DISAPPOINTMENT and dismay at the General Synod's decision not to outsource the Church of England’s safeguarding work immediately were mingled with a plea not to be too pessimistic, as bishops and survivors responded to Tuesday’s vote.
“I think there are some things that we can salvage from it,” was the assessment of the lead bishop for safeguarding, the Bishop of Stepney, Dr Joanne Grenfell.
Speaking to the Church Times after the vote, she said that she was “disappointed” by the outcome: “It’s not where I wanted to be at the end of today,” she said.
“I think Synod didn’t quite find the courage today to do the things that need to be done,” she said, describing the way forward now as a “more circuitous route”.
She pledged, however, to continue working for “greater independence” in Church safeguarding in her role as lead bishop, and said that she would work to provide the “reassurance” needed on issues including trustee responsibility and how the external body would be contracted.
In the mean time, an independent scrutiny body would be established, though Dr Grenfell said that it was hard to give a timescale for this.
The Archbishop of York said: “I’m disappointed that the Church is now going to do that in two stages, but I fully commit myself to work towards implementing synod’s decision and making it happen.”
As for the perception of the vote, Dr Grenfell said that the Church had “missed a huge opportunity to send a message to victims and survivors that we hear their concerns about trust and confidence”.
The Bishop of Blackburn, the Rt Revd Philip North, who had proposed the amendment to Dr Grenfell’s motion, took a different view.
“I don’t think that an almost unanimous vote for greater safeguarding is a bad news story,” he said. “I think that’s a very good news story, and it shows a Church that is repentant, that wants to change, and is moving ahead as fast as feasible towards greater independence of safeguarding.”
Further work would be done on Model 4, and proposals would return to the Synod when they were deliverable, he suggested. “There was a risk today that we over- promised. There was a risk that we said we would do things that we then later work out we are unable, legally or practically, to do.”
The Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, said that, although she had wanted Model 4, “I don’t think in reality we are very far off the same end result.
“Even if we had gone straight to option four, it would have still been slow, because there’s lots of work to do to ensure that we can actually deliver that and implement it, with all the complexities we have under charity law and not wanting to abdicate our responsibility for safeguarding,” she said.
“The difference is that this will now have to be brought back to Synod, but I don’t think this has to be a problem if we agree we need to have a timetable.”
Bishop Treweek said that she recognised that the decision would feel “hugely painful” to those survivors who had called for Model 4. “I want to give reassurance that this is about us moving forward.”
She also expressed concern about how the decision would be reported. “I think it can be reported in a positive way, or it can be reported in a way that looks as if we’ve all voted against independence, which is not what we’ve done at all.”
The immediate response from survivors on social media was negative. “Survivors are devastated,” the founder of Survivors Voices, Jane Chevous, wrote on X. “We feel betrayed by the church, who again have not listened to us. Trust is not restored but further broken.”
Another survivor, the Revd Lizzi Green, addressed Synod members in a post. “Do you know what you have just done?” she wrote: “Do you genuinely not hear survivors? Because we keep shouting and you keep telling us you are centering us, but that’s clearly crap. We do not trust you.”
The Second Church Estates Commissioner, Marsha de Cordova MP, said that the decision “puts back the progress we need”. She made her maiden speech during the debate, arguing in favour of Model 4.
In a blog post after the debate, she lamented the outcome of the vote. “The road to rebuilding trust and confidence in the Church remains long.”
Others who responded included Professor Alexis Jay, who last February delivered a report setting out a pathway to independent safeguarding. On Tuesday, she told the BBC that the decision was “deeply disappointing” and “devastating for victims and survivors”.
In an interview on Channel 4 News, also on Tuesday, she said that the decision did not make people less safe in the Church of England, but that it was a “huge opportunity missed to ensure that they were more safe, but most importantly that trust and confidence in the Church could, in part, be restored”.
A Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Chester, Professor Paul Middleton, however, cautioned against the Synod’s decision being “misrepresented by some as a kind of ‘failure’ to do the right thing.
“There were clear issues and problems with Model 4 (the highest level of ‘independence’), and what has been adopted is a model with a high degree of independent safeguarding,” he wrote.
One of the concerns that had been raised was about would happen if the independent body appointed to do this safeguarding work was not up to scratch. The issue was one that swayed an Oxford lay represenatative Prudence Dailey.
“I would say to victims and survivors that the will towards independence is there, it’s just some of these practical issues that could actually make things better than worse,” she told the Church Times.
Bishop North said that the Synod’s decision was “wise and proportionate”. There was a range of opinion among survivors and safeguarding experts, he said, and the approach now being taken allowed for independent scrutiny to be introduced “immediately”, while the Church did “due diligence” on further outsourcing.
In spring last year, a survey of more than 2000 people connected with the Church of England showed that support for fully outsourced safeguarding was low among bishops and safeguarding professionals working within the Church.
Support was higher among survivors, with 71 per cent favouring a move to operationally independent safeguarding (News, 31 May 2024).
