WHILE attention has naturally focused on her recommendation for independent structures, the “most egregious” issue reported by Professor Alexis Jay after an extensive consultation on the state of Church of England safeguarding was “the use of safeguarding to address matters of conduct which had nothing to do with risks to children or vulnerable adults”. At its most extreme, she recounted, this was described as the “weaponising” of safeguarding. Examples of matters referred to safeguarding staff included parishioners (with no recognised vulnerabilities) having extra-marital affairs, and a lay preacher accused of praying too vehemently. Among Professor Jay’s recommendations was that the Church adopt the statutory definition of safeguarding, whose “basic purpose”, she asserted, was “the protection and support of children and vulnerable adults who have been abused or who are at risk of abuse”. The Church was not, she observed, “very good at saying what is and isn’t safeguarding”.

While the General Synod have been devoted hours of its time to the optimal degree of independence in safeguarding, little attention seems to have been given to this fundamental question. About half of the respondents to a consultation on the Jay review supported her proposed definition, but others feared its “narrow nature”. The urgent need for the Church to tackle the matter is apparent from a recent employment-tribunal finding, in which a former curate is vehemently criticised for labelling a “personal grievance” a safeguarding matter. It describes the curate on more than once “trying to impose a task on a DSA [diocesan safeguarding adviser] which was outside their professional remit”. Safeguarding was concerned, the panel asserted (in an echo of the Jay review), “with identifying and minimising or eliminating the risk of harm to children and vulnerable adults”.

A repeated finding of INEQE audits of diocesan safeguarding is that greater capacity is needed. Yet, interestingly — given accounts of safeguarding professionals’ workloads — agreement with Professor Jay’s recommended definition was lower (40 per cent) among this group. The tribunal’s definition has been criticised by a former London DSA as “misaligned with established Church policy”. Motive here is important. While some may deliberately weaponise safeguarding, others will genuinely believe that their concern falls within its — deliberately broad — remit. Others will turn to this department — clearly signposted and now enjoying a degree of autonomy, resource, and power — when they are at a loss about where else to go. “The labelling of non-safeguarding matters as safeguarding is not an issue of definition,” one cleric told Professor Jay. “Rather, it arises from poor behaviours e.g. lack of HR resources to deal with behaviours through HR processes.” It is perhaps unsurprising that so many matters find their way to the desks of DSAs, partly because some with ill intent will seek to take advantage of the current climate, but also because other avenues too often prove to be dead ends.