by Anon.
Memorandum
To: Current Participants in the Mini-MBA Talent-Pipeline Learning Community.
From: The Mini-MBA Leadership Development Module Team, Lambeth Palace.
Thank you for your emails following the publication of the outline course on Strategy and Marketing. A number of you have asked for “clarification” on the redacted pages on Safeguarding Strategy. As you know, this was done at the insistence of the Secretariat. However, after taking much careful advice and soundings from Lambeth Palace, Church House and the Secretariat, we have reproduced the questions and answers for you below, which should allay any qualms and concerns you might have.
Please note, there is no definite date for the Safeguarding Strategy Module to be delivered, because its postponement fits within the broader ‘Managing Perpetual Reputational Risk Module’. Assessment for that is ongoing in the Talent-Pipeline Learning Community, and takes place over the course of your entire ministry. You cannot begin the Safeguarding Strategy Module until the Managing Perpetual Reputational Risk Module is completed.
As you will have retired by then, you do also have the choice of opting out at this point, should you wish to do so. Whilst that means you won’t get your PTO, you might have had enough by then in any case. Many bishops just put their slippers on at this juncture, and never go out again. That avoids potential CDMs later, and if you are not going to church anymore, you don’t even have to reply to the summons. We obviously don’t recommend this course of action, but it is an option that a number have taken up!
All that said, we have tried to deal with your questions as follows:
Question One: What is a Safeguarding Complaint?
This is more difficult to answer than you might at first think. For example, a Vicar telling infants at a school assembly that Father Christmas is not real clearly meets the trauma-safeguarding threshold. So would removing soft toys from the creche on the spurious grounds that they were badly manufactured.
On the other hand, a clergyman caught behind the bushes naked from the waist down probably has prostate issues, and was just relieving themselves. Nobody likes to be caught short. The presence of other men in similar states of undress merely shows how common prostate problems are, and also points to council cuts in shutting down the public toilets.
The reason the NST does not have a robust or legally compliant definition of safeguarding is rooted in the theological commitment to reflective practice. So much depends on who you are, where you were, and what you have done (NB: Secretariat – please insert “are alleged to” throughout).
Question Two: If there is a complaint, what happens?
Much depends on what role you have in the CofE. The Archbishops’ Council does offer a system of fully comprehensive Legal-Comms insurance, but only to a few. Obviously, if you have ever tweeted in favour of Save the Parish, you can only have yourself to blame. Bishops, on the other hand, are automatically covered.
Question Three: What Does the NST Do All Day?
At last, a question about strategy! Well, the NST does NOT investigate complaints. Then again, it will often issue statements that begin, “following a complaint, and an independent investigation by the NST…”. To the uninitiated this looks like a contradiction, but the strategy is to keep these two mutually exclusive statements, ALWAYS, at least two paragraphs apart, and ideally two entirely different Cases apart.
Thus, you could issue a statement saying “after a thorough/preliminary NST investigation by the NST, XXXXX was given a verbal warning”. But you must separate that statement by at least two paragraphs from the sentence that reads “it was not the role of the NST to investigate these matters…”.
Both are true. But put together, we do agree they appear to be confusing. Clearly, the NST does not have the expertise, resources, independence or personnel to investigate complaints. Except of course, when it says it has already done so, which is different.
The NST Director can reassure you that the NST never investigates a case. Then inform you later of the result of the investigation you were just told was not even happening, and so you are now suspended. So much depends on who you are, what you were alleged to have done, and whether you have ever signalled a ‘like’ on Save the Parish tweets.
Investigations aside, the NST has outsourced most things to the NSG and NSSP, and even to 31:8 and the NSPCC. There was some outsourcing to the ISB too, but that all ended badly when the dreaded “I-word” was used far too much – Independent (see question four).
It is not tricky to grasp the nuances of this strategy. But to answer your question, nobody is actually working at the NST anymore, and that has been the case for some time. Staffing is done through AI mannequins, programmed and operated by the Secretariat and run out of Lambeth Palace. (So yes, this technically qualifies as an independent and remote ‘hands off’ operation).
