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It’s a wet night in Birmingham. It doesn’t sound as good as a rainy night in Georgia, but never mind. I’m here tonight to support a meeting of the Methodist Survivors’ Advisory Group, and at the end of our evening session, we are buzzing with ideas about how to bring the survivor perspective to the attention of the wider church. More of these plans later, but it’s good to be staying again at Woodbrooke, the Quaker Conference Centre on the south west side of the city. Being here reminds you of the quietness that we sometimes miss in our hurly burly worlds. We are invited to join the Friends in Residence for their evening worship described as an opportunity for silent, personal centring. A time for contemplation, refreshment and renewal. After the parliamentary fireworks last week the contrast is striking. Moderation of language is actually just about reduced to having no need for moderation at all, as little or nothing is said. Simon and Garfunkel’s celebrated song ‘The Sound of Silence’ is one of those songs that can speak profoundly to us, echoing a real sense of the power and strength of silence, which in safeguarding we can see being played out. We are rightly concerned when people don’t feel able to speak about what they have experienced, and equally disappointed when observers don’t speak out about what they see and hear. ‘The Stones Cry Out’ was a seminal report published by MACSAS (Ministerial and Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors) in 2010, which shone a light on clerical sexual abuse, particularly of adults. The title speaks not of silence but of telling the story far and wide and out if a sense of frustration, but equally in the face of deafening silence or even denial from church authorities at the time. There is a paradox in staying at a venue predicated on quiet reflection whilst wanting to make sure an essential voice is heard loud and clear. The peaceful Quaker ethos can, however, be easily aligned with the desire for justice and change. So this venue where we have met on 3 previous occasions, provides an environment conducive to quiet consideration, whilst offering the scope to get fired up with plans to do things better for survivors in the future. ‘People writing songs that voices never share, no one dared, disturb the sound of silence’ sang the duo. Our ambition is to speak the words that must be heard, and if Woodbrooke helps that journey along then the silence here will have been put to very good use.

Sunday night saw me at our circuit church for Choral Evensong led by the choirs of two local Anglican churches. It was a splendid evening of singing and reciting the traditional General Confession and the Creed, in all the glory of their eloquently arcane language.  I was immediately transported back over 55 years to my time spent at a Church of England boys’ junior school where learning to recite the Catechism was an absolute requirement. On Sunday I stood and hardly needed to read the words from the Book of Common Prayer – I knew them already!  I could recall ‘we have done those things we ought not to have done’ and that we needed to be mindful of the ‘devices and desires of our own hearts’.  We knew our place – we were ‘miserable offenders’. The ability to be able to recite from memory chunks of text first produced in 1571, if updated, seemed to be an expectation at my school, and no doubt many others.  Woe betide the pupil who stumbled over the words or forgot them.  I can’t recall how we were punished if we failed.  In my case my response to this curious requirement (in my view) was coloured by the fact that as a Methodist child taken to church twice a day on a Sunday, I could not recall us ever saying these words. So I believed I should be exempt.  Nevertheless to avoid whatever humiliation was coming my way for non-compliance I duly learnt the words, clearly just so 55 years later I could say them at a service I suddenly decided to attend. At my junior school corporal punishment was often meted out in response to poor behaviour – typically a slap on the back of the legs that really stung. We could also be punished for poor academic performance although I think that was rarer.  But even at the age of 10 I thought it odd that a school which was built on Christian principles of love and compassion could resort to physical hurt as a means of controlling its pupils.  Perhaps I was just naïve, and of course my school’s approach was the norm in the early sixties.  We have moved on since then with prohibitions placed on schools about such punishments.  However the Government’s latest proposals about school discipline do emphasise the use of ‘reasonable force’ to enforce discipline so we need to be alert to turning the clock back a notch. As I write this I can see again one teacher’s face as he slapped a boy next to his desk in front of the class. I can’t recall his misdemeanour, but I do remember the tears and the humiliation etched into the boy’s face, and the teacher’s slight smirk as he told the boy to return to his seat.  Let’s not see any return to these times. We know it doesn’t work.

