It's paywalled, but this gives a flavour of Sitwell's opinions on online safeguarding training for church volunteers:
Now, of course, these learning portals are being brandished in the faces of well-intentioned country folk following safeguarding scandals ...
But, as an ancient prep-school headmaster thrashes the entire school as retribution for a single misdemeanour, so the Church of England relishes its chance to wield power, abandons common sense and sets in a metaphorical stone tablet, an eleventh commandment even: "Before thou ironest the altar cloth or polishest the silver, thou shalt complete an online safeguarding course."
Sitwell argues that this will discourage volunteers from their "honourable efforts" and will only ever stop the innocent. And, the final flourish:
And, free of flowers and friendly welcomes, church attendance will dwindle further.
Who'd have thought that safeguarding is woke.
Disclaimer: I have a DT sub for work. I wouldn't give them a penny of my own money.
It's paywalled, but this gives a flavour of Sitwell's opinions on online safeguarding training for church volunteers:
Now, of course, these learning portals are being brandished in the faces of well-intentioned country folk following safeguarding scandals ...
But, as an ancient prep-school headmaster thrashes the entire school as retribution for a single misdemeanour, so the Church of England relishes its chance to wield power, abandons common sense and sets in a metaphorical stone tablet, an eleventh commandment even: "Before thou ironest the altar cloth or polishest the silver, thou shalt complete an online safeguarding course."
Sitwell argues that this will discourage volunteers from their "honourable efforts" and will only ever stop the innocent. And, the final flourish:
And, free of flowers and friendly welcomes, church attendance will dwindle further.
Who'd have thought that safeguarding is woke.
Disclaimer: I have a DT sub for work. I wouldn't give them a penny of my own money.
It's just gross isn't it. The choice of an abusive metaphor to make the point is obscene.
This is hardly "new news"! The Parish Safegusarding Manual was published in 2018.
It mentions four levels of Safeguarding training, of which "Basic Awareness" and "Foundation" are the lowest and can be completed by any member of the congregation "to support awareness raising and a culture of support and vigilance in the Church". Indeed my own denomination has a "basic" safeguarding video which we are asked to show to our entire congregation.
The Manual then says: "It is recommended that those in the following roles are encouraged to complete them:Vergers, Servers, Welcomers, Caretakers, Refreshment Helpers, Shop Staff, Sidespersons, Flower Arrangers, Administrative Staff, Bell-ringers, Choir/Music Group Members (including Sound/ AVTechnicians)". But, whether overkill or not, these recommendations (and one must wonder if they have gradually morphed into "requirements" as the Churchwarden in the article believes) seem to have taken seven years or so to reach Mr Sitwell!
Thinking specifically of flowr arrangers, I could see a situation in which a lone, possibly elderly and female, volunteer is working in an open church; they need to be aware of the potential dangers of such a situation (which include not just the possibility of being attacked by a stranger but the more likely H&S risk of falling and not being able to raise an alarm).
Thinking specifically of flowr arrangers, I could see a situation in which a lone, possibly elderly and female, volunteer is working in an open church; they need to be aware of the potential dangers of such a situation (which include not just the possibility of being attacked by a stranger but the more likely H&S risk of falling and not being able to raise an alarm).
That last point should be covered by a "Lone Working Policy". Our church has such a policy, which specifies (amongst other things) that anyone working alone in the church must have a mobile phone with them at all times, wth the phone switched on.
Yes. I well remember my doddery old mother in law teetering precariously on ledges whilst she reached up to brush a feather duster around her parish church.
She didn't have a mobile phone nor any means of contact anyone had she taken a tumble.
That last point should be covered by a "Lone Working Policy".
I totally agree, but I wonder if the good folk of wherever-it-was tend to lump "Safeguarding" and "H&S" together in their minds, and see them as one huge overbearing mass of administration - "We always managed without these things in the past" etc.
That last point should be covered by a "Lone Working Policy".
I totally agree, but I wonder if the good folk of wherever-it-was tend to lump "Safeguarding" and "H&S" together in their minds, and see them as one huge overbearing mass of administration - "We always managed without these things in the past" etc.
In our previous church, a star used be hung on one of the ceiling lights at Christmas. Hanging it meant putting the step ladder on top of the communion table and then climbing up.
It Had Always Been Done This Way.
It had never been a problem before we came with our modern ideas about church members not killing or injuring themselves on the church premises doing the stupid.
The lone working policy was universally ignored by everyone except me and Rev T.
