Children and Vulnerable Adult Protection
St Francis Xavier’s Church is subject to the same rigorous procedures in ensuring children and vulnerable adults are safe as any other “employer” of paid and voluntary staff. You can be sure that Church Policy and Procedures regarding the safety of children and vulnerable adults will be fully applied in all Church groups within our community.
The Catholic Church in Scotland has issued guidelines for the creation of a safe environment for children, young people and vulnerable adults within the Church Community. The Diocesan Child Protection Advisors appointed by the Bishops have prepared these guidelines.
Part of the strategy for implementation of the guidelines at Parish level is to appoint a Parish Designated Person who will, together with the Parish Priest act as a liaison between the Parish and the Child Protection Team for the Diocese ensuring good standards of child protection within the parish.
St Francis Xavier’s Parish Designated person is Maria Dick Tel: 637163. Please contact Maria if you have any questions, issues or concerns regarding our work in this area or if you want to find out more about the Church’s Guidelines.
We include the following short piece of information to help in your understanding of the development of child and vulnerable adult protection:
Recent legislation extends the protection offered to Scotland’s children and introduces new protection for adults at vulnerable points in their lives. It builds on existing legislation, particularly the Protection of Children (Scotland) Act 2003 and Part V of the Police Act 1997.
Since the introduction of The Protection of Children (Scotland) Act 2008 (PoCSA) many questions and concerns have been raised relating to the Disclosure process. As you know, the Catholic Church is committed to doing everything possible to ensure children, young people and vulnerable adults are kept safe from harm. The single most important responsibility to be undertaken is to ensure that anyone placed in a position of trust within the Church whether paid or otherwise, which gives them direct access to children or vulnerable adults, is selected with the utmost care.
The recruitment, selection and on-going support of both volunteers and paid employees to work with children and/or with vulnerable adults, whether undertaken locally or at diocesan level, requires rigorous recruitment, selection and monitoring practices. The establishment of Disclosure Scotland creates a much improved opportunity for ‘police checks’ to form part of this process. It will not replace any other aspect of normal recruitment practices. The Disclosure will come as part of an entire recruitment strategy.
The Central Registered Body in Scotland (CRBS) has been established by the Government to provide free Disclosures for volunteers in the voluntary sector who work with children, young people and vulnerable adults and the CRBS acts on behalf of the voluntary sector to process Disclosure applications.
In the present climate a new culture of professionalism and transparency is required of us. We are legally required to exercise a proper “duty of care” in recruitment. It is a criminal offence to appoint someone who is known to be disqualified from working with children and vulnerable adults. Failure to take advantage of these disclosures to check relevant information about suitability is likely to be seen as a failure in the “duty of care”. Therefore, the whole selection and recruitment process must include these disclosures. In itself, the Disclosure Check does not provide a safer Church. Good practice in work and ministry provide for safer environments. However, carrying out Disclosure checks provides evidence that the Church has carried out its responsibilities to check the backgrounds of people working within it. If a person has committed an offence, it gives us the opportunity to assess if we would be putting people at risk, by allowing them to perform a specific role.
Those people identified as new recruits working with, or having access to children, young people and vulnerable adults, one-to-one contact or the potential for access, are subject to the Disclosure process e.g. Parish Co-ordinators or Eucharistic Ministers who visit parishioners in their homes, Children's Liturgy helpers etc. (For more information, please see Section 3 of the policy document 'Awareness and Safety in our Catholic Communities').
