by Josephine Stein
What is the purpose of safeguarding? What and who exactly is safeguarding for in the Church of England and what is at stake? And how can one assess how well structures, processes and people achieve safeguarding objectives?
The best way to understand ecclesiastical safeguarding is to benchmark its practices against other sectors which have proven successful, such as aviation and healthcare. The aviation industry rewards workers for promptly reporting dangerous situations, including those arising from their own mistakes. Professionalism underpins patient safety and well-being in the healthcare sector, with the General Medical Council setting standards for the professional duty of candour (www.gmc-uk.org). This requires healthcare professionals to inform patients, as well as their colleagues, employers and relevant organisations, when things go wrong and how they are being set right (see Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking).
What a contrast to the Church!
Safeguarding in the Church is adversarial, requiring those who suspect problems to report them to their Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor / Officer. The DSA/O can then instigate a process which is protracted, expensive and damaging to just about everyone involved. Survivors are often forced to drive the complaints process while the Church delays, obscures and frustrates the process. The Clergy Discipline Measure is unsuitable for responding to safeguarding allegations and has been weaponized against innocent clergy. Many of the people who ought to be protected are severely harmed, most notably survivors, but also the accused.
A large operation exists to control safeguarding, generating numerous policies and guidelines along with periodic compulsory training, ‘lessons learned’ reviews (including PCRs 1 and 2) and compliance audits.
‘Standards for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy’ do not address self-reflection in clergy nor behavioural standards of ministry, let alone a professional duty of candour.
Perpetrators may be shunned but are not cared for in the way one would expect of a Christian institution; care for survivors is perceived as grudging and inadequate. According to former DSA, spiritual director and psychotherapist Fiona Gardner, the institutional Church has a corporate personality resembling those of individual perpetrators of abuse (Gardner, 2021). Not surprisingly, 100% of a sample of 2,000 survivors reported that the Church’s responses to disclosures were worse than the original abuse.
What lessons are being learned? Are we any safer as a result of Church safeguarding activities?
Much has been said and written about the need to change the culture of the Church, but what this means is very unclear. It may take a very long time to effect widespread behavioural change and confidence in safety if left to the powers that be.
Meanwhile, how can the Church’s safeguarding activities achieve better value for money?
Assessing the state of the Church’s safeguarding culture and of ‘value for money’ needs to be provided by an evaluation conducted by independent professionals, following a clear and inclusive methodology. The process involves gathering input from all groups of people affected by safeguarding, and collating views including both shared and differing understandings. Those who have been abused (survivors) represent the most important group in an evaluation as ‘end users’ of safeguarding practice, along with the small proportion of clergy who have been falsely accused of abuse.
Who are the other stakeholders? In addition to perpetrators, PCCs and congregations, there are safeguarding professionals, lawyers, trainers, reviewers, administrators and insurers; and clergy such as parish priests, cathedral canons and deans, archdeacons and bishops.
Stakeholders would be asked what they believe the specific objectives of safeguarding currently are and ought to be. All will have views on this as well as on the effectiveness of safeguarding systems currently in place. And all will have particular interests of their own which are not necessarily articulated.
The next step is for the evaluators to identify verifiable objectives. These will reveal which safeguarding systems and structures are working well and if not, what remedial steps would be required. Not least, evaluators will see how spending maps onto safeguarding objectives.
To identify value for money, evaluators need to gather data on safeguarding spending. This has been notoriously difficult to pin down as the Church either does not collect the relevant statistics centrally, nor necessarily provide information, for example to General Synod, on safeguarding expenditure by the National Church.
However, it is possible to estimate safeguarding expenditure by the dioceses and the National Church Institutions (NCIs) ahead of a full evaluation, because the main element is personnel. A survey of all 42 diocesan safeguarding webpages showed that they employ 182 DSAs, assistants, trainers, case workers and administrative assistants. Some work part time, but other Church officers serve on core groups/case management groups or support safeguarding through their other roles such as membership on Diocesan Safeguarding Advisory Panels and General Synod; archdeacons have coal-face responsibilities and consultants are brought in e.g. to conduct case reviews, for risk assessment and to deliver training – and there are costs associated with time attending training sessions. Salary data can be estimated from sampling job advertisements.
