TRANSFERRING the Church of England’s diocesan and national safeguarding staff to an independent body would take at the least three years, a paper recommending the proposal says.
In the paper, published on Thursday, the lead bishop for safeguarding, the Bishop of Stepney, Dr Joanne Grenfell, outlines the choices to be laid before the General Synod in February.
Radical change was needed, she told the Church Times, in order that “people can have trust and confidence in how safeguarding is completed.”
Two models are being recommend for consideration. In the primary, the National Safeguarding Team (NST) could be transferred to a latest, independent body; within the second, the brand new body would also include diocesan and cathedral safeguarding teams, removing them from their current local employment status.
In each models, an additional independent body is proposed to scrutinise the Church’s safeguarding operations and act as a final point to which complaints might be escalated.
The Response Group formed to contemplate the recommendations of Professor Alexis Jay and Dr Sarah Wilkinson of their respective reports was, Dr Grenfell reveals, unable to succeed in a consensus on which model to endorse.
Her paper says that each models “require substantial work to develop and deliver, which can’t be achieved overnight”, but such “radical steps” are, Dr Grenfell argues within the paper, “needed”.
The establishment of the scrutiny body is widely supported, but responses to a consultation process last spring made clear that there’s a divergence of views about whether operational safeguarding ought to be conducted by a latest body. The majority of Church safeguarding professionals opposed the proposal (News, 30 May 2024).
Thursday’s paper reveals that some members of the Response Group that developed the proposals being put to the Synod “oppose it very strongly”, and sets out their reasons.
These include the likelihood of a waiting period “of at the least three years” before it will probably be achieved, which, Dr Grenfell writes, “is prone to affect recruitment and retention of staff”. Other objections include the argument that it’s an untested model for institutions equivalent to the Church, and that it could “make the Church less protected” if responsibility for safeguarding is “not clearly embedded throughout the organisation”.
Despite these objections, Dr Grenfell backs the more extensive option of transferring all safeguarding teams to a latest body. “The reasons for doing this are about consistency, timeliness, and evenness of resources” across the dioceses, Dr Grenfell told the Church Times on Thursday afternoon.
Funding disparities were one reason for differences between dioceses in safeguarding provision, she said, but merely to even out financial resources wouldn’t necessarily result in a “consistency of practice” across the country.
“Of course it gives me pause for thought that there could be resistance to it from safeguarding professionals. I don’t doubt their expertise or wisdom,” she said, however the query had gone “beyond a technical safeguarding management issue; it’s about how the entire Church steps up and creates the appropriate environment during which those sensible professionals” could work “in essentially the most effective way and be trusted”.
While Dr Grenfell is proposing the more extensive option for outsourcing operational safeguarding, she hopes that Synod members will give proper consideration to the choice, which itself could be “good for the Church of England”. Both models, she said, were “considerable progress from where we’re in the intervening time”.
The paper emphasises that, in each models, “support for parishes and frontline settings is prioritised, with safeguarding practitioners who serve dioceses continuing to supply training, advice, and practical support to office-holders and volunteers in parishes”.
The difficulty of presenting two options for consideration under synodical procedures implies that Dr Grenfell will formally propose the second model — full outsourcing of safeguarding — but will welcome an amendment to permit the choice model to be discussed and a vote to be taken on which is carried forward.
The part played by the Synod was vital, Dr Grenfell suggested, to enabling the “whole Church to own” safeguarding. The Synod, she said, had shown that it could possibly be “mature and sensible” in its decision-making, and commended the range of its members’ experience.
The paper outlines the approach to “independence” taken by the Response Group as focused on guarding safeguarding officers from “undue actual or perceived influence or from pressure to act in a way which protects the interests of a person, group or Church body”. Nevertheless, the paper says, people working in safeguarding “report no evidence of current pressure from throughout the Church to compromise safeguarding priorities and no conflict of interest”.
Dr Grenfell said that it was correct that safeguarding professionals within the Church had reported that there “isn’t undue pressure or influence. . . None the less, I feel what we’ve tried to do is return to ‘Why did we start this work?’ Because there are perception issues around either undue influence or around actual or perceived conflicts of interest, they usually matter.
“So, in all of this work, I feel the 2 threads that run through it are about each effectiveness and trust, and that the 2 are connected with one another, and so it’s turn into essential to the Church — partly due to criticism it’s received, partly due to really, truly dreadful legacy of abuse that remains to be being uncovered — that folks can have trust and confidence in how safeguarding is completed.”