Question Four: When the Church of England Says it has Commissioned or Conducted an “Independent Investigation”, What Does this Mean?
Another laser-like strategy question – thank you, and well done! We have already covered “investigation”. When a Bishop, Archbishop or member of the Secretariat says “independent”, they mean a third party that they chose, set the terms of reference for and pay – all in order to get full value for money in their commissioning of this work.
There is obviously no point in having an investigation or even a trial if you don’t already know what the verdict is going to be that you are working towards. (Secretariat: As you know, verdicts are my prerogative, and I am exempt from any such process, just so we are clear).
If for any reason you think the preferred verdict is likely to be the wrong result, not what you paid for, or likely to be deeply unpopular with a sceptical public, the strategy is to delay publication for a considerable period of time, by which we mean several years. If there are complaints about these delays in publication, there’s no need to worry, as you can commission a separate audit or reviews into why the delays have dragged on and on.
That in itself buys even more time, and of course has to be fed into the original processes. Hopefully (NB: Secretariat – “normally”?) Synod will have all turned over by then, the entire NST staff changed, a flood will have destroyed all the records in the bishop’s basement, the server melted or been subject to some naughty rival denomination launching a cyber-attack, so the whole thing has to start all over again.
Question Five: I Might Have Been One of the Clergy Referred to in Question One, Caught Behind the Bushes with Trousers Around My Ankles. My Court Appearance is Next Month. Should I Be Worried?
(NB: Secretariat – insert “alleged” again, liberally; and redact the name of person, court location and date of appearance, etc). Not really. The legal profession works by establishing Case Law precedent. You may recall some years ago that a Bishop often got lost in places that, on reflection, were he rather less confused and other-worldly, he should probably have avoided on reputational grounds. Public lavatories, bushes in parks, private clubs in Soho and other good places to meet (Ed: seriously?) can sometimes be traps. The bishop was forever getting into unfortunate situations that were “open to misinterpretation”.
On one occasion, the Bishop got lost in a liturgical procession. (NB: Secretariat – date, festival and church redacted). But the bishop turned up later in the vestry wearing only his dressing gown, as he said he’d got confused about timings and location. But this was easily remedied by the following measures.
First, the parish did very, very well in the next round of Strategic Development Fund bids, which considering they’d not even made a submission, was an example of truly amazing grace, with everything that had happened in the procession quietly forgotten. So, win-win!
Second, the Bishop was electronically tagged (voluntarily, and we thank the police for organising this), so that his movements could be GPS tracked by the Legal-Comms Team at Lambeth Palace.
Third, the device as fitted also gave the wearer a nasty electric shock (like a dog collar – not the clergy type, but the canine ones). So if the bishop were more than 20 feet out of sight range of the hired-hand monitoring his movements, a shrill alarm would sound, and the bishop would experience a mild taser sensation.
In view of these hi-tech solutions, you should not really be worried at all. Especially as the Lambeth Palace Team (Secretariat: I have deleted “allegedly” here, as that implies some doubt) monitoring your tag on the day in question now shows that you were not even in that park at all, but on retreat several hundred miles away. So this is either a case of mistaken identity or impersonation. You can therefore plead “not guilty” with a clean conscience. (Ed: you mean like the Secretariat, who when they said they weren’t in the meeting or the room, but actually were…I’m confused…?).
Question Six: Are You Actually Going to Say Anything About Safeguarding Strategy? Isn’t the Whole Point of this Module to Understand That?
Finally, we get to the heart of the matter! This is tricky for some of those in the Mini-MBA Talent Pipeline to grasp, but strategy is an art. You’d think that strategy would flow from the many safeguarding ‘Lessons Learned Reviews’, as they would help shape future policy and practice. But you need to remember the following three things.
