Section 7: Quality Assurance
The Church has committed to developing a set of National Safeguarding Standards as part of a quality assurance framework. The quality assurance framework under development will be a mechanism for:
- Asking and answering the question: “How well are we doing this and what is the difference / outcome being achieved?”
- Analysing the answers to this question to gain learning and deepen organisational safeguarding understanding and expertise.
- Using that learned expertise to drive systematic change and continuous improvement in both the quality and impact of the activity, and to increase our knowledge and understanding of the evolving nature of church-based abuse.
Under the new quality assurance framework, statements to ascertain “What good looks like” will be developed for each of the standards. One of the Standard areas to be developed is “Safeguarding expertise, supervision and support, management structures and governance”. Safeguarding Learning will be part of this area, and the Standard will focus on “Safeguarding learning can be evidenced to be transformative: it results in positive safeguarding behaviours by engaging people at the level of their beliefs, values and theology.”
Set out below are the “What good looks like” statements in respect of safeguarding learning which have been developed so far, and will be further developed as work on the introduction of the quality assurance framework is taken forward as part of the IICSA Recommendation 1 and 8 projects.
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Supervision and on-going development of safeguarding trainers |
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- 1The National Safeguarding Team will support Church bodies in achieving this where possible and when appropriate. This is not always achievable, and not always suitable. What is critical is to incorporate survivor voice.
- 2It is recognised by the NST/NSSG that that Diocesan Boards of Finance cannot always ‘just add’ suitable resource quickly and there will be Safeguarding related demands beyond training that will also need to be resourced.