In response to a General Synod question (Tim Bull, November 2021), data were provided on the staff on the National Safeguarding Team (NST) and gross expenditure from 2016 – 2020; these can be extrapolated. The NST currently employs 26.5 FTE staff/consultants and spends approximately £4.4 million/year. Other NCI staff having safeguarding as part of their portfolio come from comms, ministry, legal and HR departments. Members of the National Safeguarding Working Group based in Church House service the National Safeguarding Steering Group and contribute to safeguarding work by the Archbishops’ Council, the House of Bishops, General Synod and other bodies.
Reputational managers and external lawyers, who in turn contract medical experts for advice in civil cases, also add to the costs of safeguarding along with insurance. In addition, the Church brings in consultants and temporary staff to conduct audits and Past Cases Reviews, plus ‘lessons learned’ reviews in cases of major safeguarding failures. Although precision is difficult, costs estimates are possible based on information in the public domain, familiarity with consultancy rates and indicative research data.
Bishops’ expenses are covered by the Church Commissioners, who paid for external lawyers involved with IICSA.
There are safeguarding meetings, ‘Safeguarding Summits’, conferences and workshops (although blended and online meetings have lowered costs).
There are also payments to survivors bringing civil suits, through the Interim Support Scheme plus money for counselling and therapeutic support, most often from dioceses.
It goes beyond the scope of this particular exercise to make detailed estimates of current safeguarding expenditure; it might come to about £30 million/year for the Church as a whole. However, one thing seems clear to me. The CofE safeguarding apparatus employs or contracts a great many people in an ever-expanding process with the creation of more new and revised policies, more updated training, more reviews, more audits and a concomitant increase in expenditure. There is a proliferation of new bodies (Safe Spaces, the National Safeguarding Panel, the Interim Support Scheme, the Independent Safeguarding Board and a Redress Fund under development) that together consume a great deal of time and money; they employ or contract more and more people.
What safeguarding achievements can be attributed to each activity? Does the associated expenditure represent ‘value for money’? A comprehensive, independent evaluation would need to answer these questions. However, based on my experience as research director for an evaluation of a 25-country European programme with structural similarities to the CofE, I would expect that savings of at least half of current expenditure could be achieved if the Church’s safeguarding structures and activities were to be rationalized. Some of the money saved could be redirected towards achieving the verified objectives identified by the evaluators as insufficiently resourced.
Church safeguarding culture can be assessed through (1) examining IICSA evidence; and (2) benchmarking against other denominations and secular sectors such as aviation and healthcare whose safety records outperform the Church.
Safeguarding cannot simply be a matter of complying with edicts handed down from the National Church. The objectives of safeguarding need precise articulation, along with their respective importance / value.
All the laws in the world do not prevent crime; nor does the Church’s adversarial approach to safeguarding protect survivors or those facing allegations – along with their families and congregations.
We must never forget the ‘core business’ of the Church. It is Christianity. Living the faith involves confession, repentance, efforts to set right the damage done and asking for forgiveness. Christians are expected to take responsibility for their sins – and for the harm done to others. A hierarchical system based on adversarial processes to deal with safeguarding failures is inherently dangerous. And the trend towards employing more non-Christian people with secular work experience based on putting adherence to rules ahead of the well-being of people exacerbates the dangers at the expense of the vulnerable. We need to put the love of God and of our fellow human beings first, as Jesus did when healing on the Sabbath. That is our calling and our discipleship.
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Dr Josephine Anne Stein
Independent researcher, policy analyst and survivor of ecclesiastical abuse
I think the guidelines for clergy conduct do actually address self-reflection, for example
‘The clergy should discern and acknowledge their own limitations of
time, competence and skill.’
And
‘Clergy should always be conscious of the power dynamics involved in
their pastoral care’
It isn’t called such but I think paragraph 2.10 does set a professional duty of candour.
I’ve been referring to the 2015 guidelines which came up as the first result when I searched.
