PROFESSOR ALEXIS JAY has really helpful a complete overhaul of the C of E’s safeguarding structures, shifting responsibility away from individual dioceses to 2 latest charities, which will likely be completely independent of church authorities.
Her report, commissioned by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and published on Wednesday morning, argues: “The diocesan management structure for safeguarding will not be compatible with the event of a trusted, high-quality, and accountable system for safeguarding.”
The creation of two latest independent bodies is really helpful: the primary to perform safeguarding work, the second to supply “oversight and scrutiny” of the work of the primary. Both needs to be established as charities and funded by the Church.
“There should be an entire transfer of responsibility from the Church to those bodies, whose advice and decisions needs to be final and never merely advisory,” the report says.
The option of creating changes to the present system is dismissed within the report. Professor Jay argues that to achieve this would “not be sufficient to rebuild trust that the Church is a secure place. . . An entire change of culture is required to revive trust and confidence in church safeguarding.”
In a supporting statement, Professor Jay, who formerly chaired the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), said: “Church safeguarding currently falls below the standards of secular organisations, with inconsistent guidance, data collection, accountability, skilled practice, and scrutiny.
“Further tinkering with existing structures wouldn’t be sufficient to make safeguarding within the Church skilled, accountable, and trusted by those that use its services.”
Professor Jay, appointed in the summertime to report on how the Church should structure it’s safeguarding systems (News, 20 July 2023), continued: “The purpose of my work was to give attention to how one can achieve a safeguarding body that was independent. This is the minimum that victims, survivors, and those that are subject to allegations are entitled to expect.”
An annex to the report reveals that she and her team interviewed 163 people, including 41 victims and survivors of abuse or their advocates, and 33 members of the clergy. A complete of 407 people filled out a web-based survey, including greater than 130 church volunteers; 32 safeguarding professionals, including former and current staff at each the national and diocesan level, were also interviewed.
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York issued a press release to coincide with the report’s publication, thanking Professor Jay and her team, saying: “We recognise her criticism of our safeguarding structures and processes, and we welcome this scrutiny and challenge.
“For the sake of all those that come into contact with the Church, particularly victims and survivors, we welcome the plans which might be in place to take forward this work as swiftly as possible to offer everyone confidence and trust in our structures and processes.
“Professor Jay rightly acknowledges the wonderful work that is completed up and down the country by experienced and committed Safeguarding Officers and others, but her challenge to us all is how our safeguarding structures and processes reach that very same standard. This is a constructive challenge that we must all take very seriously.
“We pray for all involved because the Church takes these vital decisions. We pray that our response is formed by our knowledge that every one are created within the image of God, and our fervent longing and desire to see a Church which is secure for all.”
The report will likely be debated on Saturday at a gathering of the General Synod, following a pre-recorded presentation by Professor Jay (News, 9 February).
THE conclusions of Professor Jay’s report are unlikely to be welcomed by diocesan safeguarding staff. The Church Times has been shown a letter from safeguarding professionals within the C of E, dated 30 November last yr, by which they express concern in regards to the prospect of latest, completely independent bodies.
The letter, addressed to the Archbishops’ Council and with 62 signatories, most either diocesan safeguarding advisers (DSAs) or deputy DSAs, argues that the Church should give attention to delivering IICSA’s first advice to the C of E, which is that there needs to be “operational independence of safeguarding decision-making” but stopped in need of recommending fully independent structures.
Instead, it suggested that “diocesan safeguarding officers needs to be employed locally, by the Diocese Board of Finance”, and that they need to “have the authority to make decisions independently of the diocesan bishop in respect of key safeguarding tasks” (News, 20 October 2022).
The letter suggests that there may be “no example from the UK’s third sector by which safeguarding casework is delivered by professionals employed independently of the organisation by which the cases themselves arise, at the least for organisations of any appreciable size”.
And it emphasises that DSAs don’t consider independent employment to be essential, writing that “removing safeguarding teams from diocesan or cathedral employment risks undermining the considerable cultural changes the C of E has made during the last decade at parish and diocesan level.”
Professor Jay’s report doesn’t go into detail in regards to the practicalities of a shift from diocesan to centralised safeguarding, though it does assert: “The physical location of safeguarding staff in dioceses needs to be retained.”
In response to a question from the Church Times in regards to the practical implications of the structural change for DSAs, a spokesperson for Professor Jay said that Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment (TUPE) rights would apply for diocesan and national safeguarding staff.
The report advances several explanation why the diocesan management of safeguarding is insufficient, specializing in inconsistency of practice and staff provision, including the influence of diocesan bishops, because the essential explanation why this transformation should occur.
Issues created by the influence of diocesan bishops in the present model were cited by respondents to the web survey conducted by Professor Jay’s team, including by one bishop who’s quoted within the report: “Safeguarding needs to be taken out of the hands of the bishops, and there needs to be properly independent structures at diocesan and national levels.”
“It was clear from our engagement . . . that dioceses operate their safeguarding services very in another way, and that the bishop can exert significant influence over local safeguarding,” the report suggests.
The report notes that, when appointing diocesan safeguarding staff, “a bishop should be satisfied that the person has ‘appropriate qualifications and expertise’, however the meaning of ‘appropriate’ will not be clearly articulated in church guidance.”
The result, the report suggests, is that there may be “a variable level of safeguarding expertise and experience” amongst DSAs, in addition to a big variation between dioceses as to what number of staff are employed.
”Our evaluation found no statistically significant relationship between our estimates of the variety of safeguarding staff employed in each diocese and a diocese’s worshipping population,” the report says.
It does say, nonetheless: “Criticism of the present system of safeguarding will not be a mirrored image on the person safeguarding professionals who work on the national and diocesan levels of the Church.”
The report also suggests that the present structure overburdens diocesan staff and parish volunteers, similtaneously restricting the power of the National Safeguarding Team (NST) to assist with the workload.
“We heard from many within the dioceses and parishes who felt overburdened by the variety of directives and the quantity of guidance coming from the NST that dioceses were expected to implement. Similarly, the NST expressed frustration that they weren’t capable of intervene in diocesan safeguarding even once they felt it was not appropriate or didn’t meet best practice,” the report says.
The full report might be read online here.
