Meeting for Sufferings: Area Meeting (AM) compliance and safeguarding
This was the first time Friends had used a new system, combining the annual returns and the annual safeguarding returns into a single online questionnaire.
The day ended with a report on the annual returns from Area Meetings (AM) on compliance. To the question of why Quakers need compliance, Friends were reminded of Beth Allen’s answer in Quaker faith & practice (8.25): ‘We need to be an ordinary well-run organisation, with good structures and sensible practices, which we then make extraordinary by transcending, not discarding them.’
This was the first time Friends had used a new system, combining the annual returns and the annual safeguarding returns into a single online questionnaire. This item was for information only, and, as time was running out, Friends were offered a minute: ‘We note that eleven out of seventy-three returns remain outstanding and are reassured that the recording clerk is liaising directly with these Meetings.’ The minute also asked Quaker Life Central Committee to work with AMs to improve ‘areas of concern’.
After an update on the Memoranda of Understanding, circulated to AMs for signatures, Friends were encouraged to remind their AM trustees to return them, if they had not.
The room then heard from two speakers on safeguarding. Mark Mitchell, BYM’s safeguarding officer, said that sometimes it was hard for faith groups to understand why they need safeguarding protocols. ‘Christians can make the decision that “they’re one of us”,’ he said. Working with ex-offenders is a key part of his work behind the scenes, and ‘a significant number of Meetings have agreements written up with ex-offenders, allowing them to worship but keeping our communities safe’. BYM offers support to Meetings by making Mark himself available for information and guidance, he said, backed up by a Google group for Quaker safeguarding coordinators, and networking evenings featuring expert speakers. BYM also provides AMs with model documents, which most adopt. A survey will also shortly be sent out asking what adaptations Meetings have made to safeguarding. This ‘might allow us to see where some Meetings may be struggling, and allow us to help,’ he said.
Friends then heard from Keith Walton, safeguarding coordinator for Kingston and Wandsworth AM, who started by giving a ‘trigger warning’ that he would be mentioning child sex abuse. His talk applied to England and Wales only, he said, as Scotland has different rules. Describing a Quaker who waited until she was eighty before confiding to a Friend that she had been secretly abused as a child, and ‘had to tell someone before she died’, he asked: ‘Just imagine that younger woman had come to you… would you know what to do?’
‘Safeguarding is like first aid,’ he added. ‘You just need to know the basics. You don’t have to be a surgeon.’ With the safeguarding organisation Thirtyone:eight as support, he said he doesn’t have to be an expert. Advising Friends to educate themselves on the issues and learn to spot the signs, he said: ‘Don’t assume it never happens in Quakers… churches are often seen as a soft touch. Abusers are driven by a sex drive which is very powerful, and they will spend years getting into positions of trust so they can exert power.’ Cases he has worked on in the past have also involved financial abuse in adult relationships. ‘Do you know how to recognise a couple in a coercive relationship?’ he asked.
In ministry, a former safeguarding coordinator echoed concerns that abuse affects adults too, and, with more elderly people in the Society, this was something Friends shouldn’t lose sight of. AMs should ensure training is in place. ‘We sometimes approach it with fear… we shouldn’t… it’s about knowing the basics.’ Meanwhile, a former consultant psychiatrist shared that safeguarding is ‘not about persecuting or blaming the person at fault… it’s about supporting the vulnerable person who’s at risk’. Friends passed a minute, noting: ‘We are pleased to hear that every Area Meeting has reviewed its safeguarding documents within the last three years’.
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