This week’s blog really does speak for itself and probably doesn’t warrant much commentary from me.  The link below relates to a very recent Charity Commission enquiry into the safeguarding arrangements in Birmingham Diocese. The brief report tells the story of inadequate record keeping about safeguarding contracts as well as other concerns, and finally describes how a statutory order has been placed on the trustees to make the necessary improvements. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/charity-inquiry-birmingham-diocesan-trust/birmingham-diocesan-trust. It makes for sobering reading and is a reminder to churches, circuits and districts that if they don’t pay attention to key safeguarding requirements then trustees can be forced by law to act and their failures made public. This is a theme that District Safeguarding Officers return to again and again when they meet church and circuit safeguarders, and it’s a clear and unambiguous message for church leaders. Our ongoing need for good quality recording practice and clear evidence of our compliance with the completion of training and safe recruitment procedures has been well signalled in the past and as we, too, approach the IICSA in the spring next year, this becomes an even more critical issue. There is good evidence that our well-ordered Methodist churches generally and fully understand their fiduciary, insurance and property responsibilities. They understand the consequences if they don’t comply or get it wrong.  Is it not time to put safeguarding on an equal footing?

I must confess to never having read Proust’s monumental masterpiece ‘A la recherché du temps perdu’. I think it’s one of the longest books ever written. But for me it’s just the title that inspires and conjures up a vision of bucolic scenes described brilliantly in the works of French impressionist painters.  The sun always appears to be shining, the sky blue, the corn golden and country folk quietly going about their business. Of course the book is more complex than that and is full, I understand, of a wide range of insightful personal experiences in fin de siècle France.  And we also know images of rural tranquillity can mask a wide range of issues and tensions. So what’s this got to do with the first safeguarding blog of the new Methodist Year? Well, as we start the year with varying amounts of energy and enthusiasm it’s often a time when we look back and compare notes over what we’ve done over the last couple of summer months.  Was this the year when we planned to fix the garden, repaint the garden shed, have more bar-b-q-s with friends, get out more, just chill or none of these?  Was this the summer we can look back on as being the one that lived up to expectations or was it the one that, yet again, ended in frustration, with nothing quite achieved?  Of course many readers will have been working hard without a break and may now be looking forward to an autumn holiday instead. Something about our first school term rhythms, the start of the new Methodist year, Piers Morgan back on Good Morning Britain and dare we say the new parliamentary session, affects our consciousness and gets under our skin, making this early September period a time for both reflection and anticpation.  Our church also cranks into life again with circuit meetings due in the next couple of weeks. So it’s a chance now to check that all those safeguarding tasks are up to date, that the things we said we would do over the summer have been completed and that our houses are in good order in terms of the three pillars of best practice – safe recruitment, training and up to date policies. This is the bedrock of what we are as a safe church. For some Connexional and District Safeguarding staff, it may well be a case of asking ‘where did our summers go’, how was ‘le temps perdu’ as it were, as they worked hard to complete the IICSA questionnaire and supply the requested data. We are just about there now, but we will go into the hearings next spring more confident if we know that all our churches have reviewed their safeguarding arrangements and implemented plans to address any shortcomings. We have a good story to tell – let’s not lose the chance to prove it.

Today is a first - a blog on location coming to you live - well Sunday lunchtime from Greenbelt.  Yours truly is again a member of the Safeguarding team. I've sought shade in the Foundry cafe and our President Rev Dr Barbara Glasson is leading a session on storytelling.  People in the tent are now reading their own stories composed over the last few minutes.  Barbara facilitates the Survivor's Advisory Group and often encourages us to think about the stories we tell about our lives and experiences as we move the agenda forward. When we work with both survivors and perpetrators we often ask people to tell their stories. How they got to the place they now find themselves. What happened, where and when and perhaps a stab at why.  Having a life story helps to make sense of our journey and also helps us to present a version to friends, relatives and onlookers. This is not meant to be an attempt at rationalisation or justifying some sorts of behaviour that we should not be proud of. Neither should it be a means simply of eliciting sympathy. Storytelling is about sharing an honest, deeper truth about ourselves that can help others with their own journey through life. Reflecting aboriginal tradition  Barbara is now talking about songlines, and asking the audience what our Methodist songlines might be.  The stories that reveal the history and deeper truths of our world. For people adversely affected by safeguarding concerns, having a personal story is also part of the healing process.  As we start our new Methodist year it's a great time for us all to refresh our story and look forward to what lies  in store, whatever uncertainty you might perceive.

