It has been an exceptionally confusing week for those of us who work with or who are concerned about safeguarding and redress. An announcement was made about the funding of the Redress Scheme, and was immediately followed by an announcement that the two remaining members of the Independent Safeguarding Board were being sacked. It remains unclear what will be on the agenda for the July General Synod, where ‘safeguarding’ features; will this be an anodyne presentation with carefully-managed questions from the floor, or something more real? As the fall-out from the decision by the Archbishops’ Council to end the ISB continues, and as the former members – who were appointed by a proper process rather than being selected in some opaque fashion, and who have gained the confidence of many survivors – are putting their side of the story through social media, the official line seems to be that this was only Phase 1 of ISB; the ISB wasn’t independent; and this is just a ‘reset’. 

What to make of that? I don’t know who came up with the word ‘reset’ – it has now been used in public by two members of the Archbishops’ Council, the Archbishop of York and Ian Paul, so I suspect it’s their officially-recommended term – but these are people, not a computer!

Well, the document setting up the ISB exists. It is here. While it confirms the point that what we had until last week was only ever Phase 1 (a phase envisaged as going up to the end of 2023), and addresses the problem of deciding how independence can work when a body is funded by the organisation from which it is supposed to be ‘independent’, it does raise some questions.

For example, it states that ‘There are existing models for a wholly independent charitable body to handle safeguarding. Exploring a variety of models, and assessing their applicability, will be undertaken in Phase 2.’ It also notes that ‘The proposed Independent Safeguarding Board would accompany the church in shaping the tasks in Phase 2 and deciding how they can best be delivered’ and ‘it is recommended that the work streams of Phase 2 be approached through a co-production methodology’.

How is any of that development going to happen when the Phase 1 version of the ISB has been dissolved, and in such a fashion? Who, now, designs Phase 2? What has been learned in Phase 1?

The document also discusses in a useful way the difference between executive and advisory functions and, when it tells us what the ISB – in both phases – was supposed to do, it offers an excellent aspiration for what could exist: ‘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.’

Precisely. But the way that Phase 1 has been ended doesn’t make me more confident that Phase 2 will be such a structure. 

Finally, it’s a useful document in its identification of how to reach real culture change on safeguarding. Alongside the level of ‘independence’, these four points are worth keeping in mind when we are eventually told what Phase 2 is going to look like:

Alertness to disparities of power becomes instinctive in all relationships

Group-think and tribalism are challenged effectively from outside the “club”

Responsibility is clearly attributed and shared

Systems respond to failures by holding those responsible to account and changing to prevent recurrent failures