The elephant galloping around the room with the whole "We always managed without these things in the past" argument is that we can see how well that's worked out.
It's paywalled, but this gives a flavour of Sitwell's opinions on online safeguarding training for church volunteers:
Now, of course, these learning portals are being brandished in the faces of well-intentioned country folk following safeguarding scandals ...
But, as an ancient prep-school headmaster thrashes the entire school as retribution for a single misdemeanour, so the Church of England relishes its chance to wield power, abandons common sense and sets in a metaphorical stone tablet, an eleventh commandment even: "Before thou ironest the altar cloth or polishest the silver, thou shalt complete an online safeguarding course."
Sitwell argues that this will discourage volunteers from their "honourable efforts" and will only ever stop the innocent. And, the final flourish:
And, free of flowers and friendly welcomes, church attendance will dwindle further.
Who'd have thought that safeguarding is woke.
Disclaimer: I have a DT sub for work. I wouldn't give them a penny of my own money.
It's just gross isn't it. The choice of an abusive metaphor to make the point is obscene.
Having said that, I had a skim read of it with uncomfortable recognition of the sheer churn in PCC members round here when they point blank refuse to do the safeguarding training because they genuinely believe it’s a waste of their time.
That article is preaching to an recognisable slice of the church’s volunteer labour pool, however much I/you/we might wish it wasn’t.
It is indicative of how much/how little of the idea of Church as community has been absorbed (and this can't be solely or even primarily ascribed to the evangelicals).
The elephant galloping around the room with the whole "We always managed without these things in the past" argument is that we can see how well that's worked out.
It's perceived as an accusation that people would be abusive without the training. The perception is nonsensical and the training has improved greatly but it's still the perception.
It's perceived as an accusation that people would be abusive without the training. The perception is nonsensical and the training has improved greatly but it's still the perception.
There’s also (and I’m fully up to date and fully engaged with the training) a pretty fair perception that safeguarding is a time sponge that takes up ever more of PCC meetings, and seems to be all ‘the centre’ cares about.
And I think it absolutely needs to be a priority.
FWIW IME the biggest obstacle is the lack of portability (though the reasons for that are obvious IMO) from one organisation to the next. If you’re retired and community minded, you might be volunteering at the local stately home, on the PCC, on the parish council, a JP, or in these times where numbers of people putting themselves forward are dwindling, maybe all of them. And all of them are going to mandate safeguarding training, refreshers, and requalification.
You could spend your life doing safeguarding training. And so people kick out and refuse roles that involve it. In some ways the whole culture - which is absolutely right and necessary let us be clear - of getting safeguarding right can risk leading to safeguarding burn-out.
Yes, this is the sort of nuance I think we are failing to get right. Safeguarding has to be a collective responsibility of the congregation/community which, in the church context at least, needs to be met collectively, not via this individualised bureaucratic process. Never, ever, ever ask a bureaucrat to design your solution. To anything. Ever, ever EVER.
I think there is some progress on this - many local authority safeguarding hubs make safeguarding training available in their local area. There is potential for evidencing you’ve done the local authority course, to several different organisations. They know it’s a good enough course because it is provided by the local authority.
As bellringers we ran into this at St Bats in the Belfry about two years ago. A lot of hackles were raised by a document that began "It is our duty as Christians..." - erm, we're ringers, we're notorious for it, and don't appreciate being lumped in with everything else with no consultation - it was a case of "Here's our safeguarding policy, sign it!" when we operate under different criteria. Various of us returned our documents with comments. Frustratingly, but typically of the current incumbent, nothing more has ever been said so we have no idea even as to what has happened with the rest of the church
It is indicative of how much/how little of the idea of Church as community has been absorbed (and this can't be solely or even primarily ascribed to the evangelicals).
In my experience evangelicals tend to be very aware of the church as community, in some instances to the exclusion of involvement in almost anything else other than work and family.
Our Place's FatherInCharge takes safeguarding seriously, and insists that the Diocesan guidelines are followed by all officers, PCC members, and those volunteering to help with the monthly Youth Club (we don't have a *Sunday School* any more).
I haven't heard of anyone refusing to cooperate, but I do know that some people find the various courses and modules time-consuming!
It is indicative of how much/how little of the idea of Church as community has been absorbed (and this can't be solely or even primarily ascribed to the evangelicals).
In my experience evangelicals tend to be very aware of the church as community, in some instances to the exclusion of involvement in almost anything else other than work and family.
Right, but Sitwell is writing for the Tory-Party-At-Prayer tendency (insofar as one still exists).
