Standard 1

The central importance of respect, trust, and safety always i.e., “safeguarding”, is recognised and prioritised in all the decisions and actions of the Church body. Effective safeguarding is embedded in the Church body’s leadership, governance, ministry, and culture.

The criteria which indicate that this standard is being met include:

LGC1: Leadership – The Church body will:

• Have a zero-tolerance approach to all abuse, recognising the possible escalation of low-level concerns into more serious incidents if not addressed.
• Seek and support the engagement of those who report having been harmed in contacts with personnel of the Church body, listen and respond to them.
• Make publicly available statements of its safeguarding commitments that are displayed within any location e.g. physical and online) that it operates.
• Ensure a culture of safeguarding, as everyone’s responsibility and integral to its mission and ministry, is championed by its leadership.

LGC 2: Governance – The Church body’s leadership will:

• Establish and regularly update their governance arrangements to ensure that they facilitate the implementation of the safeguarding standards.
• Set out clearly the responsibilities of Bishops/Superiors, Parish Priests and other leaders of ministries and services for safeguarding practice to enable effective adherence to the agreed standards.
• Establish a Safeguarding Implementation Group made up of leaders and professional experts to drive their Safeguarding Implementation Plan and oversee their safeguarding practices.
• Develop and publish a Safeguarding Implementation Plan for a period of three years with an annual review and update.
• Provide adequate resources, recruit, and support suitably trained and experienced safeguarding personnel to deliver their safeguarding services at every level including that of the parish and other ministries and services.

LGC: 3: Ministry and Culture – The Church body will:

• Identify, prevent, and mitigate safeguarding risks in its structures, culture, and practice of ministry.
• Regularly support and participate in any safeguarding training that is provided.
• Actively promote the “Caring for Others” pastoral and personal conduct standards agreed by the Bishops Conference in April 2020, and the Integrity in Ministry standards produced by the Conference of Religious.
• Seek to continuously improve its practices by focusing on and learning from the outcomes of its responses to safeguarding cases.

LGC: 4: Ministry and Culture – The Church body’s leadership will:

• Encourage and support a culture of transparency through their promotion of the communications standards.
• Adhere to information sharing practices and record creation policies that have been agreed nationally.
• Promote constructive engagement with the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency.

The following represents evidence that could be used to indicate compliance with this standard:

• Existence of a written safeguarding implementation plan for the Church body.
• Commitment to the Safeguarding Implementation Plan being regularly review and amended.
• Definition of the responsibilities of all involved in leadership in the Church body in contributing to effective safeguarding.
• The minutes of leadership meetings containing reference to safeguarding matters being discussed in line with the standards.
• Regular liaison with the CSSA and their advice being sought.

Links with other standards:
This standard is linked to standards 1, 2, 7 and 8