I don’t want to detract from the church’s clear record of safeguarding disasters and mismanagement, but, assuming we’re referring to the same document, to stress that the document can be read in different ways.
It is wordy and would be much better as a short series of bullet pointed principles.
Perhaps I should say that I am a nurse by profession so am used to a clear point of accountability (ultimately the Nursing and Midwifery Council) and having worked for a number of years in a Child and Adolescent Mental Health service, well used to parents complaining when they think I have broken their confidentiality.
I would say that a great deal of money is expended for no good reason. As an example I have numerous emails from NST in regard to my complaints of a series of safeguarding failures and misconduct in the Diocese. They all essentially say thank you for complaining, I hope it didn’t distress you to complain, but I cannot deal with your complaint, it is up to the Diocese you complain about to deal with your complaint. As the Diocese were not dealing with my complaint, spending money on salaries in this way is unnecessary. It also gives a false impression to those not in the know that there is a national safeguarding body who can step in to help out. Our diocese spends a lot of money on safeguarding training whilst our Bishop told me I must not complain about a clergyman who later admitted guilt According to a written statement by the DSA for cdm we had a ” key team leader” with safeguarding restrictions who required monitoring and according to our churchwarden was not. Why waste money on telling people the obvious, you should complain if you know or suspect someone is being abused, and then allow a known abuser a lead role in the parish. I believe much money is expended to make it look as if the Church takes safeguarding seriously and acts appropriately. It is just a cover for its real attitude, which in too many cases is to ignore abuse and harass the victim.
The purpose of the entire safeguarding mechanism to safeguard the reputation of the Church of England. An attempt to raise concerns about this at the last meeting of the General Synod of the Church of England was ruthlessly shut down by a Canon of the Church who used a procedural device to prevent discussion for the next 5 years. I hope he got his thirty pieces of silver in advance.
The Church of England uses obsolete terms like “vulnerable” to stigmatise victims and suggest that if you are in good mental and physical health at the time you suffer abuse, then you are not worthy of the Church’s protection.
The fact that the Church doesn’t actually have a clue how much it spends on this demonstrates that it has no serious commitment to preventing it, only to suppressing it and silencing those who complain that they have been abused.
I hope someone will ask the question soon: Has anyone done a Value For Money comparison to see how the Church’s spending on this compares with other organisations including how successful they have been ?
I am not certain that a comparison with the NHS necessarily flatters the NHS, which has had more than its fair share of appalling scandals: Mid Staffs, Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells, Shrewsbury & Telford, Northwick Park, Morecambe Bay, Cwm Taff, Nottingham and East Kent. These were often grotesque institutional failures, frequently conducted on an industrial scale and sometimes involving many deaths, where management (and many senior physicians) treated complainants with a degree of contempt every bit as egregious as that meted out by the Church. Nor does the Church, as yet, have anything on the scale, or of the nature, of Shipman.
Prosecutions of NHS officials and physicians have often proven difficult, even if complaints have the benefit of statutes like the Heath & Safety at Work Act 1974. Like the Church, the NHS has a half-baked devolution which muddies lines of accountability, and this has been the case ever since 1948 (since the existing mosaic of disparate local institutions was simply covered with a national wrapper).
However, the main difference – it seems to me – between the Church and the NHS is that the Church is much more adept at speaking with forked tongue (with officials and clergy sometimes believing sincerely in mutually exclusive propositions at the same time). It has also established a legal/administrative framework straight from a Heller of Kafka novel.
All this nonsense needs to be swept away, and the Church needs to lose its ability to mark its own safeguarding homework. It seems to me that the Church will strongly resist any such move, which means that campaigners need to stop wasting their time remonstrating with the Church, and should approach anti-clerical legislators, especially those on the government side, who will be able to exert a greater degree of suasion over civil servants and ministers. Like any playground bully, the Church will only ‘jump’ if the civil power – the bigger bully – orders it to do so (FYI, I am vehemently Erastian). Indeed, the government has political capital to gain from such a move: it can demonstrate to that large section of the electorate which is concerned about abuse, that it is taking steps to discipline wayward institutions, and to ensure that they are accountable. Thanks to its folly and arrogance, including with respect to safeguarding questions, Church has lost a great deal of its popularity within the country, and now has very few legislators across any part of the political spectrum who will be willing to act as its champions.
