THE Church of England is making “rapid improvement” on safeguarding, and should continue to deliver it “from within”, according to a report published on Monday — just 24 hours before the General Synod debates whether to outsource safeguarding.
The report by the INEQE Safeguarding Group is based on the audits of ten dioceses and nine cathedrals that have been completed in the past year. The group is scheduled to audit all of the C of E’s dioceses and cathedrals as part of the process.
INEQE’s lead auditor, Jim Gamble, writes that his organisation has seen “compelling evidence” of improvements, and that the “systems in place are demonstrably better” than they were in the past.
“The Church of yesterday is not the Church of today. Moral outrage and public exposure have driven significant change,” he writes, acknowledging that “for many years, the Church and its community were profoundly let down.”
But things had changed, he argued: “Those on the front line of safeguarding are more aware, and the Church’s blended safeguarding teams — comprised of credible safeguarding professionals with previous experience from statutory or equivalent services — are driven by a safeguarding-first philosophy that is constantly evolving and improving.”
In a sentence that implicitly refers to Tuesday’s debate, Mr Gamble writes: “When it comes to delivering effective safeguarding practice — practice that genuinely works and makes a difference — it is most effectively delivered from within, not imposed from without.”
In a webinar hosted by the Church Times on Wednesday of last week, Mr Gamble urged Synod members not to vote for “Model 4”, under which both diocesan and national safeguarding teams would be outsourced to an external body (see separate story).
In an opinion piece published separately to the report on Monday, Mr Gamble wrote that, when he started the process, he was “initially deeply cynical about the Church’s capacity to learn from past failures”.
He suggested that it was “odd” that INEQE had not been asked to engage with the response group convened to recommend the next steps for Church safeguarding. “It is almost as if there is an inevitability that, whether right or wrong, something needs to be seen to be done to the Church.
“For what it’s worth, here is my opinion: don’t tamper too much with what is actually working now, based on what didn’t work before.”
The audit process to date has involved analysis of more than 4000 documents, 4629 anonymous survey results, and 59 focus group meetings, Monday’s report says.
A trend which emerges in the nine reports published so far is of diocesan safeguarding teams’ having their capacity stretched as safeguarding provision is scaled up (News, 7 February).
“Ultimately, without sufficient capacity, workload becomes unmanageable, the workforce becomes unstable and the ability to make people safer is hindered,” Monday’s report says.
The best way to address this, it says, and to ensure accountability for safeguarding, is to adopt a model in which dioceses employ a “director of safeguarding” who has “the authority to provide expert advice and oversight, challenge senior clergy and church bodies, and escalate concerns to higher authorities”, such as the National Safeguarding Team.
INEQE suggest that such positions could be funded by the Church Commissioners rather than the dioceses themselves. Currently, diocesan safeguarding teams are fully funded by their diocese, something which the report flags as a concern.
“The most common concern raised by Diocesan Secretaries has been the desire to improve safeguarding provision, hampered by a lack of financial resources,” the report says.