A couple or more years ago I was discussing, on this blog, the professional background of those who made up the original National Safeguarding Team (NST) of the Church of England. This team was put together by the Church in 2015 at some considerable expense and consisted of thirteen and half full-time posts. The names of everyone working on that team was recorded on the Church’s website. It was thus possible to see which professional skills were most highly valued by those creating this new church initiative. I noted when writing my piece that many of those then working for the NST seemed to have a social work background or links with the police. The professions notably not represented were the legal profession and those connected with one of the disciplines around mental care and therapy. No doubt, legal opinion could be brought in when required, but the absence of anyone with an awareness of the needs of victims and survivors of trauma was a serious omission. I commented that this appeared to suggest that, in the minds of those creating this new NST body, management and the protection of the institution seemed to take a higher priority than the care of those damaged by abuse. In short, the NST appeared to be a body for ‘managing’ the problem of abuse, rather than having proper regard for the victims of such behaviour. The NST has indeed obtained a reputation among survivors for its clunky and sometimes cruel protocols administered on behalf of the Church. Abuse had to be rooted out, it was true, but there has often not been any real empathetic engagement with the needs of those who had been damaged along the way. The frequent cry often heard seemed to be that the protocols operated by the Church were harder to endure than the original abuses suffered.
Since 2015 the old NST has been entirely rebuilt. Some of this ‘renewal’ of personnel was apparently to do with failures revealed at the hearings of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). But for whatever reason, the original members of the team under the leadership of Graham Tilby are no longer in post. A new broom in the person of Melissa Caslake was brought in. Survivors looked to her with hope since she brought into the Church a new and independent professional perspective which might have been able to cut through some of the old, fusty protocols. Above all, she was not caught up in a church culture addicted to reputation management and the demands of its communications department. Melissa was able, in the short time she spent in post, to build up new team almost from scratch. Although she was able to win the confidence of a number of survivors I am in touch with, there were clearly other pressures she had to face that we can only speculate about. She lasted in post a bare 15 months, before taking up a senior child protection appointment in the state sector. It is not unreasonable for us to pause a moment to speculate why she was able to give so little time to the role. It would seem that any vision she may have had for the NST could not be driven forward. The needs of the church institution, seen through the eyes of William Nye and other senior officials at Church House, perhaps came into conflict with the priorities of an outside professional concerned with the welfare and right-dealing for survivors. Something had to give and so the new head of the NST felt obliged to move into a new role. What I say here is speculation as we have no means of knowing exactly what went on behind the scenes
For the rest of this post, I want us to think about the idea of team and what it might imply in the context of the Church pursuing its safeguarding task. When we talk about teams in ordinary conversation, we are describing a group of people working together. Between them they possess all the complementary skills needed to complete a particular task. No single member of the team has all the required skills to do the project alone. One person, the team leader, may be expected to have an appreciation for all the skills represented in his/her team. He/she is responsible for deploying the team to work together so that the process of completing the joint task may be smooth and efficient. The leader will be a particular kind of professional person, the one that can appreciate the skills of others and see how each interlock with others. My complaint over the apparent failures of the NST so far, in its public performance, is that it has not brought together all the skills necessary to do the complete safeguarding job properly. In earlier posts, I have discussed the extraordinary absence of anyone from the therapeutic world to feed into team discussions the likely impact on individuals either experiencing accusation or a lifetime of trauma following abuse. Anyone following the stories of Matt Ineson, Martyn Percy or more recently Alan Griffin, must have asked themselves the simple but obvious question. Why was no one in the local/national team working with these cases able to anticipate the appalling impact on individuals caught up in them? When the NST was brought in in March 2020 to look at a spurious accusation over Percy’s alleged failure to act appropriately in a safeguarding matter (a case that was dismissed), no one was on hand to look at the potential impact on the accused. Did no one in the senior ranks of the London diocese reflect on the appalling stress placed on Fr Griffin by leaving serious accusations on the table without any urgency to resolve the veracity of these accusations? A single individual, without necessarily high levels of therapeutic training, could have asked the simple question each time, have you thought through what these as-yet unproven accusations are doing to these individuals caught up this process? No one asked that question in these and many other cases. The consequence was serious pain and, in one case, tragedy.