Simon Butler gave no credible reasons for opposing Gavin Drake’s motions, other than on frankly specious procedural grounds, and when I raised the matter on TA, Helen King simply noted that Mr Drake’s motions had little backing. That is not surprising, given that Synod is a largely pointless sham legislature packed with diocesan lobby fodder.
Actually, what I said on TA was not that Gavin Drake’s following motion to the Safeguarding report had very little backing – who knows, as we didn’t vote on it due to it being scuppered by Simon Butler’s procedural motion – but that his Private Members’ Motions, which are similar to parts of it, had very little backing.
https://www.churchofengland.org/about/leadership-and-governance/general-synod/private-members-motions has not been updated since Dec 2021. I signed both of these in November and was surprised that there was little support at that time. PMMs need 100 signatures to be considered for debate.
Simon Butler is now on record as saying that his issue with the following motion was the lack of a backing paper to explain the background.
Many thanks for that correction/clarification, Prof. King! I apologise for putting thing as I did.
When watching the debate, I noted that the clerk explained to the chair, and the chair to the assembled members, that the matter could not be raised again during the life of this Synod (i.e., another 5 years). If I recall, this was in response to a query put to the chair by Jayne Ozanne.
Having received that explanation, Canon Butler could presumably have waived his objections quite easily. That he did not, and that he felt fit to provide such a feeble and trivial explanation, will add weight to those who would argue that he was wrecking Mr Drake’s proposals deliberately, and for the purpose of defending the episcopate from accountability to abuse survivors. Mr Drake’s motions were self-explanatory: essentially, that the authorities must be made more accountable. The absence of a position paper seems to me to be neither here nor there: private members’ bills in parliament are not preceded by green/white papers, no doubt on the basis that most legislators have the mental capacity to determine what a bill is about and/or to seek external advice. As you note, Mr Drake’s motions had been on the order paper for weeks beforehand, and Synod members could have undertaken their own analysis or sought advice from informed outsiders had they wished to do so. Thank you for supporting them yourself.
That the motions do not seem to have elicited much support, still less interest, sharpens my attitudes towards Synod still further, and makes me warm to Oliver Cromwell’s famous directions to the Long Parliament on 20 April 1653. This is a matter of major importance to the Church, and in funking the issue (or perhaps deliberately kicking it into the very long grass), Synod once again managed to demonstrate its essential worthlessness, at least in its present form.
No problem, Froghole. I am trying to find out what the figures now are for those PMMS…
Thank you, Mr Froghole, for pointing out that the Church should not mark its own homework. Exactly the same was said by + Peter Hancock, the then lead safeguarding bishop at the IICSA hearings. I was there.
Since submitting my piece to SC, I have learned that the NCIs are recruiting five senior safeguarding staff, one of whom will be based not in the NST but in the Bishoprics and Cathedrals team. One of these posts is a National Safeguarding Research and Evaluation Lead on the NST, with a salary of £58,569 after probation. My £4.4 million/year (under)estimate of NST’s costs would, counting all five incoming staff, raise the NST/safeguarding expenditure to closer to £5 million/year. And what for? It looks like they are being hired in part to, erm, mark the NCI’s own homework.
The external legal advisors at IICSA came from a City Law Firm that I’m told is the most expensive in the country, paid for by the Church Commissioners. Although some of the IICSA evidence was prepared by Church House lawyers such as Stephen Slack, the evidence given by (arch)bishops was drawn up by these external lawyers (both solicitors and barristers).
We know, Trish, that dioceses are often just as reluctant to disclose information as the NCIs. This is why the audits of the dioceses could only go so far – they were essentially auditing compliance with safeguarding rules and totally reliant on what the dioceses reported.
