About Us
Safeguarding Governance
The Church of England is structured to provide a Christian presence in every community. It has some 12,500 parishes which are grouped within 42 dioceses under the leadership of the diocesan bishop. Each diocese has a cathedral as it’s central church building. The work of the 42 dioceses is supported and coordinated from the National Church Institutions.
Every Church of England Diocese and Cathedral has a Safeguarding Advisor (or Officer), who has been recruited according to the Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor (DSA) Regulations. These are the roles which hold professional responsibility for managing safeguarding cases and referrals in their church body.
They are supported by a Diocesan Safeguarding Panel, the purpose of which is to provide advice, scrutiny and, where necessary, challenge to the Diocesan Bishop and the Diocese regarding the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults. The panel is independently chaired and is made up of senior church officers and independent members with safeguarding expertise drawn from a wide range of agencies.
The National Safeguarding Team (NST) is responsible for managing cases which involve Bishops or Deans, or involve multiple locations. The NST also sets the policy framework for safeguarding in the Church of England and develops the relevant learning and development materials. It has no direct responsibly over DSAs, but can receive cases from them and provides advice and support on any particular case.
The NST sits under the Archbishops’ Council. The Archbishops’ Council was established in 1999. The Council is a charity, set up in law to co-ordinate, promote, aid and further the work and mission of the Church of England. It does this by providing national support to the Church in dioceses and locally, working closely with the House of Bishops and other bodies of the Church. The Archbishops’ Council is one of the seven National Church Institutions (NCIs).
The House of Bishops has delegated some of its safeguarding functions to the National Safeguarding Steering Group (NSSG), which is chaired by the lead Safeguarding Bishop. Its memberships is drawn from Diocese, Cathedrals, NCI staff and members of Synod.
The National Safeguarding Panel (NSP) is an advisory body which provides external expertise and advise on the development of safeguarding arrangements. Membership includes survivor representatives.
For more information, please see the attached document.
Towards Independence
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) Report emphasised the importance of introducing an independent element into safeguarding arrangements in the Church of England (“the church”) (Recc. D.4). Conscious of the need to improve the culture of safeguarding across the church, the Archbishops’ Council and House of Bishops had already agreed to develop an independent structure to deliver professional supervision and quality assurance across its safeguarding activities. The IICSA Report gives new momentum to this decision.
This would be a complex and time-consuming exercise if every aspect had to be finalised before anything happened. In the meantime, the lack of an independent element would become increasingly evident as the need had been acknowledged but not yet delivered, leading to understandable criticism.
The Archbishops’ Council and House of Bishops have therefore decided to put the initial element of independence in place at the earliest opportunity, recognising that some questions, especially those involving legislation or other complex structural changes, will be addressed later. This has the advantage that independent wisdom can be captured at each stage. It has the disadvantage that a degree of uncertainty will remain for those involved in areas of safeguarding where key questions remain to be addressed, which includes concerns of victims and survivors. It is therefore imperative that progress is maintained after this interim arrangement is in place.
The first step is to appoint an Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) which would accompany the church in shaping the tasks to deliver independence in the long term.
The purpose of introducing an independent structure for the church’s safeguarding work is twofold: to ensure good safeguarding and to challenge the internal cultures of the Church of England which too often have resulted in preventing best practice. A problem with all forms of culture change is that, if the drivers of change are located too close to the organisation, they become absorbed into the culture themselves – but placed too far away, they have insufficient traction to effect the desired changes. The wisdom from business and commerce is that there is no single “right” answer to this – the relationship between the culture and the drivers of change must be reviewed and adjusted from time to time.
Another level of ambiguity arises because, whilst IICSA has pointed to the desirability of having an independent safeguarding role, enacting that objective is the responsibility of the church itself. An independent body will also need to be funded by the church. This is not a case of an external body imposing control, but of the church delivering its legal responsibilities by vesting a new, independent, body with authority over the church itself.
An independent body will have considerable moral authority. It has the power to blow the whistle publicly and expose resistance or backsliding on the church’s part. But there are many contexts where friction and resistance from the church could undermine the independent body. What is needed is a structure which the church may put in place, but which it cannot frustrate.