There is one further category of professional insight that is needed in many safeguarding cases. As a background comment before we consider this, we might note that the Church of England has seriously undermined its reputation in the eyes of the wider public over the past few years. The reader of the Daily Mail will probably be aware of two things about the Church. One is that there are numerous survivors of sexual and other forms of church abuse who are still searching for justice. A second point is that there is an awareness that the Church has seemed to place its reputation and financial assets above the need for care and justice. Over the past twelve to eighteen months, with the talk by central Church authorities of compensatory schemes (which Gilo has so ably unpacked for us a week ago), the powers that be at the heart of the Church are finally showing signs of understanding the crisis of reputation. They are now responding to this widespread antipathy towards the institution. Something is moving at the centre, but we are still left with the cumbersome, in some cases, the heartless and cruel structures of the Clergy Disciplinary Measure. What can the Church do further to reclaim its reputation and claw back a little of the goodwill that has vanished over past months and years in Britain and elsewhere in the world?
The answer that I am sketching here is not a DIY for reputation recovery. It is simply a plea for a new uncovering of areas of expertise and insight which are desperately needed in the NST and indeed, in the whole Church. The expertise I am talking about comes somewhere in what we can broadly call institutional dynamics or organisational psychology. It is an area of discourse that crosses various disciplinary boundaries. It takes in social psychology, psychoanalytical theory and sociology. It can perhaps answer questions like the ones which puzzle many of us. Why do individuals change when they join institutions like the Church? What happens to individual conscience, capacity for empathy and integrity when people become part of large groups? Why do organisations sometimes seem to sit so lightly on old-fashioned morality, even when they claim the Christian label? We are describing serious institutional failures that befall large organisations and the Church is no exception to these processes. Many people accept these manifestations of institutional behaviour without realising that, as with most things, there are those who study these things. Institutional dynamics, the negative kind, are severely damaging the Church at present. We need in Church House, the NST and the House of Bishops people who really understand these processes and the dynamics of what is happening. These same forces are undermining the Church and its institutional reputation. If the Church of England were a public company with profit margins to maintain, it would have done the necessary tasks of analysis a long time ago. Poor ethical behaviour, such as we often see in church institutions, needs to be tackled head-on. Such behaviour threatens the purpose and the future of the whole organisation.
So, in conclusion, the Church needs these three things in facing the cataclysmic safeguarding crisis that is threatening to destroy the residual influence that it still has in the UK. It needs first to understand how to set up structures that provide justice and meaningful levels of restorative compensation. This it is beginning to do. In the second place there needs to be grafted both into the committee structure and widely available afterwards, people who understand the deep needs of the emotionally abused and traumatised. Thirdly, and this is not something I can do more than sketch out, it needs to have experts who can help the Church see the way that institutions often seem to function harmfully and have a corrupting power over many of their leading members. The Church so often, in pursuit of its corporate and institutional goals, seems to retreat from its ideals of love, compassion and kingdom values. No one will want to join a Church if it is perceived only to be protecting the power and privilege of its leaders. Hypocrisy, in the shape of bishops and clergy who may smile but are compliant with acts of cruelty, is a very poor look.
Thirty or forty years ago there was a question posed for church congregations trying to take their evangelistic responsibilities seriously. It was: Is your Church worth joining? The topical question for Christians in these abuse aware days, from archbishops downwards is this: Is your Church a safe place to join?