It’s August and it’s meant to be quiet.  If it’s not the weather making the news it’s Brexit or a commentary on the Royals’ holiday arrangements and who paid for a private jet.  We’ve also had the tragic murder of a police officer in Berkshire and the seemingly random killing of a man in Newcastle who came up against a group of young people in the city centre.  At the very start of the month was news of the conviction and sentencing of a churchwarden who targeted a couple of unsuspecting older people for financial gain. In one case he was convicted of murder. So August has not been the month when nothing happens. Don’t forget the First World War started in August and the second one missed the month by a whisker. The case of the churchwarden who abused two deeply religious elderly people in a small village prompted a number of people to go on television and reflect that they should have been more observant of what was going on. Perhaps in our language not adopting any sense of respectful uncertainty, even when it became clear that all was not well in the lives of the two trusting pensioners.  We often say ‘with hindsight’ we might know better what to do in future or there might have been an alternative course of action we could have taken.  What we do know is that making a judgement about what we are seeing can be hard if things are not clear cut, involve people we respect or care about, and it’s easier, not to look the other way, but to seek another explanation. I don’t think there is a magic answer to this conundrum. Most of us will not come across such troubling situations in our lifetimes and so, thankfully, we can’t practice getting it right. Social workers and police officers are highly trained to be observant and so they do get the opportunity to practice how to spot things that don’t seem as they should be. In our churches, our congregational members may be the first to spot something that strikes them as a bit odd – but they may not have attended our safeguarding training courses which can help with the recognition of abuse.  Here’s where the idea of ‘Safeguarding Sunday’ or articles about safeguarding in the church magazine or attached to the weekly notices can help to drip feed the idea that it’s OK to think something strange or ask questions.  It’s true that some people don’t like being presented with these concerns, but if we are true to our gospel calling, looking out for each other is what we are all about.  This blog for example is now copied in a number of magazines I understand.    It’s really just about getting people to think twice. Finally for regular followers, at the start of the new season, the safeguarding steward at Selhurst Park no longer has the white tabard with the word ‘safeguarding’ on it.  I don’t know if he has been demoted but I looked around and didn’t see a new one.  This concerned me so I might have to ask my own questions!

The other big news story last week was the conviction and imprisonment of Carl Beech. The BBC described him as ‘the fantasist’ who told lies about the abuse he claimed to have suffered at the hands of a group of prominent figures.  Extensive press coverage described the way in which his own story unravelled, the fact of his being an already convicted paedophile and the impact his testimony had on those whom he had accused.  For Beech, 18 years for perverting the course of justice, was a significant sentence, the judge indicating the seriousness of making unfounded allegations. Following sentencing there was an understandable media response from organisations who support survivors of abuse, concerned about the potential impact Beech’s experience may have on other people coming forward to tell their stories.  In 2014, when some of the allegations surfaced there was some presumption of belief on the part of investigating agencies , but this now seems to have been set aside.  Replacing this with something similar to ‘respectful uncertainty’ is potentially concerning for those who have suffered abuse and who may now feel a greater degree of reluctance to report. Published in the Guardian newspaper yesterday was a letter from a group of therapists and counsellors that made a plea to provide justice for all in situations like this, recognising that ‘trauma and abuse evoke powerful feelings.’  Understanding ‘fantasists and liars’ is equally as important as listening with care to what children are telling us.  Appreciating that trauma can cause a dissociative disorder, it’s possible to recognise that different states of mind can hold different perspectives on the same life event at the same time. Beech’s case was very complex, with questions now being asked today about the legality of police methods of collecting evidence.  The issues identified in the letter quoted above are equally complex and possibly beyond some aspects of lay understanding.  However going forward the Church will be endeavouring, through working in partnership with the Survivors’ Advisory Group, to make sure that safe spaces are widely available in which the voices of survivors are clearly heard. The most important thing we need to do now is actively to support people who have been abused to tell their story and continue to report concerns to investigating agencies.  If we don’t continue to provide that absolute commitment and reassurance our recent progress will be halted.

Are you ready for the midweek heatwave? Tough if you are stuck in the office or other workplace, and spare a thought for those who need to do hard physical work in 35 degree temperatures. If you are lucky enough to be on holiday, or about to go, you will have thought about what to pack, and if you are like me, how light you can get the luggage. This time of year trains and buses can be full of people with outsize suitcases, mega backpacks and sports equipment. Is it all necessary I wonder? At church we often sing ‘Don’t carry a load in your pack; you don’t need two shirts on your back’. But despite this liberating theological idea, we can still feel bogged down, not only with all our physical possessions and personal issues, but in safeguarding, with all the baggage of knowledge and responsibility we have to carry with us. If you have recently received a request for information required by the Connexion to inform its response to the IICSA, with a pretty sharp turnaround time, you may be feeling equally overburdened just now, especially if you have been personally assigned to supply the data. I’m afraid I can’t offer too much immediate relief, but hopefully it will shortly feel like when you check in your luggage at the airport, and free of encumbers, you can discover the highlights of duty free and the departure lounge and look forward to the flight. All in anticipation of a great time ahead. We think the Methodist Church has a reasonably good story to tell about how it has responded to abuse in the church over the last 25 years and we hope that in due course the IICSA will realise that too. But to get there, there is some fetching and carrying to be done. We have just to get on with the doing, so that we can show the public, through the Inquiry, how seriously we as a church take child sexual abuse in particular. I can’t guarantee that holiday feeling when next March we conclude our hearing, but I’m sure the hard work now will pay off in due course. We invest time and energy in planning our own rewards so please support the church, as best as you are able, as it aims to answer the 50 plus questions that the Inquiry has suddenly passed our way. If you are beach-bound, or in search of a rural idyll, or planning a city break, or simply enjoying some down time at home, just enjoy the change to your routine.

