Encouraging a Culture of Safety
As a community, we seek to build and sustain a culture of safety within our congregations by nurturing greater awareness, acceptance and understanding.
At a safe church training workshop held in Canberra Region Presbytery in November 2023, a participant suggested that it would be good if the Synod Safe Church Unit organised regular gatherings of safe church contacts from across all the congregations. These would be gatherings to further equip, support and encourage safe church contacts in the important work they do with their congregations to make our churches safe.
Another person responded: “We have agency. We can do that for ourselves.” Three of the people from that workshop joined together to make it happen. This led to the start-up of the Presbytery Safe Church Community that meets quarterly on zoom, with its first gathering in March 2024.
This community is a great fit with the Canberra Region Presbytery Mission Plan 2023-26, which helps guide all the congregations across our Presbytery. Part of the commitments in the plan includes: “Being church together – Building deeper connections across the Presbytery … and being friendly and supportive”. Through this commitment we aim for our congregations to become more cohesive with each other, while valuing our diversity. We also aim to grow from each other’s experiences, being a supportive source of vitality, inspiration, fellowship, and practical resourceful assistance. The Presbytery Safe Church Community is one of the ways we live out these commitments of the Mission Plan.
The community is a group of safe church volunteers throughout the Presbytery committed to imbedding a culture of safety within our congregations. We affirm our faithful commitment to the protection and safety of all, in particular children and vulnerable adults to whom we have a particular duty of care.
As individuals, we can feel alone in our roles. As a community of volunteers, however, we are stronger when we support and encourage each other in our roles.
As a community, we seek to build and sustain a culture of safety within our congregations by nurturing greater awareness, acceptance and understanding. We will do this by:
- Helping each other demonstrate a proactive rather than compliance approach to safe church, that is inspired by our Christian discipleship
- encouraging and supporting each other in best practice through sharing relationship, information, ideas and resources.
The community is greatly strengthened by two of its co-leaders, who bring great passion and valuable experience and knowledge in safe church culture. Narelle Dodd is safe church contact for Gungahlin Uniting Church, and Ann Marie Tarry is safe church contact for North Belconnen Uniting Church. From feedback by community members, Narelle and Ann Marie shape up and resource each of the gatherings. They also lead Biblical reflections and prayers around culture of safety. Presbytery Minister, Andrew Smith provides support to the group in coordination.
In our quarterly gatherings in March, June and August, we introduced the group to Katie Watson – Head of Culture of Safety, