When I was a small child, there was a recognition that, as part of growing up, we had to catch certain illnesses to become immune to them. I am of course speaking about chickenpox, measles and mumps among others. There was another illness, not uncommon among children, which had a terrifying reputation. This was far more serious; it was polio. Even as a young child I heard about children in hospitals encased in an iron lung to assist their breathing. Their lungs had ceased to work because of paralysis. Eventually the Salk vaccine for polio came in and children all over the country were given it on a lump of sugar. To organise such an immunisation process for every child in the country must have taken a lot of effort. It was apparently successful as, after around 1957, few further cases of polio were reported in the UK.
I begin with this anecdote as a way of drawing out a contrast that I see in the world of church safeguarding. The highly organised structure of trained people who make it their business to defend children and vulnerable people from potential dangers within the Church is like the Ministry of Health organising an immunisation programme. Everyone, from the Archbishops down to a member of a church council, has been required to attend a safeguarding event as well as undergo a criminal record check. This process, like the polio vaccination effort of the 50s, has required a massive amount of organisation and time. It would be good to say that these safeguarding efforts by the church will be as effective as the campaign against polio. It would be marvellous if reported cases of sexual abuse reduced to zero. The word safeguarding is one that implies protection and vigilance against possible dangers. It requires everyone to be on their guard against inappropriate behaviour, especially around relationships with children.
The IICSA hearing about the diocese of Chichester revealed that the process of safeguarding has become almost a mini-industry. I have not studied the official guidelines for good practice, but I understand that they run to several hundred pages. To add to the complexity, each diocese is responsible for the details of its own safeguarding policy. Although Church House employs 13 f/t members of staff in this area, the National Safeguarding Team does not seem to have authority over the protocol of each diocese. We might hope that out of the IICSA process some centralisation of practice as well as simplification might result.
My anecdote about polio and the task of immunisation also carried a reference to those who were tragically afflicted by the disease. They were not all placed in an iron lung but some ‘escaped’ only with a degree of paralysis to the limbs. The extreme cases died or were rendered cripples for life. These breathing machines saved lives, but an experience of being inside one for even a week must have traumatised the patients severely. By the end of the 50s no one was talking about children in hospital inside iron lungs. For whatever reason they simply were not around anymore and thus not needing to be spoken about.
If we compare the process of safeguarding with the polio immunisation programme, we need also to ask how the abuse survivors fare. From the evidence of IICSA and other communication I have had from victims via the blog, it seems to be true that many victims feel like the children inside machines designed to help them breathe. They have been shut away and ignored. All the money and the magnificent organisational abilities of the church have gone to protect as-yet uninfected (unabused) children. The survivor community often feels like the children hidden away in hospitals. They are ignored so that they can be forgotten. Safeguarding officials in trying to stamp out the virus of sexual abuse in the church, are not interested or even able to help them. The focus is on the ‘well’, not the victims of abuse.
In this blog I want to distinguish between the activity of safeguarding, the setting up of structures to protect and defend vulnerable people, and the task of caring for survivors. The church for all its detailed attention to safeguarding structures for the protection of the vulnerable, does not seem to care or give much attention in responding to victims and survivors in an effective way. This apparent indifference that survivors have encountered from safeguarding officers, nationally and locally, is said to be so hurtful that it is experienced as a kind of secondary abuse.
If we identify the safeguarding process as being like setting up a huge immunisation programme which is distinct from the task of nursing the existing victims of polio, we may be able to suggest what is missing in the church’s current response. The unfortunate victims of polio needed care in the same way as the abuse survivors need care. I have struggled to find a single word to describe the nature of the care needed by abuse survivors. Two words have been suggested to me -thriving and flourishing again. Taking the first of these words I have made it part of an acronym ESTA- Enabling Survivors to Thrive Again. I understand that this acronym is also a word in Spanish – you are. ESTA is what is needed for survivors, in the same way as unmolested children and vulnerable adults need protection through safeguarding. Let us abandon the pretence that caring for the abused plays any part in the safeguarding role. No one, nationally or locally, seems to have achieved this double role within the safeguarding community. Care of survivors should be put into the hands of a completely new body. Just as we did not expect civil servants to care for children in iron lungs, so we should not expect safeguarding experts to have much to offer the needs of abuse victims.
In this blog I am calling for ESTA groups which should be commissioned to work independently of existing safeguarding teams. They would support abuse victims who request their help. The advantage of my acronym is it indicates that survivors would not be passive consumers of help. The word ‘enable’ points to the way that the relationship of the helper to the survivor is one of cooperation and support. Survivors need many things. But it is not the task of the helper to tell them what they need. Many things should be on offer -therapy, residential care, legal support and emotional backing. Above all the survivor needs to feel heard by the institution which has abused him or her. We are not just talking about the original abuse but also the subsequent institutional abuse which has been so often reported by survivors. Unanswered letters, blanking by senior officials and a sense of being ignored by the system have been deeply traumatising to those experiencing them. By removing responsibility for helping survivors from safeguarding teams, we would hope to restore the human touch which has somewhere been lost in the process. What I have written remains an aspiration rather than a detailed proposal. But it might help someone reading it to wake to the realisation that the present structures of safeguarding are sometimes deeply damaging to those who in vain look to them for help and support.
