearing age was a “risk”.
Ms Noppen, whose children were each born while she was an incumbent, spoke of the challenge of finding any details about shared parental leave. Confirmation had not been provided by the diocese, which had failed to finish the suitable paperwork. She also spoke of the pressure of attempting to secure cover during a difficult pregnancy.
She spoke anecdotally of the “sheer quantity of ladies leaving parish ministry, since the expectations on us as vicars with young kids is de facto hard”. Yet she had been “amazed” by how much having children had “fleshed out” her ministry.
It is, the authors write, “worryingly common for ladies with young children to be steered towards SSM ministry and/or actively discouraged from in search of incumbency posts”.
The report is “one example of something that, arguably, must have been organised and funded centrally”, its authors write. It refers to General Synod questions on a an absence of centrally available data. A 24-hour writing retreat was funded by WATCH. The Ministry Council funded the ultimate publication and distribution.
Many women who told the authors their stories were “reluctant to be named or to discover their diocese”. But the aim was to not “embarrass” dioceses, but to encourage improvements, Dr Caro said this week. “We are doing this on behalf of ladies who don’t feel in a position to have the conversation.”
“We are for the Church,” Ms Taylor said. “We are critical, but because we wish it to be constructive. The Church may very well be a superb place [for clergy parents] and, in lots of cases, with a small amount of change.”