Very good Stephen. Thank you
I agree totally. But it is not enough to have persons with the right expertise in a team. Melissa did her best to act professionally and caringly but was up against too much opposition and the absolute power of Bishops in their diocese. It is imperative that Bishops lose their absolute autonomy because it is this which has allowed them to ignore the advice of NS T and thumb their noses at the safeguarding guidelines they have a duty to keep. For instance NS T have not been able to force my Bishop to follow guidelines. Apparently other Bishops are not following guidelines. So we need a team which has both the needed expertise and the authority to take action against anyone guilty of misconduct or is acting incorrectly and ignoring even the most basic justice and care of people who may well be contemplating suicide. And they need the authority to act against everyone acting on behalf of the church of England, whether they are an Archbishop or a law firm. So, if say a law firm is unfairly harassing anyone they should be banned from being used by the church. I fear that without draconian measures, injustice for survivors will remain common, and dirty tricks will be continued to be used to persecute those someone has deliberately set out to harass and persecute. Whilst there have been some helpful changes, the hierarchy has shown itself to be self interested especially as regards their protection. If we cannot achieve this, then those in power will simply get around the new changes just as they have done in the past. How else to explain the number of Bishops getting away with not following safeguarding guidelines which should have protected us and brought us justice. Whilst I totally agree with Stephen it is likely that any changes will prove to be cosmetic until we wrest power from those who misuse their authority.
One of the problems with so much negative publicity surrounding the church is that people do not particularly want to work for it. Salaries are very competitive but still people would rather steer clear, perhaps with good reason.
Therefore is it better to have no one than someone who is unsuited to the role?
Those with psychological qualifications have their pick of jobs these days so why work for the church?
The church may need these people but the fact is there are simply better more ethical and rewarding jobs out there.
You can point out obvious skill shortages in an organisation until you are blue in the face but a) does the organisation wish to change? Really? And b) are there swift mechanisms in place actually for change to be possible?
For me there are two many vested interests benefiting from the status quo, for anything more than negative answers to these questions.
Inertia is structural. Generally people don’t budge until the money runs out.
Just a wee hint… there are people in the pews with the qualifications and experience. There are clergy with prior or existing careers with relevant qualification and experience. As an MSE working full time as a Safeguarding Officer in a ‘secular’ setting one might expect my church may have asked my opinion and thought on the subject. But no. Just as there are several thousand MBA’s sitting in the pews, R&R decided that putting Bishops and prospective Bishops through an MBA was the thing to do. There’s a great deal of untapped capacity within…
Clergy have to do everything themselves! I’ve spent most of my formal ministry trying to persuade them to let go and let me!
English Athena, when I was appointed curate in charge back in 1988, I said at my first service, “Most churches operate like a London bus – one driver and the rest passengers. But we are the Body of Christ. Our job is to find out the will of God for this area together and do it. The inspiration might come to any one of us, not just me. Please let me know what God is saying.” I hope you approve.
After a couple of years, God raised the issue of rough sleepers with us. I am just writing it all up now in a book. I have written the first ten thousand words. Fun.
Putting bishops through MBAs sounds hard to believe, but on second thoughts no I could easily see they would think a bolted on academic qualification can make up somehow for deficits in expertise and experience. It can’t of course.
I welcome people who are qualified in business, but how about engaging the business expertise around them, by using a key business skill of collaboration or delegation or team working?
Honestly you couldn’t make it up.
Indeed. Surely the ‘answer’ is to get bishops and archdeacons away from administration, by ensuring that they cease to have any administrative or financial functions?
This means abolishing the dioceses as administrative and financial entities.
The notion that someone who presumably invested a good deal of time and effort for the purposes of becoming a priest, preacher and pastor (and was invested in, expensively, by the Church) should metamorphose into a CEO or, still worse, combine the functions of a CEO with those of a pastor, is utterly grotesque. To succeed in either function, especially with prevailing financial constraints is, almost certainly, a recipe for failure in both – the two functions being inherently in often acute tension with each other. Many of the more egregious recent scandals are borne of higher clergy attempting to ride these two horses, with equal incompetence.
That anyone should aspire to be a CEO in the course of training for ministry makes them ipso facto unsuitable for any form of ministry. As I see it, anyone who desires to become a bishop or archdeacon, if being a bishop or archdeacon also means being a CEO or COO, is inherently (and at least morally) unqualified for the job; their ambition makes their preferment unsuitable.