First, very few ‘Lessons Learned Reviews’ are ever completed. Even fewer are published. And those that are must be subjected to full Maxwell-isation so that no person can be identified, unless it is the one we had previously nominated for throwing under the bus.
Second, remember that zero is a number, and that it is possible, therefore, to talk about “a number of lessons learned”. However, GDPR legislation does not actually require you to specify what the number is. The Chair of the House of Laity was very clear about that at a recent meeting of General Synod. In any case, that number could always increase, so it pays to be circumspect.
Third, never forget that the context of this module is set within the “Talent Pipeline Learning Community”. This is very important for strategy. You cannot speak of “learned” as though this was done and dusted and in the past tense. We are always “learning” (present and future tense), so it really would be pedagogically nonsensical to talk about “lessons learned (in the past)”, as everything learned has to be un-learned, so we can re-learn.
Question Seven: I’ve Heard Quite a Few Bishops, the NST, Secretariat and Others Talk About “the Safeguarding Journey we are all on”. But What Does That Mean in Practice?
We are glad you asked, and we can end this Q&A with a proper old biblical story – the Parable of the Missing Japanese Snow Monkey! As you know, this naughty Snow Monkey went AWOL from Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig, near Aviemore, in January. It was on the run for five days, before being finally found in some Highlands back garden eating nuts. Like the lost coin, lost sheep, lost pearl or straying prodigal son, there was much rejoicing at the Monkey being recaptured. (NB: Secretariat – “recovered” or “found” sounds better; this modern parable is not supposed to stress the captive nature of the animal).
Now throughout the Monkey’s meanderings, nobody was asking if the animal had a destination or end in mind, or was trying to get home (to Japan!). No, this Monkey was on a journey, and the point of the journey was to keep moving, and follow its nose. The excitement, vision and energy comes from not knowing where this will end from one day to the next. Reaching an actual destination is never the point. Because that would mean to have arrived, have finished something, and to be at completion.
This is not the way of the pilgrim. John Bunyan was right to title his book Pilgrim’s Progress. He didn’t call it Pilgrim’s Arrival, or Pilgrim’s Journey Ends. The clue is in the word ‘progress’ – he keeps going. Like the Snow Monkey.
You may this this is all a bit fruitless, but then so much strategy is about going back to the beginning, and starting all over again (Ed: You mean like LLF?). The Monkey did not have a wasted journey. And our Safeguarding Journey is never wasted either.
All that happens is after some while meandering around, we go back home, and begin to reimagine the next Safeguarding Journey we might embark upon. The aim is to keep moving, and not get overly focussed on where we are supposed to be ending up. Look how that tormented Bunyan!
But it didn’t bother the Monkey one bit, who is glad to be back at the beginning with a banana, and is already planning their next trek. Remember, the Talent Pipeline Learning Community is a non-stop Ferris Wheel. You are not meant to get off.
Assessment:
If you are in favour of Save the Parish, you may answer questions 1-3, but should then proceed straight on to question eight.
- On a scale of 1-5, five being the most favourable, how would you rate the oversight of the Secretariat in national safeguarding?
- On a scale of 1-5, five being the most favourable, how would you rate the performance of the NST, NSG, NSSP, etc?
- On a scale of 1-5, five being the most favourable, how confident are you of a bishop evading a safeguarding complaint?
- Using fewer than 10 words, but with diagrams allowed, what lessons were learned in the last review you looked at? If none, write ‘zero’ (which is a number, and might be the right answer)?
- The Father Ted Christmas Special episode involving the lost clergy in the lingerie section of Dublin’s leading department store was the set text for critical reflection in our previous module. (NB: Secretariat – the Ignatian reflections from some students were illuminating). Mindful of that critical incident, how could Father Ted’s leadership be up-scaled?
- Assuming you have understood this Module correctly, as it was intended to be, write down your next ideal job on completion of the Mini-MBA.
- What does the Monkey teach us about the value of the Journey (NB: not a question about destinations!).
- If you answered with less than ‘five’ in questions 1-3, where do you think you are actually going to end up?