Church of England rejects safeguarding independence
The issue around Safeguarding and the Church of England is a long-standing one. The safeguarding breaches that have occurred, historically, are never far from the headlines. Whilst the fact that these claims are now being heard is a good thing, the fact that they happened at all is awful and the fact that they have taken so long to come to light, again gives cause for concern.
As with all institutions, the Church of England is responsible for creating and implementing a safe culture for all that work or come into contact with its activities. This notion is nothing new and has been the case for a number of years.
However, the Church of England is a large organisation and, as such, regional responsibilities on the matter are devolved to the Diocese and come under the remit of the Bishop for that area. The Church has a swathe of safeguarding policies, practices and personnel in place to address the matter. However, due to the fact that individual Bishops are responsible for their Diocese, including the financing of it, it only stands to reason that there are differing approaches in differing areas. There may well be an overarching standard, but implementation is passed to the respective Bishops.
A known contributing factor to creating an organisation's culture is that of a conjoined approach from the leadership. It is clear that the leadership, in this instance, have, for many years, adopted a varying degree of enforcement, which raises many questions, the most obvious of which is: why?
There can, of course, be a swathe of reasons as to why the Church has constantly failed on this matter, some of which have been sited before in reports such as IICSA. On the face of it, it would appear that there is a protective culture around the matter, as in the overriding desire is to protect the Church, not necessarily the desire to protect those who have been or are at risk of harm.
Irrespective of the reasoning, none of which are excusable, the fact remains that the culture around safeguarding within the Church of England is still in a very poor state and needs addressing urgently.
Recommendations have been made as to how this culture can be improved, arguably the most notable of which was that of Professor Alexis Jay, who in the IICSA Report clearly stated that a Safeguarding Model, fully independent of the Church, should be adopted to address the desperately troubling culture within the Church.
The General Synod met in early February 2025, to discuss and vote on this matter and many others. The notion of the Church adopting a fully independent safeguarding model was indeed tabled and subsequently voted against. This has led to widespread disappointment and disbelief from Professor Jay and advocates of 'survivor groups'.
Instead, the Church has voted for a system that will see the creation of a centralised independent safeguarding team for the Church. However, Cathedral and Diocesan safeguarding officers will continue in their current guise. This Church has caveated this with the promise to do more and improve in the future. This therefore means that those who are currently dealing with safeguarding in the church will continue to do so, and they will feed their information into the centralised independent body.
In theory, this does make sense to a point. However, when you look at the matter in the wider context, and can at almost every turn see the unwillingness of the Church to expose such issues, then this does leave me wondering what if any positive impact this new approach will have as the main hurdle to progress stays in place, namely a transparent approach to the subject. What we are left with now is effectively a 'gatekeeper', who will pass on what they deem appropriate to the independent body.
The Church views this as a progressive step and intimated that implementing a wholly independent system would take far too long to come into effect. Instead, they will adopt this approach in the short-term with the intention of moving towards an independent model in the future.
As someone who works in this sphere, I find this argument to be somewhat weak in the sense that cultural change always takes time, it requires a great deal of work, effort and navigating many challenges. However, positive legacy changes far outweigh this. Therefore, not addressing this head on, not showing a real clear desire to be accountable and transparent, gives me cause for concern.
Nevertheless, this is the space that we find ourselves in. On the positive side, there is an independent entity now in the mix and, whilst their remit is limited, it is a start. It now remains the responsibility of the Church to do as they have promised, and improve the landscape going forward. Failure to do so, yet again, may well cause significant harm.