As bellringers we ran into this at St Bats in the Belfry about two years ago. A lot of hackles were raised by a document that began "It is our duty as Christians..." - erm, we're ringers, we're notorious for it, and don't appreciate being lumped in with everything else with no consultation - it was a case of "Here's our safeguarding policy, sign it!" when we operate under different criteria. Various of us returned our documents with comments. Frustratingly, but typically of the current incumbent, nothing more has ever been said so we have no idea even as to what has happened with the rest of the church
I don’t understand. Are you saying that you should be exempt from the same rules that everyone else in the church are required to follow?
Yes, this is the sort of nuance I think we are failing to get right. Safeguarding has to be a collective responsibility of the congregation/community which, in the church context at least, needs to be met collectively, not via this individualised bureaucratic process. Never, ever, ever ask a bureaucrat to design your solution. To anything. Ever, ever EVER.
Hey! I'm a bureaucrat these days and I always aim to design solutions to cause minimum frustration. I spent 2 days a couple of months back teaching myself rudimentary VB for applications so that I could condense 6 separate forms into a single form customisable with tick boxes. Apart from anything else a good bureaucrat knows that unless you make your bureaucracy as frictionless as possible people will just circumvent it.
Well yes, so am I in a way. But I am very concerned about the invariable tendency for crises like this to make everyone's life more difficult without changing the fundamental issues. To me, they are about the things that abusers can hide behind. The other inevitable problem is that any solution is going to affect a lot of innocent people because abuse is rare. Not as rare as it should be because there should be none, but rare enough for anything that makes abuse harder to inevitably make a lot of good things harder too. I think it's probably inevitable that this is how it will work.
As bellringers we ran into this at St Bats in the Belfry about two years ago. A lot of hackles were raised by a document that began "It is our duty as Christians..." - erm, we're ringers, we're notorious for it, and don't appreciate being lumped in with everything else with no consultation - it was a case of "Here's our safeguarding policy, sign it!" when we operate under different criteria. Various of us returned our documents with comments. Frustratingly, but typically of the current incumbent, nothing more has ever been said so we have no idea even as to what has happened with the rest of the church
I don’t understand. Are you saying that you should be exempt from the same rules that everyone else in the church are required to follow?
Not at all - the objection was to a poorly put-together policy (the Tower Captain and his wife both have considerable safeguarding experience and could see it was a fudge) that began by asserting Christianity, not safety.
My family finally gave up its long association with scouts when my mother died and we quite simply couldn’t put in the time to get recertified (a yearly thing) , what with the funeral, various people’s lives falling apart, and etc. There wasn’t enough give in the system to allow us to do it later, it had to be done right then. So we gave up all involvement, and that lost them three active adults, two of them office holders.
It isn’t quite the same as what you’re dealing with in the UK, but enough similar that i sympathize.
It's certainly the case that our local Scout/Cubs etc. groups are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain leaders, although the safeguarding requirements aren't the only relevant issues.
An estimated 3.1 million adults aged 18 to 74 years were victims of sexual abuse before the age of 16 years; this includes abuse by both adult and child perpetrators.
I'm talking in relative terms so it still depends on your sample size. In absolute terms, 3.1 million is a stunning and appalling number, but it may still mean that there are a lot of people and congregations with no direct experience.
I'm talking in relative terms so it still depends on your sample size. In absolute terms, 3.1 million is a stunning and appalling number, but it may still mean that there are a lot of people and congregations with no direct experience.
There will be congregations with no experience. There are also a huge number of congregations who believe there is no direct experience because of the silence of the victims. This is a huge part of the problem. It could never happen here... is such a dangerous way to think. Whilst headlines are made of the predatory abusers who 'everyone said there was something dodgy about him...' the truth is that most abuse is much more subtle and hidden than that. Having no direct experience is no measure of anything really.
My broader point, whilst not trying to be too argumentative,* is that abuse is common and we need to admit that fact and deal with it. However, I don't disagree that the wideness of the net that is cast means that totally innocent people get caught up in a bureaucratic process. The wideness being necessary, of course.
Is there evidence that having to go through safeguarding processes deters potential abusers?
Or that due processes in place prevent a potential abuser from carrying out abuse?
I think there are two elements. Some processes are a fence - deterring or excluding potential abusers, other processes are comparable to hygiene practices making it less likely that abuse can take place.
Safer recruitment practices, well-advertised safeguarding policies and procedures, well-advertised reporting procedures for concerns all fall broadly into the first category.