Oh, three cheers. Also true of survivors of bullying. Totally brushed aside.
I cannot totally agree with this post and it would be deeply wrong of me to do so. I fully agree that the vast majority of safeguarding officers have no capacity to care for survivors and have personally experienced the very worst of this. However there are, safeguarding officers that go above and beyond their duty of care, are moral and ethical and above all courageous. They speak up for survivors when no one else will listen and give their time at their own expense. I have also been truly fortunate to find one such person. The fundamental question is why so many safeguarding officers, however well qualified, are not like this. The answer is shocking and simple, safeguarding officers who speak up for survivors are threatened with disciplinary action. It Is truly shameful, a hidden shame, abuse of a totally different kind.
Right now I am being torn apart because I know that by involving a safeguarding officer in my fight for justice I could ultimately get them the sack. That is a position that neither I nor they should be put in and if anyone from the church is monitoring this forum I want them to hear that.
What a terrible situation to be in. It’s wrong that the safeguarding officer is not allowed to help victims. Even worse that usually there isn’t anyone who is.
Trish. I think you will see that I was not trying to undermine the quality of individual safeguarding officers. It would be impossible anyway to know how good a job they were doing in all 40+ dioceses unless one had a contact in all of them. Of course I have not got this information. Indeed I doubt if anyone really knows the overall picture. But the point of my piece is that safeguarding does not cover caring for survivors. Different skills are required. The fact that you have found someone who is trying to do both parts of the job is splendid but probably untypical. The problem is that there is an expectation that somehow safeguarding does cover both aspects, protection and caring. As long as this expectation is out there, survivors will queue up at the door of DSAs (Diocesan Safeguarding Officers) and find rebuff and distancing. That is the current situation (as told me by the survivors I know) and it is a cause of massive frustration on the part of many survivors. It is the structures that are at fault. We need a new body to devote itself to caring not push the task on to the DSAs. The Bishops must think through what structures are needed. They are not there at present.
You are right EnglishAthena it is an appalling situation. I am afraid we will have to agree to differ Stephen. I am fully aware of extremely bad safeguarding and have experienced it. However opting for an independent care system might sound alright in theory but in practice I strongly suspect that because it would require financial outlay by the church the criteria of being a ‘survivor’ would revert back to how it was a few years ago of ‘this was an affair’ and so you cannot access those services. That would be a retrograde step. It is important to first challenge the structures that are already in place and ask why DSA’s face disciplinary action for being exactly what the church needs them to be. Once that has been challenged in the cold light of day proper discussion can take place about what is needed.
http://survivingchurch.org/2013/12/11/vulnerability-and-the-church/ Trish I would like you to read something I wrote in 2013 when the numbers reading my stuff seldom reached double figures. Of course the church should care for all victims, but constrained by legal ideas, no doubt, they have created this artificial idea of ‘vulnerable’ adults. We are all vulnerable to abuse. However for the purposes of this analysis I have decided to focus with the Safeguarding Officers on the people they have accepted some responsibility for. I am a passionate defender of all abused people in the church. There are a half million words on this blog to indicate this. Only recently with the advent of IICSA have I come into the child abuse scene. This has never been my focus till now and my commentaries on the hearings are appreciated by some.
ESTA is an excellent suggestion, and I hope the Church takes it up. Having a department or staff (or group or whatever) responsible for ESTA would relieve safeguarding staff of a task they aren’t trained for, and which some clearly find very uncongenial. It would clearly signal the Church’s intention to look after survivors properly and atone, in some measure at least, for its shaming failures in this regard.
An ESTA department doesn’t have to be set up in each denomination separately; all denominations could contribute funding to it. This would help to ensure its independence from too much control by any one Church, too. If the Church of England and the Methodist Church could share a National Safeguarding Advisor (as they did at one time) surely they could share eESTA too. If, say, the the Roman Catholics, Baptists and URC were to join in the burden on any one Church should not be too great.
ESTA isn’t about sexual abuse alone; it should be available to anyone who has been damaged by abuses of power in a supposedly Christian context. This would include bullying, as Athena suggests, harassment, and spiritual abuse.
I really hope denominational leaders, including our own Archbishops, Archbishops Council, and General Synod can be persuaded to implement it.