If you work in safeguarding, I guess one thing you might be attracted to, or equally turned off by, are TV dramas that have a safeguarding focus. The current BBC drama series Dark Money features the story of a boy aged 13 who is sexually abused by a film producer whilst in Hollywood, despite being chaperoned. The boy’s family are offered a significant sum of money by the producer’s lawyers, provided they take the matter no further and sign a non-disclosure agreement. In the story they have a limited amount of time to choose what to do. These type of agreements are very much in the news at the moment in a variety of places, but their use in a safeguarding context has not so far been much in evidence. However we know from our training that there are other more subtle and insidious ways to buy a victim’s silence.  There are a couple more episodes to go so we will have to wait to see what the outcome is. Another thing that can happen if you work in safeguarding is that something from a while ago you took for granted, or didn’t really consider as having a relevance to safeguarding, suddenly jolts your mind if and when it re-presents itself.  When cooking I always have the radio on, and last week in the kitchen I was pulled up short by a track by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band.  The SAHB (for short) were a mid-seventies experimental glam rock outfit from Glasgow, with the eponymous lead singer an almost forty, been there, had and wrecked the T-shirt character who seemed positively geriatric to me at 19 (46 years ago if you’re asking).  An interesting bunch who played edgy, darker material than T-Rex, and consequently a band I immediately took to. The track was called ‘Faith Healer’, with a creepily repeated refrain of ‘let me put my hands on you’.   Suddenly an image of a seedy healer placing hands where they were not wanted popped into my mind, so I decided to research the lyrics and made a discovery that actually put the song into a context.  Alex seemingly felt that young people at the time were looking for people to inspire and engage them, to give them something to believe in. He himself believed that troubled people needed someone to heal them in a natural way, enabling their bodies to rest and recuperate. The trouble is that the title and key phrases seem to tell a different story, and the music is full of menace and uncertainty, not helped by the rather exaggerated posturing and costumes the band wore. We don’t accept behaviour that may have been tolerated a few years ago. #Metoo, as well as Dark Money this week, shows us that there is still a need to be ever alert to the wiles of powerful people who believe that their victims can be bought off or silenced.  Alex Harvey in 1973 may not have painted the right picture for 2019, but there is a sense he was trying to say something about the need for wholeness after brokenness, for people to be restored. If you want to see a clip from the Old Grey Whistle Test, to see what I mean, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rQ6BBc8f6Y

It’s early July and I guess we should be thinking about joining Cliff Richard as we all go on our summer holiday.  But having now heard from the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) about the advance information they require of the Church, by the end of August, the prospect for the Connexional Safeguarding Team of a quiet summer with a chance to catch up or take some down time, is receding fast!  Our hearing date will be in March 2020 but before that, the inquiry wants to know how we, along with other faith groups, have dealt with all cases of child sexual abuse coming to our attention over the last ten years. The data and case records collected through our Past Cases Review should help here, but it will still be a lengthy process to provide the comprehensive summary describing our responses as expected by the IICSA. In addition we shall have to provide evidence about our safe recruitment processes and how effective they are, as well the take up and impact of our training programmes.  We have also been asked to provide a description of our organisational culture relative to safeguarding children.  An analysis of our organisational culture will provide a real barometer of how seriously we as a Church take our safeguarding responsibilities.  We already know that some people see safeguarding as a chore and so our sustained approach must be to strive to assert the joy, privilege and opportunity to demonstrate our mission that safeguarding can provide. The message to our Church is that IICSA are serious about understanding how well we have dealt with past concerns and going forward, how we are aiming to ensure the future safety of all children who are linked with us.  Their public statements about us in due course will impact on our reputation and how people in our communities see us. It is vital we show the inquiry something of the journey we have travelled over the last decade, but they will want to know that as a church we are all heading in the same direction. But the summer is still a great time to take time out whenever we can, ‘going where the sun shines brightly’.  Despite our initial collective groan when we saw the task ahead, this does in fact give us the opportunity to show our Church in the best possible light.

