Section 4: Creating a healthy culture

Guidance 

4.1 Creating a healthy culture 

Creating a healthy organisational culture is an essential part of safeguarding, facilitating victims and survivors of abuse to come forward and encouraging reporting of behaviours which are of concern.  It relates to the nature and quality of the communications and behaviours that happen within an organisation. It involves how people treat each other and talk to each other, and whether these interactions are positive and affirming or negative and destructive. Healthy organisational cultures are compassionate and caring, open to challenge, and transparent. Unhealthy cultures are closed, critical and can generate fear or apathy. Given the acute sense of vulnerability that victims and survivors will already feel, most will be reluctant to disclose their abuse in cultures that are (or appear to be) unhealthy. It is therefore imperative that all Church bodies, including religious communities take active steps to ensure the health of their life together. The Responding Well to Victims and Survivors of Abuse Guidance sets out why a healthy culture is so important, and some of the key principles are summarised here:

Communication patterns

• The mode of communication adopted by people is “genuine dialogue”, a respectful, person-centred exchange in which all people are open to being influenced, rather than “monologue disguised as dialogue.”
• There is encouragement and welcoming of different perspectives and views.
• People do not feel they are “taking a risk” by expressing different views to other members of the community.
• People do not have anxiety or fear about raising concerns.

Behaviour patterns

• There is absence of coercive and/or controlling behaviour by ordained and non-ordained people and a "command and control” style of leadership.
• “Poor behaviour” (e.g. bullying) is challenged and resolved when it occurs.
• There is no evasion of responsibility to address difficult situations – for example, senior clergy or staff are not reallocated different roles when safeguarding concerns are raised about them, and the matter is addressed.
• Those involved in the community support each other through difficult times.

Relationships

• Power is shared and distributed instead of being vested in a few people.
• Leadership styles are inclusive and consultative rather than controlling.
• There are no powerful elites or cliques dominating the life and affairs of the community
• Safe boundaries between people are understood and observed.
• No one is isolated or left out of the community’s life and activities.

Self-reflexivity

• Collectively and individually, the community devotes time to reflect on their behaviours and relationships.
• The tendency towards, and dangers of, clerical deference are acknowledged and actively guarded against.
• People are aware of the impact they can have on others.
• Feedback from others (for example, about communication style and behaviour) is welcomed.
• Leaders in the community learn from failures and reviews (in their own as well as in other organisations) and take appropriate actions to seek to prevent any recurrence.

4.2 Promoting healthy Christian cultures

Healthy Christian cultures need to be consciously and purposefully developed, nurtured and reviewed. The starting point is to reflect on the quality of the existing culture. Communities can do this by:

• Highlighting the importance of healthy cultures and raising it in peoples’ consciousness at meetings
• Having conversations at these meetings where people ask and seek to answer the question: “How healthy is our culture?”
• Creating opportunities to include all those involved in the community in this dialogue – for example, introducing yearly feedback and reflection sessions to evaluate the "health" of the community’s culture and community.
• Drawing on the section “Characteristics of healthy and safe cultures” above in these dialogues.
• Proactively role modelling healthy culture behaviours and communication patterns – as individuals and senior leadership roles.

4.3 Issues for Recognised communities

It is acknowledged that those communities who live together may experience tensions at varying stages, and being alive to the signs of potential bullying or harassment, and having the ability to have those conversations is even more important in these circumstances.  Signs of bullying and harassment can be found in the Definitions section of the Safeguarding Children, Young People and Vulnerable Adults guidance, and it should be noted that these do not automatically come under safeguarding processes. Sometimes, a pastoral or Human Resources response is more appropriate.  Many communities will already have identified ways which have enabled them to live together well and may be encouraged to reflect on what has worked for them.  It needs to be acknowledged that as people age, their needs, wants and priorities will change, and even the most stable community may experience challenges.

Obedience

Obedience is one of the key vows taken by recognised communities and a virtue of great richness. It is also however, patent of serious abuse; it has negative as well as positive connotations.  It has the basic meaning of ‘acceding to the will of another’.

In religious life, it denotes something which is habitual and ready; it is not in contradiction with responsibility or freedom. In communities shaped by the Rule of Benedict especially, it is to be accompanied by listening to one another. When a decision is made, compliance is owed. Nothing may be commanded which goes against Christian truth.

This is grounded on the pattern of Christ’s obedience; to hear, to trust, to submit and surrender to God belong to the biblical understanding of obedience which is basic to religious life.  

This can, however, in worst case scenarios, be exploited by someone to their own ends, to increase their “power” over others. This need not necessarily be the one who leads the community, it could be anyone within it. Some pertinent issues are covered in the next section on spiritual abuse, but it may be helpful for communities to explore what obedience means to them, including what are risks as well as positives:

• How can obedience help/hinder the development of a healthy culture?
• How might any potential risks be mitigated?
• To what/to whom is obedience directed?  Structures? Individuals? Outside factors?
• Do we demand obedience or ask for it?
• Is our obedience total, discerning or dependent on circumstances?

Working through some of these questions may generate some areas for communities to discuss and explore further.

4.4 Spiritual Abuse

There is further information with regards to healthy cultures in the Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults guidance on Spiritual Abuse. This section provides examples of the spectrum of behaviour that flows from healthy, through unhelpful and unhealthy to abusive behaviour.

Spiritual abuse is a form of emotional and psychological abuse that occurs specifically in a religious context.  It is characterised by a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour in a religious context, and can be best demonstrated by use of scripture to justify abusive behaviour. Further signs you may see are set out in the Definitions section. It is important to recognise that anyone can be the subject of spiritual abuse, including whole communities.  It is therefore vital, particularly for recognised communities, that signs of unhelpful and unhealthy behaviour are identified and addressed at an early stage.

The Guidance states:

“It is important to situate spiritual abuse in the spectrum of behaviour we experience within Christian contexts. The diagram above is helpful in understanding this spectrum. At one end there is good, healthy, nurturing behaviour in which people flourish and grow, and there are many examples of this in our communities. Then as we move along the spectrum, we reach unhelpful behaviour. This is where someone’s reaction/behaviour is not harmful but not helpful and we all behave in this way at times. If we continue along the spectrum and if, in the context of spiritual abuse, we start to see a consistent pattern of behaviour that is negative, where we check ourselves before approaching that person; where they are not open to question etc., it starts to become unhealthy and much of the behaviour that concerns us sits here. It can often be challenged and addressed at this stage.

If it becomes a persistent pattern of coercive controlling behaviour that reflects the definition of psychological abuse with a religious rationale, it can cross the threshold into spiritual abuse.”

4.5 Where to start/moving forward 

Thinking about how to develop a healthy culture might feel overwhelming to start with, however, specifically as part of a recognised community, it is likely that you have had to find ways to resolve differences, perhaps significant differences, already. Appendix C sets out some suggestions as to exercises you may want to undertake, and template worksheets are available to capture any results and actions that you identify. These are not mandatory, and can be adapted to suit your own individual needs.