Evaluations are different. They must have the capacity to collect relevant data, both qualitative and quantitative – and they must be conducted independently according to the evaluators’ own methodology and professional standards. Perhaps the evaluators could be appointed by the Independent Safeguarding Panel, on a model of co-production with ecclesiastical abuse survivors with professional experience in this area. Not that the ISB has executive authority…… or a budget under their control…..
We are frequently told that the Church is ‘episcopally led and synodically governed’. But who really runs safeguarding?
There is a National Safeguarding Working Group (NSWG) based in Church House that ought to be better understood. I believe that they control recruitment strategy and draw up job descriptions; write the responses to General Synod questions and even the General Synod papers such as GS2244; set the terms of reference for audits and reviews (including the PCRs); and prepare papers for the numerous bodies they serve, including agendas and minutes of meetings. Information on the composition of the NSWG used to be on the NSSG’s web page but it has disappeared (along with almost all of the NST members). Hmmmm. Good job I saved the information before it evaporated.
As Janet Fife observed, ‘It’s very reminiscent of Yes, Minister.’ Indeed. And Matthew:23.
I could say more about professionalism and conflict of interest, but am up against the length limit. Thank you all for your contributions to this Surviving…
In her article in the Church Times on February 18th Rebecca Chapman makes some pertinent points about synod and the unease felt after Gavin Drake’s proposal was so quickly squashed.
This event does clearly demonstrate that while there is still so little appetite for truth and transparency in the church any ‘value for money’ audit would be a complete waste of time because dioceses would lie and facts would be buried. While dioceses remain autonomous any safeguarding role from outside remains limited in its scope. I asked the redress team, if redress for me is simply having my case examined and acted on independently then how do they intend to provide that. Like Mary I received a pleasant response that basically said, that won’t be happening. So redress will be selective and prescriptive!
Froghole is right remonstrating with the church is pointless and in an increasingly secular world the time must be right to seek support outside its confines.
I am at a loss to see how the proportion of non-Christian employees plays any significant role in safeguarding and assume this just to be personal opinion. Personally I would be repulsed by any selection process that discriminated against applicants based on their personal convictions.
Short answer. Anyone can see, it is definitely NOT value for money. A huge edifice that on its own is totally self defeating. Oh we have to be seen to do the right thing!! Jobs !!! Meanwhile at the sharp end …….??
Brilliant!
‘I would expect that savings of at least half of current expenditure could be achieved if the Church’s safeguarding structures and activities were to be rationalized. Some of the money saved could be redirected towards achieving the verified objectives identified by the evaluators as insufficiently resourced. ‘
What is obvious, and significant, is that huge wodges of money are being spent on church structures rather than victims and survivors. It’s very reminiscent of Yes Minister. And it reflects the church’s self-absorption, to the point of idolatry.
Agreed. The “Yes Minister” reference is very pertinent.
Well said. Brilliant!! Janet.
A partial defence: safeguarding is not just about reacting but prevention, and my observations are the Churches are far safer than they were in the past through having clear policies and leads in in each Church. Domestic abuse by clergy is probably the next key issue to be tackled my anecdotal experience suggests it is really common. Try dealing with religious institutions with no safeguarding structures (see Jehovah’s Witnesses or Brethren until recently) to see the difference or look at clerically dominated cultures). Structures only work with people to staff them, and safeguarding is a time consuming, laborious activity. The best ‘prevention’ would probably be to thoroughly screen entrants to training and to train them thoroughly in the dynamics of power and safeguarding – and assess them thoroughly whilst in placement.
Agreed but there are structures efficient and sensible and edifices!! Soooo much money and too many chiefs!!
About prevention, my DSA did not engage with me about breaches of restrictions she implemented herself. It is still unsafe for me to attend church services, my Bishop knows this, my Archdeacon knows this, my Rector knows this, my curate knows this, my churchwarden knows this. I then made a formal complaint about my Rector who became abusive whilst robed for a communion service. My Bishop knows this … I wonder how much my Diocese spends on safeguarding …
Mary so very sorry. How many times do we hear of this load of ineptitude . No amount if £50000+ jobs will change that I fear. As I said … meanwhile at the sharp end ….. and here you are a perfect example!