It is an excellent idea. Once I discovered there was such an animal as a vulnerable adults officer, he was very helpful. He arranged for me to see the Bishop. Unfortunately, the Bishop wasn’t inclined to take his advice! Where do you go then?
The media are getting interested. Since the Church’s disciplinary processes don’t work, the media may be the only option for getting justice.
In my vision ESTA would be a group of authorised people with a defined brief. Bishops would not be able to ignore them.
I’m not going to give details for obvious reasons, but I just heard about a case where someone witnessed a senior cleric bullying someone. Both victim and witness are very distressed. But it raises the question, what should the witness do? They are vulnerable themselves, in the sense that they are not sufficiently high status to protect themselves from for instance, being sacked!
Stephen I am genuinely perplexed by your comments to me. Vulnerable adults are not an artificial idea it is enshrined in law and the church like every institution has to comply with it. I am a child abuse survivor, my abuse which was both sexual and physical was violent and prolonged and the mental and physical problems I have been left with are life long and debilitating. I have often praised your forum but the first time I don’t quite agree I am seemingly shot down in flames. I am incredibly hurt because I feel I have a right to have my opinion respected even if it is not agreed with. I stood up for a safeguarding officer because when I wrote to you personally you were very complementary about them as they were about you and I did not want them to read that. Safeguarding officers are on the whole useless but the reason behind that needs to be established and a spotlight shone on it. ESTA is an ideal and that is fine but we also need to be challenging structures that are already in place.
I thought I had found a forum where I could finally find a sense of belonging but I am bewildered by your comments and once again feel alone and isolated as I just don’t understand people.
I think you’ve slightly misunderstood each other. From where I’m sitting, you have together identified that safeguarding officers’ jobs don’t include pastoral care. Many of them seem to have a police background in my experience. And I don’t think you disagree that some are nevertheless good and kind. I haven’t seen you disagreeing, just not quite understanding each other. I don’t think Stephen minds being disagreed with, Trish, honestly! And you are so clever and wise. And you have had such a hard time. I’ve learned a lot from you in a very short time. I’ve had responses that hurt, too. But I’ve found this blog to be a wonderful self help group. I would hate you to take your gifts away. We need you, you’re one of the team.
Trish, I think I agree with Athena that you and Stephen are a bit at cross purposes. He is away at present so if you don’t get a response from him please don’t take it personally.
It’s appalling that you and the safeguarding officer are being put in such a difficult position and I feel for both of you. It isn’t right that the Church should even think of disciplining someone for giving pastoral care. At the same time, safeguarding professionals are so overstretched that few would have time to give such care even if they have the appropriate temperament, skills and training for it – which most won’t.
I wasn’t quite sure what you meant by ‘the Church would revert back to how it was a few years ago of “this was an affair”‘? Could you say a bit more about that? It does sound as if you’ve had a very difficult experience.
Quite a few of us are challenging the Church’s structures, including safeguarding structures, and hopefully there will be a General Synod debate on the subject in July. Survivors speaking out about their experiences of the Church, including your comments on this forum, are very valuable and I hope you’ll stay with us and keep posting.
Thank you Janet and Athena for your comments I am extremely fragile right now. Maybe it was a misunderstanding and I realize that actually liking a safeguarding officer will always be unpopular but I have always believed that supporting those inside the system who are actually courageous enough to try and make a difference is important. This DSA is not from my diocese, (because my DSA won’t talk to me or allow any of her team to) and so has to face the possibility of disciplinary action for not allowing me to go unsupported. That is incredibly wrong and makes me very upset. What I wanted/needed from Stephen was to hear him say ‘if that happens we will try to help’ but I didn’t, he didn’t seem to hear me at all so I am left feeling alone, frightened and above all the message of childhood abuse of ‘it’s me that is bad/wrong’ is played over and over again.
Trish, I’m sorry you are so fragile at present. We all have fragile times and it’s a miserable place to be. You are certainly not the only one to have a good relationship with a safeguarding officer; I know other survivors who have, too. We know that they vary, as all people and occupations do. The debate about whether safeguarding officers should be involved in the care of survivors, or whether we need a separate group of people to do ESTA, is in many ways separate from the issues you are facing right now.
It’s good that the safeguarding officer you’re in touch with is being so helpful, but I hope you are finding support from other directions as well. Are you in touch with MACSAS (Minister and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors)? They have a helpline and a lot of experience in this field. If the issues you and the safeguarding officer are dealing with concern your childhood abuse you could also contact IICSA (Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse). They will be holding hearings early in 2019 on how the Church of England deals with CSA and survivors. They have a main website which says a lot about their work. They also have a separate website, The Truth Project (https://www.truthproject.org.uk/i-will-be-heard), where people can contact them about their experiences and these will then be fed into their investigations.
You are not bad or wrong, you are good and you are loved. And you are in my prayers.