Reasonably wide awareness of the risks of abuse, accepted good practice around working with children and vulnerable adults fall broadly into the second category, making it less likely that there are situations which could be exploited by a bad actor, and also less likely that someone could face a false accusation.
One aspect of safeguarding is people learning how to look out for the precursors of abuse, in order that intervention can occur before abuse takes place.
I think this aspect is relevant to understanding resistance to accepting the need for safeguarding training and processes, particularly among churchgoers. As well as not wanting to believe that there are abusers and victims "hidden" within many congregations and church communities, I think many people are unwilling to take on a role that appears to require us to adopt an attitude of suspicious surveillance towards those around us, those who we count as friends and family.
It seems to me that these sentiments feed directly into decidedly uncomfortable narratives: that the church has failed and is failing in one of its core callings; that safeguarding conflicts with basic Christian principles, such as not thinking ill of another.
I'm talking in relative terms so it still depends on your sample size. In absolute terms, 3.1 million is a stunning and appalling number, but it may still mean that there are a lot of people and congregations with no direct experience.
There will be congregations with no experience. There are also a huge number of congregations who believe there is no direct experience because of the silence of the victims. This is a huge part of the problem.
This! Very much this.
Though to be clear, I don’t think it’s silence of victims in and of itself that’s the problem. Victims can have various reasons for staying silent, and if that’s how they deal with what happened to them, then that needs to be respected.
The problem is the assumption that because no one has spoken up, there is no problem. We know way too much about this kind of abuse now to reasonably interpret not hearing of problems as “no problem here.”
I'm talking in relative terms so it still depends on your sample size. In absolute terms, 3.1 million is a stunning and appalling number, but it may still mean that there are a lot of people and congregations with no direct experience.
There will be congregations with no experience. There are also a huge number of congregations who believe there is no direct experience because of the silence of the victims. This is a huge part of the problem.
This! Very much this.
Though to be clear, I don’t think it’s silence of victims in and of itself that’s the problem. Victims can have various reasons for staying silent, and if that’s how they deal with what happened to them, then that needs to be respected.
The problem is the assumption that because no one has spoken up, there is no problem. We know way too much about this kind of abuse now to reasonably interpret not hearing of problems as “no problem here.”
A few years ago, Our Place had just this experience.
No-one spoke up, and the eventual conviction of the perpetrator (for offences against people outside the congregation) came as a nasty shock.
Thank you @Nick Tamen for your clarification. It was needed.
I meant no implication from the fact that victims are silent. It is an observation of fact that abuse often is not disclosed until years afterwards. That's all I meant.
However, this is a conversation where I should not risk any misunderstanding of my meaning.
In my life, several people have chosen to disclose to me the story of their abuse. It has been an immense privilege to be so trusted. There are multiple reasons why people don't want to speak up. That is their right. Often it is not a case of don't want to so much as can't. The emotional and psychological costs of disclosure can be absolutely huge. Never underestimate this.*
My point still stands that the assumption that no abuse has occurred here is deeply flawed but I should have phrased my point better in case someone might be genuinely hurt by how I said it.
I apologise freely.
AFZ
*Which brings us back to earlier themes on this thread about how let down many survivors have been by the CofE. To disclose is costly and then effectively the church threw it back in their faces. This is the problem.
Mrs RR has just completed her online safeguarding whatsit so she can legitimately greet people at the door. Something she's been doing for ages. She scored '100% andis now trying to find out how to print out her certificate FFS. I point out she needs to go on a bad language training course.
It's all nonsense of course .... will I have to take one as I read out the lessons at morning services?
No worries, @alienfromzog. I didn’t detect or assume any victim-blaming or the like in what you said. I took it as you meant it, but thought, as you say, that for a conversation like this one, it might hat was implicit should perhaps be explicit.
I'm talking in relative terms so it still depends on your sample size. In absolute terms, 3.1 million is a stunning and appalling number, but it may still mean that there are a lot of people and congregations with no direct experience.
It is 20% of the population, 1 in 5 adults between 18 & 74 in England and Wales. Figures somewhat higher for women than men - but that is the population average - it is in no meaningful sense rare, and you’d need an extremely small congregation for no one to have any lived experience. Likewise, if you get 25 women in a room you can be near certain at least one of them has been raped.
My family finally gave up its long association with scouts when my mother died and we quite simply couldn’t put in the time to get recertified (a yearly thing) , what with the funeral, various people’s lives falling apart, and etc. There wasn’t enough give in the system to allow us to do it later, it had to be done right then. So we gave up all involvement, and that lost them three active adults, two of them office holders.