The Metropolitan Police have just released figures which show that they raise 700 safeguarding concerns for children and adults every day.  That’s a staggering 1.3 million records over the last five years.  The figures were included in a Freedom of Information response requested by the Guardian newspaper.  The full report is available on the paper’s website and describes graphically the figures for different types of concerns, including forced marriage, sexual exploitation and bullying. At the same the investigative resources at the Police’s disposal have been reduced and the capacity of local authorities to respond to reports has also been impacted by year on year savings targets.  The Local Government Association meeting in Bournemouth this week is making the point that without an injection of extra funds, core services for children and vulnerable adults will have to be cut in the near future. It already feels that some aspects of the system are stretched to a risky level.  No wonder members of the public are sometimes mystified when a concern about a child is not followed up by a hard pressed council as the matter may not, at least initially, be deemed serious enough. Our Advanced Level training shows how referrals can be made to local councils when a concern is spotted, but we know from our Past Cases Review, and other more recent case evidence, that we need to overcome any reticence or uncertainty we might have about making a referral. Even if we think that nothing may happen as a consequence it’s still important to log that concern, and of course your DSO is the primary go to person to help local churches frame their concern in a way that is going to be noticed. At the Methodist Conference on Monday, the Safeguarding Report was presented and accepted. There was a focus on the work of the Survivor Advisory Group and our partnership with the Church of England in particular in the short debate that followed the moving of the report. This was followed by consideration of two memorials questioning local preacher and worship leader involvement in the Advanced Module course.  Both were declined and there was some moving testimony from a couple of speakers about why those who represent the church at the front, as preachers and worship leaders, should continue to be included.  Key to this was a sense that a preacher may be the person chosen by a survivor that day to hear a story and that they needed to know what to do. Feedback shows that the Advanced Module can inspire confidence and encourage local leaders to think more about what their churches are doing to create safe spaces.  The course also emphasises that we must work in partnership both within and outside the church to protect children and vulnerable adults. Passing on our concerns to the right place is an essential part of our mission. We should not then be fearful about making a referral, nor adding to the unbelievably large numbers of cases that come to notice in London, and no doubt around the country, every day. If these statistics make you sit up and you have a real sense that the responding services are overwhelmed, then it’s also right to take every opportunity to ask the right and searching questions of our local and national leaders. Before it’s too late.

Sadly, serious youth violence, particularly but not exclusively in the capital, has not abated.  A shooting in a part of Feltham in south west London late last week brought this epidemic to the edge of our circuit for the first time. At the same time churches are continuing to respond as best as they are able, and the Methodist Church in London at a senior level is involved in ongoing discussions with ecumenical partners about what can be done to stop it.  This column has described before how churches might respond by deploying their safeguarding knowledge and experience in their direct work with young people.  Our greater understanding of ‘contextual safeguarding’ and the drivers that seem to propel a small number of young people to commit serious crimes is also helpful as it shows us something of a culture of alienation, exploitation and violence that permeates the lives of some youngsters.  The problem has also been defined as a public health issue, and this too is helpful, as solutions need to be joined up, holistic and carefully focused. One London Anglican vicar suggested last week that churches could open their doors as places of sanctuary for school children making their way home from school or college.  Some violence seems to erupt at the end of the school day and so there is a logic in trying to provide safe spaces where young people can find some peace.  It’s a good idea, but having run a youth drop in centre early in my youth work career, I know that danger does not always check itself into the cloakroom at the entrance. It will be important to ensure that any church embarking on this approach thinks through the offer with care, being clear they are sufficiently resourced in terms of adult supervision and have well prepared practice protocols to deal with the myriad of issues that could present themselves.  These are not reasons to close off this particular type of response but a note to reflect on that the root causes of serious youth violence are complex and that apparently simple solutions may be just that, not fully matching what’s required. It’s again worth re-stating that youth violence in itself is not exclusively a 21st century phenomenon.  Social history over at least the last two centuries is littered with examples of gang culture and periodic moral panics.  What’s different this time is the speed at which things happen and their transmission by social media. There is also a sense that a recourse to violence leading to possible death is a result of a different split second calculation about what’s OK or not when an argument erupts. The bloody nose and split lip has been replaced by the fatal stab. Churches, as key community partners, must play their part as been flagged by recent reports.  Let’s deploy the resources and skills at our disposal, but aim to do it safely and securely.