This section provides general requirements and good practice advice for all communities with regards to joining and appointments. For those communities who specifically work directly in regulated activity with children and vulnerable adults, or who have staff/volunteers who do, This is dealt with in section 3.2.
Requirements
3.2 Members joining an acknowledged community:
3.3.1 All those seeking to join an acknowledged community must, as part of the period of preparation to join a community, have discussions which explore issues around safeguarding behaviours and beliefs, alongside values and motivations.
3.4 Trustees:
3.4.1 The Leader of the community must ensure, in those communities which are also charities (whether registered or not) that trustees are recruited or appointed in line with Charity Commission guidance[1]
Guidance
It is recognised that ordained members will have gone through a safer recruitment process prior to ordination, but they will still need to go through a process as part of their preparation for joining a recognised or acknowledged community as set out above and in the community’s own governance documents. It is also recognised that communities strive to be as welcoming and inclusive as possible, but this needs to be proportionately balanced against risks and will depend on the nature of the community. General advice on joining and exiting procedures can be found in the Handbook of the Religious Life.
As a minimum, should discussions during preparation for joining or at any point during ongoing supervision bring to light similar behaviours to the examples below, which is not an exhaustive list, these should be taken as warning signs and explored further, with help from the DSO if needed:
- Non-consensual touching, e.g. hugging, holding hands
- Not appreciating personal space or boundaries
- Reference to spending time alone with children/taking children away for trips
- Interest in children that is beyond what would be expected
- Unwilling to be challenged on their ideas
- Unwilling to undertake safeguarding training or appreciate its importance
- Unwilling to accept that abuse can occur in a faith setting
Simply being a member of a religious community does not automatically qualify someone for a DBS check - DBS checks are determined by the role that someone undertakes. The full guidance around DBS checking eligibility is set out in Section 9 of the Safer Recruitment and People Management >Guidance, but in summary:
- Basic checks: Any individual can apply for a Basic DBS check
- Enhanced check with or without barred list: Must be applied for by an organisation for a role that is in regulated activity. Regulated activity is clearly defined in law and covers roles such as teaching and personal care of children and personal care of adults. All ordained clergy (including those with PTO) are subject to an Enhanced with barring list check
- Trustees: The Charity Commission recommends that where a role is eligible for a check, that check is undertaken. For Trustees, this would be an Enhanced check only if the charity is a children’s or vulnerable adults charity, again there are legal definitions of what these are.
If you are in any doubt about whether a DBS check should be undertaken, you should seek advice from the DSO.
Only staff/volunteers involved in substantial work with children or vulnerable adults need to go through a Safer Recruitment process, which may involve an Enhanced DBS check if the work is Regulated Activity. Where these circumstances apply, the guidance in the next section should be followed. However, given the nature of acknowledged communities, it is strongly recommended for roles not subject to safer recruitment, that some form of process, e.g. checking references, full job history, interview is undertaken.