The Future of Church Safeguarding: A look at the Jay Report

Stephen Parsons, MC member and Editor of the Surviving Church blog, reflects on the findings of Professor Alexis Jay’s Report, The Future of Church Safeguarding, published today (Feb 21st).

“Safeguarding activity in the Church of England is currently a shambles; the Church needs to hand over all its power in this area to two new and independent bodies.”

The sentence above is a very loose summary of Professor Alexis Jay’s skilled overview of the current state of safeguarding in the Church.  For her report, The Future of Church Safeguarding published today (Feb 21st), Jay has spoken to dozens of individuals involved in this area of work.  While she is impressed with the work and dedication of many of them, her overall conclusion is that the procedures and protocols that are in place for church safeguarding are not fit for purpose.  She sums up her finding by saying, ‘the Church’s system of operational safeguarding is not compatible with best practices …’  A striking finding from her questionnaire data states also that 69% of the victims and survivors were unsatisfied or very unsatisfied with the outcome of the safeguarding process as it applied to them.  With only a mere 16% declaring themselves satisfied, it is clear that the Church is involved with a system which fails to inspire trust or confidence in those involved.  In spite of spending huge amounts of money, the Church authorities are presiding over procedures which let people down.  In the process they inflict considerable reputational damage on the Church itself.  

One important feature of the report is that the reader is allowed to listen to anonymous voices of some of the many stakeholders involved in safeguarding.  Some are those who are responsible for operating the protocols, while others are the victims and survivors.  This focus on the lived experience of individuals caught up in the system is an aspect of the total picture that Jay wants to share with her readers.  Her report is independent, and thus there is no attempt to gloss over some quite serious claims of institutional cruelty or incompetence being used as a way to protect the ‘system’.  One major problem across English dioceses is the inconsistency of practice.  One member of the clergy described the safeguarding instructions emanating from the centre as ‘opaque, confusing and complex.’  Different dioceses may treat an identical issue in quite different ways.  Line management of Diocesan Safeguarding Advisers (DSA) can frequently prove to be a problem.  Also, not every DSA had worked in a profession previously which valued a sensitivity to trauma.  An absence of the skill of working with old-fashioned human kindness has the consequence that some of these survivors are forced to retreat into a hidden place where they are out of reach of the help of others.

One important way that Jay shows her helpful understanding of the negative dynamics of some safeguarding activity, is when she refers to ‘weaponisation’.  This is the habit of making an otherwise lightweight issue of behaviour into a ‘safeguarding matter’ so that it attracts to itself a disproportionate weight of process.  Most disagreements between colleagues or within a parish setting can be resolved by mediation.  Instead, we hear that clergy can now be intimidated to the point of breakdown by lay people threatening a safeguarding process against them.    Jay is clear that safeguarding is an area of church life which is about offering protection to children and vulnerable adults.  It is not a method for disgruntled individuals to settle scores against others by defining the word vulnerable in a loose way.

Some of Jay’s report concerns itself with incompetent and less than professional breakdowns of communication and understanding between safeguarding officials.    She notes the highly variable structure of personnel across the dioceses in England.  Some employ up to six full-time staff (Chester) while others (Carlisle) have a single Safeguarding Adviser with some secretarial back-up.  The key proposal in the report is to set up two new independent charitable organisations. The first would be responsible for delivering all Church safeguarding activities and coordinate all the national safeguarding work. It would serve all the safeguarding work of the dioceses in an even-handed manner.  Local Diocesan safeguarding committees would disappear.   The second would be responsible for providing scrutiny and oversight of safeguarding, acting as a supervisory body overseeing the work of the first organisation, thereby removing responsibility from bishops to act as the place of last resort.  Both bodies would be separate from the Church with their relationship underpinned by legally binding collaboration agreements.

Jay had noticed, not infrequently, that crucial decisions were expected of personnel who did not have either the interest or the professional skill to make such decisions.  A House of Bishops, such as the one we have in the Church of England, which finds it difficult or impossible to nominate a Lead Bishop for Safeguarding, should surely not want to protest if the responsibility was removed from their control.  It would be a popular change among the survivors I know.  Most recent Lead Bishops for Safeguarding have appeared to become demoralised by the tasks placed on them.  Some have responded to their role by becoming invisible while others have demonstrated all too clearly in their words and demeanour something of the toll that this responsibility has placed on them.

The basic message of Professor Jay’s report is to indicate to the Church of England that it is out of its depth when seeking to provide safeguarding for those who need it.  I have not attempted to give the detail of Jay’s two proposed new organisations in this short commentary; but suffice to say, it is a radical departure from what is in existence at present.  The suggestions of Jay would appear to be based on good common-sense, but they will likely be firmly resisted by those who exercise power in the Church of England.   The power that has accrued to senior lawyers and senior church civil servants will not be surrendered easily to two independent bodies that cannot be controlled and bent to the will of the Church’s central administration.  The management of safeguarding in the C of E currently seems to be all about power. We must hope that the evidence of mishandled power in the Church up till the present, will allow parliament and public opinion to force these necessary changes on the C of E.  We need a safeguarding regime which will allow transparency and justice.  Such a new system may help to provide healing for all who have suffered power abuse or institutional re-abuse at the hands of their fellow Christians.