That's a logistics problem, different from the question of which volunteers have to take the training. The last interim minister I reported to held her ministerial standing in a different conference from the one the church was in, and both conferences required her to do their online mandated reporter training
"Safeguarding" isn't the term of art in the US that it is in the UK, and we don't have the comprehensive view it expresses. Protecting children is treated separately from other things, and protecting vulnerable adults is spotty at best. California counties all have Adult Protective Services agencies, but lots of people don't know they exist, not like they know about the existence of Child Protective Services. Likewise, churches will generally have policies about protecting children that meet state requirements (though I doubt a lot of the start-up storefront churches do, but plenty don't have policies about protecting vulnerable adults.
At the church I worked for, starting sometime in the late 2000s all employees and volunteers who worked with children have to have background checks and do the anti-abuse (or abuse awareness? not sure what it's called) training mandated by the state of California. But despise having lots of older adults, there is no policy for protecting vulnerable seniors. As I didn't work with children, I just had to do anti-harassment training for employees, and they only started doing that within the last few years -- I did it just once before I retired.
The church required people to have been members for six months before they could volunteer for something like Sunday School, and that was the one thing that occasionally bugged new people. But generally you could just say "we're talking about kids, it's required" and people understood.
The thing that always staggered me was the policy about not being at the church alone -- it seemed to apply to everyone but employees, especially custodians. No one ever blinked at scheduling a small event that meant a custodian would work alone at night, closing up after the whole thing was over.
I'm talking in relative terms so it still depends on your sample size. In absolute terms, 3.1 million is a stunning and appalling number, but it may still mean that there are a lot of people and congregations with no direct experience.
There will be congregations with no experience. There are also a huge number of congregations who believe there is no direct experience because of the silence of the victims.
I remember an excellent sermon from our previous pastor. In it she mentioned that she had experienced on the job physical sexual harassment from church people at three of the four churches she had served. And in case we were hoping we were the fourth, she clarified that we weren't. Apparently that was why she only passes the peace by crossing her arms and nodding instead of hugging those who would otherwise hug.
If I heard Maily Telegraph style sneering about safeguarding in real life, I would run a mile from it. It would lead me as someone with relevant lived experience to fear worse from the person coming out with that stuff - that I might find they would also come out with rape myths or disbelief, or play down the damage a powerful abuser had done - and that would lead me to protect myself by staying away from them.
It sends a message - and the message I hear is 'we prefer the past where we didn't have to bother about what that did to folk like you'
I don't mean 'it could be done better, the bureaucracy could be made smoother' but sneering about how important it is and why it is needed at all.
In my line of work there are pretty detailed safeguarding courses to be done too. I hate doing courses, I am terrible at filling in forms but I absolutely understand why it has to be done.
So do I, but such courses in no way prevent abuse occurring. Yes, they attempt to reduce the possibility and to increase awareness, but if a person is intent on abusing they will do so, no matter how many courses the church holds.
The categorisation of potential victims to be protected as “children” or “vulnerable adults” is insufficient. I am “ elderly” but not much more vulnerable than at any other point in my adult life. I was much more vulnerable emotionally in my thirties when my first marriage was breaking down. Like disabilities, not all vulnerabilities are visible.
So do I, but such courses in no way prevent abuse occurring. Yes, they attempt to reduce the possibility and to increase awareness, but if a person is intent on abusing they will do so, no matter how many courses the church holds.
Right, but if you raise the likelihood (and, just as importantly, the perception) of detecting an offender this is likely to act as a deterrent. And increased vigilance and awareness reduces the opportunities for offending, because you plan to minimise scenarios where adults are in unobserved 1 on 1 situations with vulnerable people. Nobody claims that we can prevent or detect every instance of abuse. It's about harm reduction - like seatbelts and airbags or lane-keeping features in a car.
Stopping abusers is challenging and complicated but not impossible. That counsel of despair is dangerous.
If you want to be really depressed, read the Laming Report into the death of Victoria Climbie.* There were several points at which she could have been saved. That was about professional failings but it's really stark, if the proper procedures had been followed, she would not have died.
I am Level 3 trained for professional reasons. Will probably upgrade to Level 4, so I am very familiar with all this.
Put simply, training enables people to know and therefore follow Best Practice.
Best Practice takes away the opportunity for abuse to occur. I will often return to the fact that the vast majority of abuse occurs in the home. That's a much harder situation than what happens within the church. But we can close those windows that abusers look to exploit.