Thank you Janet. Last year when it all kicked off because my diocese complained about the safeguarding officer to the NST, MACSAS and an independent safeguarding adviser who made recommendations about support in his review supported us and the NST backed off. However on this present leg of my journey the safeguarding officer will be playing a more active role and realistically we know that the consequences of doing that could be severe.
I did the truth project before all this stuff so when a conclusion has been reached I will update it for 2019.
To be very honest Janet after I saw the impact of your letter to the Archbishops I thought I would start shouting my mouth off on here so that if anyone from the church read it they might think twice about doing something horrible. It’s sad that I have to resort to such petty behaviour but they don’t listen and won’t talk so what’s left.
Yes, it’s very, very hard to see what’s best. I really can’t see what will happen next. I’m kind of hunched up waiting for everything to kick off.
It’s disgraceful! When will the Church start behaving like a group of people who follow Jesus? I don’t think posting things on here is ‘petty’ at all. You’re finding your voice and that’s good. Abusers want to hush us up, which is a very good reason to speak out.
If things turn out badly for you and the SO who’s working with you, you could go to the media. You can tell your story but stay anonymous. Sometimes, sadly, that’s the only way of getting justice.
I wanted to add to the comments already shared on this blog. As someone who has spent a working life entirely within child protection social work and safeguarding, I want to thank Trish for her willingness to stand up for a SO that she has been supported by. Her concerns that this may cause harm to this persons immediate employment should not be interpreted by her as something that is her fault in any way. The fact is that any SO who is committed to their role and understands what it is, has to act to provide support for those that are vulnerable with whom they work. They have no other choice. They are required by their professional standards to do so. Many do not and fall short of what is expected of them and that is certainly true of the Church. However, you should not judge the safeguarding role by looking at examples of bad practice. What should be encouraged are those cases were survivors have been helped. It is the responsibility of the effective SO to challenge and confront bad practice when they meet with it regardless of who is involved. Whether they are an Archbishop or not, it should not matter. Bad practice must always to called out for what it is, regardless of the consequences.
Thank you, Trish, for being willing to defend the role of the effective SO but remember professional social workers have a code of ethics which require them to defend and support those that they are seeking to help. If they are bullied by their employers as a consequence, then they should complain to their regulatory body.
Thank you so much Ian for your very kind and helpful comments which will help me to hold onto something positive when I am struggling to cope.
Thank you for taking the time to comment.
I was genuinely pleased to add my comments to support your own. You spoke up and said what you felt was right and that takes some degree of courage. I generally find myself to be taking stands that are not in keeping with what most other people think or say. This does not bother me so long as I am content that what I am saying what I believe to be right. It is so much more important to be right rather than popular in life. We are all stronger when we work together, speak the truth, and look out for each other. Take care, and stay strong.
Ian. We seem to have two models that are out there re: safeguarding. One is the world of ‘secular’ safeguarding which seems to be able to embrace all the aspects that would seem to belong to the task, including care for survivors. Then there is the world of church safeguarding which is not always allowed to embrace the full role that might be given to it. Those of us in the church and seeing only what happens in diocesan teams and the NST have never glimpsed this wider fuller vision of safeguarding practice. An article is need to explain how the church might embrace the professional type of safeguarding rather than the defensive type we see in the churches. Would you attempt something like this? It might help to inform the Synod debate in July. Certainly nothing I write will have the authority in the debate as I realise that I have been assessing safeguarding from what goes on or does not go on the church. That is clearly a very blinkered perspective.
Stephen, I have come to realise this very point. The practice of safeguarding within the Church of England is not one that I would endorse. For me, it frequently misses the point. Those who occupy safeguarding roles should be confronting and challenging bad practice with a view to eliminating risk to those that are vulnerable. This appears to be in short supply within the Church.
Effective safeguarding is not achieved simply by putting in place a set of policies or procedures. These can always be ignored anyway. Within a Church setting, it is advanced by confronting the misuse of power which has caused harm and hurt to others by those in authority. In practical terms, it is about taking your bishop aside and explaining to them that what they did or did not do was wrong and it must not happen again!! It is about standing up for the weak who have been preyed upon by the powerful. And if change does not happen, then you speak out about it. What you should not do is to accept bad practice for the sake of continued employment or a pay check.
Because I am a registered social worker within Northern Ireland, my practice is always subject to scrutiny by the NI Health and Social Care Council. If I fail to comply with the practice standards set down by the NIHSCC, I can be struck of in the same way that a medical doctor can be. This is not the case everywhere in the UK but I happen to believe that it should be.
I’m afraid Bishops know little about safeguarding, and are subject to no oversight. And to a high degree, that applies to Deans, too. This came up in a discussion I had with a member of senior staff in one diocese. There isn’t much a Bishop can do to shift a Dean. In fact, there isn’t now much a Bishop can do to shift the vicar!