Most people will be aware of the safeguarding problems that the national church has had.  To help address this, and to help ensure that children and vulnerable adults are kept safe the national church has created new safeguarding procedures, which the Diocese and the Parish have adopted.  The Parish is now in the process of implementing these new procedures.

As a result of this we will be:

• Drawing up a list of all church activities, together with leaders and assistants.
• Circulating a “know your safeguarding role” to all people working with children or vulnerable adults.
• Asking all people working with children or vulnerable adults to sign the new confidential declaration form.
• Implementing the “Safe Recruitment” procedures for people taking on new roles.
• Creating risk assessments for all church activities.
• Working with regular hall bookers to ensure that they have adequate safeguarding procedures and public liability insurance.

It will take us some time to do this, but we have no choice, both because this is best practice, and because we wish to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults using our services (in the wider sense) or our buildings.

Alan Crawley