CofE Safeguarding Reform: objections to Option 4
on Thursday, 6 February 2025 at 1.07 pm by Simon Sarmiento
categorised as Church of England, General Synod, Safeguarding
Two documents have been issued to General Synod members, both of which raise concerns about the recommendation in favour of Option 4, as described in GS 2378.
So what happens if, after the February Synod multiple bishops/DBFs and many PCCs write to the Charity Commission to say that the option selected by Synod does not, in their view as trustees, sufficiently allow them to meet their obligations? I can see the good ship Church of England is sailing towards rocks. Again.
We have reached the high tide mark of centralisation, as it flows back out the fundamental structure of the CofE will be revealed again and we will learn to play our parts more modestly. After all, other than the gospel, we have a got a lot to be modest about.
What an interesting list of signatories- independent (sic) chairs, Chief Operating Officers, administrative officers, and Cathedral staff and Diocesan ones all mixed up DSOs and trainers, so it was hard to work out who had the most objections, though one Diocese seemed to have wheeled out everybody they could think of. Presumably this goes with the Gloucester advice? Does it predate the Charity Commission letter?
Or come from folk who still think there is a long time ahead to keep tweaking the status quo?
From a quick scan I find that Newcastle, Durham, Sodor & Man, & Lichfield are missing, but against that we have 7 signatures from Southwark & plenty of 4s & 5s from other Dios. General Synod is almost upon CofE, & all one can foresee at the moment is chaos & indecision.
Just to add icing to the cake of CofE woes, Cathy Newman & #4 aired yet another humiliating exposé tonight, this time on David Fletcher. Somehow I suspect that there is yet more bad news in the pipeline from Cathy Newman & #4 .
I couldn’t see Ely there either
Diocese of Ely, also missing, as far as I can see.
The battle lines are simply delineated.
Option 3 is the preferred choice of the supplier class
Option 4 is the preferred choice of the consumers
Thanks Martin. Your work in this space is exemplary. I avoided reading the article given it was not healthy for my blood pressure. Without the recommendations of the Jay report being taken in full my reading of option 3 is that it is not functionally independent. Is Gloucester an outlier or maybe easily influenced by Cottrell and the NYE bots ? Also am I correct that your lead safeguarding Bishop is pushing option 4 whilst NYE the AB council Cottrell and the other conservative patriarchal powerbrokers in the House of Bishops are acting to wedge and block option 4 with… Read more »
I cannot comment on all the speculations but we are certainly approaching “ High Noon”. This Church is being given one last chance to grasp independence, after that we are in basket case territory as far as safeguarding credibility is concerned. I am not prepared to put any effort into clawing back credibility if Synod decides to tinker with the Jay recommendations. My guess is that the heirs of Smyth and David Fletcher and all the cover up merchants will oppose proper independent safeguarding. Many will cave to the pressure of their local DSO who may or not be competent.… Read more »
It is interesting that allegations against David Fletcher personally, not just for his cover up of Smyth, surfaced yesterday, and his brother is still awaiting trial , I believe for several charges of indecent assault and 1x charge of ABH. So quite a lot of ‘bad apples’, and the Church’s failure to deal with cases and call them out properly besmirches the reputation of so many honourable priests. I also cannot fathom why so many DSOs seem to have been taken in by all the surrounding briefings or misinformation about the need for safeguarding which is properly independent and not… Read more »
I saw both excellent papers had serious issues with option 4. More independence I think they both wanted. The existing staff were worried about organisational changes, but I think those can be easily ameliorated.
How the Synod is supposed to make any sense of this in a few hours, after the group convened for the purpose failed to reach any agreement after many months of hard and thoughtful, work, goodness only knows. Safeguarding, after all, is just one (essentially rather peripheral) part of the Church’s raison d’etre and purpose. Something any organisation has to think about, these days. But to an outsider, reading the discussions here and elsewhere, it seems that if there is no consensus on what the “mission” of the organisation is, and how its governance should be organised to pursue that… Read more »
‘Tend Christ’s flock’ is the core mission of the Church’s leaders. That is what Jesus commissioned Peter to do, and presumably Church leaders after him. Therefore safeguarding is part of the Church’s core mission, since it – supposedly – protects the sheep from harm and drives off the wolves. The failure to do safeguarding properly and enact justice for survivors has the potential to destroy the C of E – and that, in my view, would be a just judgment.
And at present looks ever more likely because of the entrenched and entitled behaviour of those getting fat off the organisation
Isn’t it amazing that the Church Establishment is throwing everything at the Jay proposals in the last few days hoping to overwhelm Synod members with anxiety and multiple questions at at time when we are already awash with papers? And they have had access to Diocesan funds made available to buy a favourable opinion from Church lawyers? I used to cross examine expert witnesses – the first thing you asked to see was the instruction letter, the index of documents supplied and notes of additional instructions. Lawyers are like computers – only as good as the data input. Church lawyers… Read more »
“A letter signed by 106 persons associated with church safeguarding in CofE dioceses and cathedrals: General Synod Letter February 2025 – Final” The letter merely confirms a comment Antonio Gramsci made: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters” – Antonio Gramsci It is clear that at this time they have done nothing while the most traumatising abuses were being practised all around them by individuals exalted to ecclesiastical high office. – as demonstrated from the endless reporting by Channel 4 and numerous other media outlets on the current… Read more »
Yet another conservative evangelical unmasked as an abuser: https://www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/news/24915564.john-smyth-abuse-allegations-oxford-christian-camp-leader/
Time to run safeguarding investigations on the whole CEEC and all the other homophobes who poke their noses into other people’s love lives while abusing people in their own,.
Does the fact that many of your identify this push for option 3 as the “establishment fighting back” imply that Bishop Joanne Grenfell is seen as part of the “anti-establishment” ? If her firm support for Option 4 is rejected, she would presumably have to resign her safeguarding post?
General Synod today voted, IIUC, in favour of Model 3. This is despite the Second Church Commissioner, Marsha Cordova MP, who speaks ‘for the church’ in the House of Parliament urging support for Model 4 as a sign of commitment to change, noting the importance and urgency of regaining the trust and confidence of the nation, and having consistency of practice. Again, the church seems to be more concerned about its internal arrangements than the needs of victims and survivors and how it appears to the nation and its democratically-elected representatives.
There are a number of issues arising from this correspondence – and some people seem to be making the false assumption that that option 4 solves all our problems. Actually I think that the letter from safeguarding professionals does show significant iSight Ito the issues we still face. It is notable that many of them still list their roles as DSAs rather than DSOs, as this, in itself was supposed to signal a change. In my submission to Jay, I pointed out the dangers involved in taking away too much safeguarding responsibility from the operational part of the Church –… Read more »
That may indeed be, but ‘the media’ and ‘the nation’ have no time for the niceties of Synod’s deliberations and the defensiveness of bishops. Is there no understanding of how decisions might be seen and felt by ‘survivors’; do bishops receive no comms training. Speaker after speaker recognised that ‘it’s complex’ or ‘it’s complicated. Bringing 86 safeguarding entities into one, as recommennded by the nation’s expert commissioned by ‘the church’ to come up with recommendations ignored by General Synod, would surely have been a start and would have been seen ‘outside’ as such. Jesus, a victim, must be weeping at… Read more »