A NEW approach to outsourcing church safeguarding to an independent body was endorsed overwhelmingly by the General Synod on Wednesday afternoon.
Despite some speeches that called for a greater sense of urgency, or urged the Synod to revisit the thought rejected last yr of also moving diocesan safeguarding teams to a latest external organisation, members overall welcomed the newest considering on independent safeguarding.
Dame Christine Ryan, the independent chair of the Safeguarding Structures Programme Board, which is piloting this work, said that, after months of conversations and consultation, it had turn into clear to her that the Church of England was “ready to alter” and had a “deep commitment” to doing “what was right”. Nevertheless, actual change was happening far too slowly, she concluded.
Regulators, Parliament, and the general public would not tolerate incremental improvements, she warned. She had, subsequently, drawn up a latest model for independent safeguarding which might simplify matters, restore trust, and end the “invidious” situation wherein the Church acted as each “pastor and judge” in safeguarding cases.
A single independent national charity, provisionally titled the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA), can be created, she said. Its governing board would have a majority of independent non-church members. As an additional layer of impartiality, its chief safeguarding officer’s operational decisions can be accountable solely to not the board, but to an external regulatory body.
A latest uniform complaints process can be rolled out across every diocese, and an ombudsman would supply a final route of appeal for handling complaints that might not be resolved locally.
Local diocesan and cathedral safeguarding teams wouldn’t turn into employees of the ISA (because the National Safeguarding Team would), but would depend on the ISA for guidance, resources, training, and support.
All of this might begin to alter the culture, Dame Christine said. “My ask today is easy: endorse this direction of travel,” she concluded. “The cost of delayed motion can be measured within the harm that it enables.”
The Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, Dr Joanne Grenfell, who’s the lead bishop for safeguarding, acknowledged that this latest model was different from what the Synod had approved 12 months earlier, but she said that it was each simpler and quicker to implement, while also “squaring the circle” of retaining embedded local safeguarding teams while increasing independence.
Most members spoke warmly of the brand new approach and urged that it’s progressed speedily towards laws. The Bishop of Tewkesbury, the Rt Revd Robert Springett, the deputy lead bishop for safeguarding, said that this could deliver the core requirement: to stop the Church from “marking its own homework”.
Other speakers praised Dame Christine’s approach to simplifying complexity and recognising the advantages of local expertise.
The Revd Will Harwood (Truro), who described himself as a survivor of church-based abuse, urged members to hold the motion endorsing the brand new model. It was vital, he said, for the Church to integrate survivors’ voices fully into its work: “God draws near to the broken-hearted, will we do the identical?”
The Archbishop of Canterbury also backed the motion, she said, to interrupt through what had appeared to be “intractable”. This sensible latest approach may very well be “delivered at speed”, mixing independence of decision-making with trustees’ legal responsibilities. But this was just the “next step” on the Church’s safeguarding journey, she warned: “Earning people’s trust inside and out of doors the Church will take greater than only one motion.”
Alison Coulter (Winchester) said that she and other members of the Archbishops’ Council had been forced into painfully confronting their failures on safeguarding independence lately. “It has been humbling, and really clear we’d like to do higher,” she said.
Besides paying tribute to the victims and survivors who sat on the safeguarding-structures board together with her, she also told the Synod that the parliamentary Ecclesiastical Committee was closely following its deliberations and urging a greater sense of urgency.
There was an attempt, through amendments, to impose a deadline of July 2027 to bring to the Synod laws to implement this model, and in addition to reopen the thought of transferring local safeguarding teams to the ISA.
Robert Zampetti (London), who moved each amendments, argued that the Church too often “talked a very good talk” but didn’t deliver on its good intentions. A set deadline would hold its feet to the hearth.
Dr Grenfell persuaded the Synod to reject this, nevertheless, arguing that it was unnecessary and imposed excessive inflexibility on the working group, which was actually looking for to return with laws before July 2027, anyway.
Mr Zampetti’s second amendment on preparing plans to outsource diocesan safeguarding also fell after Dr Grenfell argued that this could distract her team from focusing all its efforts on implementing the recommendation of their independent safeguarding experts.
This argument was echoed by the Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Philip North, who had steered the Synod along with his own amendment last February into rejecting a model that outsourced local in addition to national safeguarding teams.
The unamended motion was carried by 345-1, with three recorded abstentions.