In the good old/bad old days bishops were barons, and barons had retinues of clerks, and even of knights. Contemporary diocesan administrations are a relic of the medieval bishops’ chanceries. They should be consigned to the scrap-heap much in the same way that the notion of the bishop-as-baron is now hopelessly and embarrassingly obsolete (though you sometimes see constitutional historians advancing the case that bishops remain in parliament by dint of their ‘baronies’, even if they are not ‘peers’ but ‘lords of parliament’).
We have the Commissioners; let them run the Church instead of having both them and 42 petty bureaucracies, especially now that weekly attendance has fallen below 800,000, and mostly comprises the ‘upper middle aged’.
The expertise is certainly available. For instance, sociologist/theologian Linda Woodhead and social psychologist Anne Lee (whose speciality is bullying) have valuable insights to offer – to name but two. But the Church is tragically reluctant to heed those who can help her save herself.
Thanks Janet. Unfortunately Linda and I share one characteristic which makes the church extremely reluctant to even listen to, let alone accept our expertise: we are lay women. My experience shows that lay women are at the bottom of the pile. The hierarchical structure of the church has been, until very recently, dominated by men. Many of these men are simply unable to hear what women say. I had a lovely illustration of this at one General Synod in York. It was very hot and I was queuing at the bar one evening to order a long, cold drink. Behind me was a clergyman in a cassock. When it got to my turn to be served, he simply talked over my head and ordered his own drink. I turned round to him and suggested that I was ahead of him in the queue and perhaps I could make my order before he did. His response: “I didn’t see you.” And I was standing literally in front of him. Lay women are invisible.
Agreed! I hope you stamped on his foot!
That’s awful, and very frustrating. Clergywomen are all too frequently invisible and inaudible, too. When I was a curate at St Michael-le-Belfrey I sometimes used to wonder whether I was surrounded by soundproof glass – though admittedly that was a long time ago.
Even now, the stories of male abuse survivors seem to carry more weight than those of female survivors. The Church is highly selective about those it will listen to – lay status, sex, and class are all factors. And that selective deafness looks like being fatal.
I find male clergy speak to me in the voice usually reserved for children and animals. Even if they were being normal moments ago, before they discovered I am not ordained.
“I didn’t see you”?!
This reminds me of the old saw about a barrister who appeared wigless in court. Court etiquette then held that a barrister could not be recognised as such without a wig. The barrister in question commenced his argument, only to be interrupted by the judge with the words “I can’t see you”. Whereupon the barrister held his hands to his temples, waved his fingers and cried “nah-nah-na-nah-nah”! The judge, hoisted on his own ludicrous petard, remained impassive.
Without lay women there would be no Church! Who do they think does almost everything?
Agreed, Froghole. Something has to be done. In a way, the fact that the church is trying to do something is good. But, none of us seems to think this is it. And yes, David, it’s good to have invited collaborative ministry. I hope it worked for you.
The Church does appear to have attempted to address the managerial skill shortages by “fast-tracking” people to bishop without all the customary “coal face” experience.
This is tacit acknowledgment that very different skills are required to manage a large organisation from those required to pastor a small flock. Indeed it is unusual to find both such abilities in one person.
You could indeed split out the managerial role from the traditional ceremonial appearances role the bishops do. But as I understand it, the bishops would have to vote for this? I just can’t imagine this happening. Some would relish relinquishing the tedious “business-ey” stuff they were never trained for or enthusiastic about, but the considerable prestige, influence, non-cash benefits (palaces) and, dare I say it, expense account, would have to be drastically cut back to justify the reduction in role transferred to the ceos.
Some debate on these pages has also highlighted the sense of esteem in which clergy and very senior clergy are still held. There is still a belief in ‘Holy Orders’. It’s not my place to question this and the sense of anointing, except to say it does seem to accrue a level of unaccountability unmatched in other walks of life.
Quite right. Don’t place too much weight on the “palace”, though. In most cases it’s a combination of office block and conference centre. Perhaps with a flat for the chaplain. The Bishop’s accommodation will be a two bedroom apartment, on the assumption that the Bishop is an elderly gentleman! And it may not be very conveniently located. Where the palaces are still in use, that is.