Best Practice means doing the right thing when someone makes a disclosure. Another major failing of the church.
I have to teach about Victoria Climbie and Daniel Pelka on my youth and parenting module; the reports are very sobering.
When I was 17, 2 female friends disclosed sexual abuse to me, both in their immediate families. As a nurse I was exposed to a lot of stories of abuse, in both adults and children. I now teach adults in a distance learning institution, so never meet my students face to face, yet I make safeguarding referrals every year due to student disclosures. Abuse is more common than people think and vetting for anyone with the potential to manipulative vulnerable people is essential, alongside safeguarding training
<snip>
The categorisation of potential victims to be protected as “children” or “vulnerable adults” is insufficient. I am “ elderly” but not much more vulnerable than at any other point in my adult life. I was much more vulnerable emotionally in my thirties when my first marriage was breaking down. Like disabilities, not all vulnerabilities are visible.
In the training I have experienced, it has always been recognised that vulnerable adult needs to be a broad category, and that any adult may be vulnerable at some point in their lives.
A classic for clergy, of course, is the more or less recently bereaved who are often very vulnerable.
I still think I am onto something when I say that the best response to safeguarding concerns arises at a communal level. I don't mean that individual responsibility and awareness are not vital; they are. But what is it about the way the lives of congregations work that make churches such frequent contexts for abuse? And how can we look after each other better without denaturing congregational life?
Comments
It's paywalled, but this gives a flavour of Sitwell's opinions on online safeguarding training for church volunteers:
Sitwell argues that this will discourage volunteers from their "honourable efforts" and will only ever stop the innocent. And, the final flourish:
Who'd have thought that safeguarding is woke.
Disclaimer: I have a DT sub for work. I wouldn't give them a penny of my own money.
It's just gross isn't it. The choice of an abusive metaphor to make the point is obscene.
It mentions four levels of Safeguarding training, of which "Basic Awareness" and "Foundation" are the lowest and can be completed by any member of the congregation "to support awareness raising and a culture of support and vigilance in the Church". Indeed my own denomination has a "basic" safeguarding video which we are asked to show to our entire congregation.
The Manual then says: "It is recommended that those in the following roles are encouraged to complete them:Vergers, Servers, Welcomers, Caretakers, Refreshment Helpers, Shop Staff, Sidespersons, Flower Arrangers, Administrative Staff, Bell-ringers, Choir/Music Group Members (including Sound/ AVTechnicians)". But, whether overkill or not, these recommendations (and one must wonder if they have gradually morphed into "requirements" as the Churchwarden in the article believes) seem to have taken seven years or so to reach Mr Sitwell!
Thinking specifically of flowr arrangers, I could see a situation in which a lone, possibly elderly and female, volunteer is working in an open church; they need to be aware of the potential dangers of such a situation (which include not just the possibility of being attacked by a stranger but the more likely H&S risk of falling and not being able to raise an alarm).
That last point should be covered by a "Lone Working Policy". Our church has such a policy, which specifies (amongst other things) that anyone working alone in the church must have a mobile phone with them at all times, wth the phone switched on.
She didn't have a mobile phone nor any means of contact anyone had she taken a tumble.
In our previous church, a star used be hung on one of the ceiling lights at Christmas. Hanging it meant putting the step ladder on top of the communion table and then climbing up.
It Had Always Been Done This Way.
It had never been a problem before we came with our modern ideas about church members not killing or injuring themselves on the church premises doing the stupid.
The lone working policy was universally ignored by everyone except me and Rev T.
The elephant galloping around the room with the whole "We always managed without these things in the past" argument is that we can see how well that's worked out.
Having said that, I had a skim read of it with uncomfortable recognition of the sheer churn in PCC members round here when they point blank refuse to do the safeguarding training because they genuinely believe it’s a waste of their time.
That article is preaching to an recognisable slice of the church’s volunteer labour pool, however much I/you/we might wish it wasn’t.
There’s also (and I’m fully up to date and fully engaged with the training) a pretty fair perception that safeguarding is a time sponge that takes up ever more of PCC meetings, and seems to be all ‘the centre’ cares about.
And I think it absolutely needs to be a priority.
FWIW IME the biggest obstacle is the lack of portability (though the reasons for that are obvious IMO) from one organisation to the next. If you’re retired and community minded, you might be volunteering at the local stately home, on the PCC, on the parish council, a JP, or in these times where numbers of people putting themselves forward are dwindling, maybe all of them. And all of them are going to mandate safeguarding training, refreshers, and requalification.
