ON TUESDAY morning, the General Synod considered a further item related to safeguarding — this time, members were asked to approve a Safeguarding Practice Reviews Code of Practice.
The Bishop of Stepney, Dr Joanne Grenfell (Southern Suffragans), moving the motion, said: “No policy can ever mitigate or repair the harm that has been done to an individual, but a policy can help by learning and making the organisation safer for others.”
A new code of practice would incorporate “good practice from other sectors” in the way in which the Church conducted reviews of safeguarding processes, and was one part of a “bigger jigsaw of safeguarding code”.
Martin Sewell (Rochester) moved an adjournment. “This is like washing the decks of the Titanic as the ship sinks beneath the waves,” he said. The Church’s credibility on safeguarding was shot, he said, especially as the Synod rules had constantly prevented proper debate. “If they won’t listen to our concerns, why should we listen to theirs?” He urged members to vote to adjourn the debate as an expression of their “disgust” at the Church’s authorities. Survivors would not co-operate with the Church; so setting up a system for doing so was an “insult” and a waste of time.
Bishop Grenfell acknowledged the challenges and pain surrounding safeguarding, and that no policy alone could take away the problems. But, she said, it was essential that the C of E had ways to reflect on its practice, to identify what was and was not working. The Synod’s own rules compelled her to bring forward the code of practice for their approval, she said, and there was no logic to delaying its implementation so that it “sat on the shelf rather than being used to develop good practice”. She therefore urged the Synod to resist Mr Sewell’s motion.
The motion was defeated by 184-74, with 24 recorded abstentions.
Margaret Sheather (Gloucester), warmly welcoming the code of practice, said how learning and change had been possible in local-authority social services, her previous profession. This was the Church rejecting “exceptionalism” and putting itself in the footsteps of other organisations which had trodden the same path before, she said.
A member of the Archbishops’ Council, Dr Jamie Harrison (Durham), also commended the code and praised the coherence and professionalism of safeguarding work at all levels of the Church. “Great organisations are learning organisations,” he said. This required an agile, open, and undefended culture.
Kashmir Garton (Worcester) supported the reviews, which, she said, would provide evidence-based learning to help the Church to understand why such events happened and how to prevent their recurring.
Canon Mark Bennet (Oxford) said that the Church needed to acknowledge the reality that, in a “sinful world”, abuse would happen again. He spoke of his parish, where the arrest several years ago of a team vicar had led to deep division and confusion. “We need to capture this learning for the healing of survivors.” These were the questions that the reviews needed to ask, he said.
The Code of Practice was approved in a vote by Houses: Bishops 27-0; Clergy 113-10, with 11 recorded abstentions; Laity 112-18, with 24 recorded abstentions.