Requirements
6.1 The Church body(ies) directly involved in the case and any other bodies in respect of which the Review makes recommendations, must produce a formal response to the Review’s recommendations, within two months. This will include details of which recommendations will be taken forward and, where recommendations are not accepted, provide reasons and any additional actions.
6.2 Where applicable, no later than three months after the publication of the Report, the Review Group must publish a composite action plan bringing together the individual action plans from each Church body to whom recommendations apply.
6.3 For each recommendation, the action plan will state what outcome the recommendation is expected to achieve, how the desired outcome will be measured, timescale for delivery, specific actions required and who owns the actions.
6.4 The Church bodies implementing the Review recommendations must establish a mechanism for over-seeing and reporting on the implementation of their action plan (e.g. a specific implementation group, or the DSAP).
6.5 The progress and impact of the action plans must be formally reviewed after 12 months of the production of the action plan and reported to relevant governance bodies.
6.6 The Review Group must decide on, and action, the most effective way of sharing messages about good practice that have Church-wide relevance.
6.7 The final role of the Review Group will be to evaluate the quality and impact of the review process against the Terms of Reference.
Good Practice Advice
Where the report identifies good practice, this should be highlighted and the report should outline whether and how this practice should form the basis for practice improvements elsewhere.
Disseminating learning
The Church Bodies involved in the case under review should give consideration at the earliest possible point as to how the learning from the Review will be shared and disseminated, first and foremost with those who contributed to the Review and also more widely within their local context to promote learning. In terms of wider learning, the production of an executive summary of the report will assist. Other processes might include a letter from the Bishop to their diocese (or equivalent), an article within a newsletter or an overview of the learning within an annual report.
On a wider scale, the NST will have a role in reviewing the themes that are emerging from all the Reviews carried out. This will feed back into the NST’s planning cycle for learning and development thus closing the learning loop. Linking the recommendations to the Safeguarding Standards also allows for them to be included in any further external audits, again ensuring that the learning is captured and implemented.