You could spend your life doing safeguarding training. And so people kick out and refuse roles that involve it. In some ways the whole culture - which is absolutely right and necessary let us be clear - of getting safeguarding right can risk leading to safeguarding burn-out.
Which is, to say the least, counterproductive.
In my experience evangelicals tend to be very aware of the church as community, in some instances to the exclusion of involvement in almost anything else other than work and family.
I haven't heard of anyone refusing to cooperate, but I do know that some people find the various courses and modules time-consuming!
Right, but Sitwell is writing for the Tory-Party-At-Prayer tendency (insofar as one still exists).
I don’t understand. Are you saying that you should be exempt from the same rules that everyone else in the church are required to follow?
Hey! I'm a bureaucrat these days and I always aim to design solutions to cause minimum frustration. I spent 2 days a couple of months back teaching myself rudimentary VB for applications so that I could condense 6 separate forms into a single form customisable with tick boxes. Apart from anything else a good bureaucrat knows that unless you make your bureaucracy as frictionless as possible people will just circumvent it.
Not at all - the objection was to a poorly put-together policy (the Tower Captain and his wife both have considerable safeguarding experience and could see it was a fudge) that began by asserting Christianity, not safety.
It isn’t quite the same as what you’re dealing with in the UK, but enough similar that i sympathize.
No it's not. Abuse is stunningly common.
Sorry, probably derailing the discussion here. But it's a fact we all need to face that abuse is much more common than people think.
It's probably accurate here to say that abusers are a minority and that the majority of abuse occurs in the home rather than institutions.
AFZ
For reference: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/childabuseinenglandandwales/march2020
There will be congregations with no experience. There are also a huge number of congregations who believe there is no direct experience because of the silence of the victims. This is a huge part of the problem. It could never happen here... is such a dangerous way to think. Whilst headlines are made of the predatory abusers who 'everyone said there was something dodgy about him...' the truth is that most abuse is much more subtle and hidden than that. Having no direct experience is no measure of anything really.
My broader point, whilst not trying to be too argumentative,* is that abuse is common and we need to admit that fact and deal with it. However, I don't disagree that the wideness of the net that is cast means that totally innocent people get caught up in a bureaucratic process. The wideness being necessary, of course.
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*I failed.
Or that due processes in place prevent a potential abuser from carrying out abuse?
Safer recruitment practices, well-advertised safeguarding policies and procedures, well-advertised reporting procedures for concerns all fall broadly into the first category.
Reasonably wide awareness of the risks of abuse, accepted good practice around working with children and vulnerable adults fall broadly into the second category, making it less likely that there are situations which could be exploited by a bad actor, and also less likely that someone could face a false accusation.
I think this aspect is relevant to understanding resistance to accepting the need for safeguarding training and processes, particularly among churchgoers. As well as not wanting to believe that there are abusers and victims "hidden" within many congregations and church communities, I think many people are unwilling to take on a role that appears to require us to adopt an attitude of suspicious surveillance towards those around us, those who we count as friends and family.
It seems to me that these sentiments feed directly into decidedly uncomfortable narratives: that the church has failed and is failing in one of its core callings; that safeguarding conflicts with basic Christian principles, such as not thinking ill of another.
Though to be clear, I don’t think it’s silence of victims in and of itself that’s the problem. Victims can have various reasons for staying silent, and if that’s how they deal with what happened to them, then that needs to be respected.
The problem is the assumption that because no one has spoken up, there is no problem. We know way too much about this kind of abuse now to reasonably interpret not hearing of problems as “no problem here.”
A few years ago, Our Place had just this experience.
I meant no implication from the fact that victims are silent. It is an observation of fact that abuse often is not disclosed until years afterwards. That's all I meant.
However, this is a conversation where I should not risk any misunderstanding of my meaning.
In my life, several people have chosen to disclose to me the story of their abuse. It has been an immense privilege to be so trusted. There are multiple reasons why people don't want to speak up. That is their right. Often it is not a case of don't want to so much as can't. The emotional and psychological costs of disclosure can be absolutely huge. Never underestimate this.*
My point still stands that the assumption that no abuse has occurred here is deeply flawed but I should have phrased my point better in case someone might be genuinely hurt by how I said it.
I apologise freely.
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*Which brings us back to earlier themes on this thread about how let down many survivors have been by the CofE. To disclose is costly and then effectively the church threw it back in their faces. This is the problem.
It's all nonsense of course .... will I have to take one as I read out the lessons at morning services?
Now this is really, really unhelpful. My thoughts and prayers are with you.
