This website is intended to be as helpful as possible to busy people in parishes who want to get their church's safeguarding practice as strong as it can be. This page is a quick guide to what can be found on this site, and where best to start. It can also be used to navigate quickly to all other pages on the site: simply click on the red word(s) at the start of each paragraph (which are the titles of the rest of the sections on the site) and you'll go straight there.
What Do I Do If? is your quick guide to how to respond to immediate safeguarding concerns. When you are looking for guidance in such situations, you don't want to search through sub-menus or long documents, so we have provided you with straightforward, easy-to-follow guidance that is one click away. We strongly suggest that you familiarise yourself with this section before you become involved in an immediate concern, so you know where to go!
The How to Guides section provides you with straightforward 'How To' information about various aspects of safeguarding practice in parish settings.Here, we have tried to distil the basic advice that parishes most often ask us about. We have tried to keep this section as succinct as possible...straightforward answers to the most 'Frequently Asked Questions' that Parish Safeguarding Officers and clergy need to know.
The Training section takes you to the safeguarding training programme for the Diocese of Chichester, giving details of what modules are provided, who needs to undertake these modules, and also a training calendar so you can easily see what events are on. You can also book onto training events through this section.
The Simple Quality Protects section introduces the primary tool through which the Diocese of Chichester will improve our local-church safeguarding practice. SQP is a tool developed originally for third-sector organisations, which has been adapted by the Diocese of Chichester Safeguarding Team in collaboration with the SQP team. It is primarily a self-audit tool, which enables parishes to check that they have everything in place that they need to practice safely. In addition to self-audit, there is also a Level-awards system built into SQP that will mean parishes can demonstrate that they have met certain standards - think of this like a 'safeguarding-kitemark' scheme. All the various resources that we have produced to enable churches to SQP can be found within the tool itself. There is a more detailed introduction to SQP along with instructions for beginning the SQP process to be found in this section.
Policies provides you with links to full-text copies of all the safeguarding policies we are working with as a Diocese. These policies are national Church-of-England policies, plus associated practice guidance released by the House of Bishops.
Finally, Useful Links provides you with links to other organisations and resources -both statutory and non-statutory - which will help you in your safeguarding work in the local church. All safeguarding work is best done in partnership, but often we don't know who to turn to. This section will help with that, by giving you details of the organisations in Sussex and the wider UK who provide expert help in this field. We have divided this section into topical headings to make it easier to find what you are looking for.