DISAPPOINTMENT and dismay on the General Synod’s decision to not outsource the Church of England’s safeguarding work immediately were mingled with a plea to not be too pessimistic, as bishops and survivors responded to Tuesday’s vote.
“I believe there are some things that we are able to salvage from it,” was the assessment of the lead bishop for safeguarding, the Bishop of Stepney, Dr Joanne Grenfell.
Speaking to the Church Times after the vote, she said that she was “disenchanted” by the consequence: “It’s not where I desired to be at the tip of today,” she said.
“I believe Synod didn’t quite find the courage today to do the things that should be done,” she said, describing the best way forward now as a “more circuitous route”.
She pledged, nonetheless, to proceed working for “greater independence” in Church safeguarding in her role as lead bishop, and said that she would work to offer the “reassurance” needed on issues including trustee responsibility and the way the external body can be contracted.
In the mean time, an independent scrutiny body can be established, though Dr Grenfell said that it was hard to present a timescale for this.
The Archbishop of York said: “I’m disenchanted that the Church is now going to do this in two stages, but I fully commit myself to work towards implementing synod’s decision and making it occur.”
As for the perception of the vote, Dr Grenfell said that the Church had “missed an enormous opportunity to send a message to victims and survivors that we hear their concerns about trust and confidence”.
The Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Philip North, who had proposed the amendment to Dr Grenfell’s motion, took a distinct view.
“I don’t think that an almost unanimous vote for greater safeguarding is a foul news story,” he said. “I believe that’s a superb news story, and it shows a Church that’s repentant, that desires to vary, and is moving ahead as fast as feasible towards greater independence of safeguarding.”
Further work can be done on Model 4, and proposals would return to the Synod once they were deliverable, he suggested. “There was a risk today that we over- promised. There was a risk that we said we might do things that we then later work out we’re unable, legally or practically, to do.”
The Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, said that, although she had wanted Model 4, “I don’t think in point of fact we’re very far off the identical final result.
“Even if we had gone straight to option 4, it will have still been slow, because there’s a lot of work to do to be sure that we are able to actually deliver that and implement it, with all of the complexities we now have under charity law and never wanting to abdicate our responsibility for safeguarding,” she said.
“The difference is that this may now should be brought back to Synod, but I don’t think this needs to be an issue if we agree we’d like to have a timetable.”
Bishop Treweek said that she recognised that the choice would feel “hugely painful” to those survivors who had called for Model 4. “I would like to present reassurance that that is about us moving forward.”
She also expressed concern about how the choice can be reported. “I believe it might be reported in a positive way, or it might be reported in a way that appears as if we’ve all voted against independence, which isn’t what we’ve done in any respect.”
The immediate response from survivors on social media was negative. “Survivors are devastated,” the founding father of Survivors Voices, Jane Chevous, wrote on X. “We feel betrayed by the church, who again haven’t listened to us. Trust isn’t restored but further broken.”
Another survivor, the Revd Lizzi Green, addressed Synod members in a post. “Do you recognize what you will have just done?” she wrote: “Do you genuinely not hear survivors? Because we keep shouting and also you keep telling us you might be centering us, but that’s clearly crap. We don’t trust you.”
The Second Church Estates Commissioner, Marsha de Cordova MP, said that the choice “puts back the progress we’d like”. She made her maiden speech throughout the debate, arguing in favour of Model 4.
In a blog post after the talk, she lamented the consequence of the vote. “The road to rebuilding trust and confidence within the Church stays long.”
Others who responded included Professor Alexis Jay, who last February delivered a report setting out a pathway to independent safeguarding. On Tuesday, she told the BBC that the choice was “deeply disappointing” and “devastating for victims and survivors”.
In an interview on Channel 4 News, also on Tuesday, she said that the choice didn’t make people less secure within the Church of England, but that it was a “huge opportunity missed to be sure that they were more secure, but most significantly that trust and confidence within the Church could, partially, be restored”.
A Professor of Biblical Studies on the University of Chester, Professor Paul Middleton, nonetheless, cautioned against the Synod’s decision being “misrepresented by some as a form of ‘failure’ to do the appropriate thing.
“There were clear issues and problems with Model 4 (the best level of ‘independence’), and what has been adopted is a model with a high degree of independent safeguarding,” he wrote.
One of the concerns that had been raised was about would occur if the independent body appointed to do that safeguarding work was lower than scratch. The issue was one which swayed lay member Prudence Dailey.
“I’d say to victims and survivors that the desire towards independence is there, it’s just a few of these practical issues that might actually make things higher than worse,” she told the Church Times.
Bishop North said that the Synod’s decision was “sensible and proportionate”. There was a spread of opinion amongst survivors and safeguarding experts, he said, and the approach now being taken allowed for independent scrutiny to be introduced “immediately”, while the Church did “due diligence” on further outsourcing.
In spring last 12 months, a survey of greater than 2000 people connected with the Church of England showed that support for fully outsourced safeguarding was low amongst bishops and safeguarding professionals working throughout the Church.
Support was higher amongst survivors, with 71 per cent favouring a move to operationally independent safeguarding (News, 31 May 2024).
