This year’s Safeguarding Week run by the Diocese of York with York Minster is coming up fast – thirteen online events between Monday 13th and Friday 17th November will see a range of speakers and sessions cover aspects of the serious business of making and keeping our churches and church communities safer.
This year’s title says it all: ‘Strength in Numbers; we’re in this together.’
Booking is open now and the free Zoom sessions give some useful background to the safeguarding processes we all take part in, and alert us to some concerns that go beyond the regular diocesan safeguarding training that so many undertake.
Highlights include:
- Disclosing Abuse in Religious Settings (Monday 13 Nov 6:30pm – 8:00pm). What do you need to understand about responding to abuse that has been experienced in a religious context? Speaker Lisa Oakley is professor of safeguarding and knowledge exchange and deputy programme leader for the MSc in Family and Child Psychology in the School of Psychology at the University of Chester in the UK. She presents some of the early findings from research exploring disclosures of abuse experienced within a religious context, which used visual methods so that survivors chose images that represented their experiences. We will explore some of the learning from this study and the implications of this for improving response and safeguarding practice.
- Modern Slavery; awareness raising and safeguarding (Tuesday 14 Nov 2:00pm – 3:30pm). Our speaker from The Clewer Initiative, the Church of England’s national work stream to combat modern slavery, will introduce us to the reality of abuse sometimes happening in our midst, and how to identify and respond to what might be hiding in plain sight around us.
- Preventing Gambling Harm (Thursday 16 Nov 2023 10:30am – 12:00pm). Speakers from GamCare, leading UK provider of information, advice and support for those experiencing gambling harm, are Jack Killingray (Education and Training Lead, Young People’s Gambling Harm Prevention Programme), and Paige Christie (Training Lead – Gambling Awareness and Prevention Programme). They will cover questions such as what is gambling? How does gambling become harmful and how does it affect those harmed by it? How does gambling affect others? And how can we support those experiencing gambling harms?