And though I shouldn’t have to do it, I’ll say it: In what is not typical for me in Epiphanies, I’m speaking from lived experience on this one.
It is 20% of the population, 1 in 5 adults between 18 & 74 in England and Wales. Figures somewhat higher for women than men - but that is the population average - it is in no meaningful sense rare, and you’d need an extremely small congregation for no one to have any lived experience. Likewise, if you get 25 women in a room you can be near certain at least one of them has been raped.
That's a logistics problem, different from the question of which volunteers have to take the training. The last interim minister I reported to held her ministerial standing in a different conference from the one the church was in, and both conferences required her to do their online mandated reporter training
"Safeguarding" isn't the term of art in the US that it is in the UK, and we don't have the comprehensive view it expresses. Protecting children is treated separately from other things, and protecting vulnerable adults is spotty at best. California counties all have Adult Protective Services agencies, but lots of people don't know they exist, not like they know about the existence of Child Protective Services. Likewise, churches will generally have policies about protecting children that meet state requirements (though I doubt a lot of the start-up storefront churches do, but plenty don't have policies about protecting vulnerable adults.
At the church I worked for, starting sometime in the late 2000s all employees and volunteers who worked with children have to have background checks and do the anti-abuse (or abuse awareness? not sure what it's called) training mandated by the state of California. But despise having lots of older adults, there is no policy for protecting vulnerable seniors. As I didn't work with children, I just had to do anti-harassment training for employees, and they only started doing that within the last few years -- I did it just once before I retired.
The church required people to have been members for six months before they could volunteer for something like Sunday School, and that was the one thing that occasionally bugged new people. But generally you could just say "we're talking about kids, it's required" and people understood.
The thing that always staggered me was the policy about not being at the church alone -- it seemed to apply to everyone but employees, especially custodians. No one ever blinked at scheduling a small event that meant a custodian would work alone at night, closing up after the whole thing was over.
I remember an excellent sermon from our previous pastor. In it she mentioned that she had experienced on the job physical sexual harassment from church people at three of the four churches she had served. And in case we were hoping we were the fourth, she clarified that we weren't. Apparently that was why she only passes the peace by crossing her arms and nodding instead of hugging those who would otherwise hug.
It sends a message - and the message I hear is 'we prefer the past where we didn't have to bother about what that did to folk like you'
I don't mean 'it could be done better, the bureaucracy could be made smoother' but sneering about how important it is and why it is needed at all.
In my line of work there are pretty detailed safeguarding courses to be done too. I hate doing courses, I am terrible at filling in forms but I absolutely understand why it has to be done.
The categorisation of potential victims to be protected as “children” or “vulnerable adults” is insufficient. I am “ elderly” but not much more vulnerable than at any other point in my adult life. I was much more vulnerable emotionally in my thirties when my first marriage was breaking down. Like disabilities, not all vulnerabilities are visible.
Right, but if you raise the likelihood (and, just as importantly, the perception) of detecting an offender this is likely to act as a deterrent. And increased vigilance and awareness reduces the opportunities for offending, because you plan to minimise scenarios where adults are in unobserved 1 on 1 situations with vulnerable people. Nobody claims that we can prevent or detect every instance of abuse. It's about harm reduction - like seatbelts and airbags or lane-keeping features in a car.
If you want to be really depressed, read the Laming Report into the death of Victoria Climbie.* There were several points at which she could have been saved. That was about professional failings but it's really stark, if the proper procedures had been followed, she would not have died.
I am Level 3 trained for professional reasons. Will probably upgrade to Level 4, so I am very familiar with all this.
Put simply, training enables people to know and therefore follow Best Practice.
Best Practice takes away the opportunity for abuse to occur. I will often return to the fact that the vast majority of abuse occurs in the home. That's a much harder situation than what happens within the church. But we can close those windows that abusers look to exploit.
Best Practice means doing the right thing when someone makes a disclosure. Another major failing of the church.
Safeguarding philosophy and training is vital.
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*I have never read all of it, it's too painful.
When I was 17, 2 female friends disclosed sexual abuse to me, both in their immediate families. As a nurse I was exposed to a lot of stories of abuse, in both adults and children. I now teach adults in a distance learning institution, so never meet my students face to face, yet I make safeguarding referrals every year due to student disclosures. Abuse is more common than people think and vetting for anyone with the potential to manipulative vulnerable people is essential, alongside safeguarding training
A classic for clergy, of course, is the more or less recently bereaved who are often very vulnerable.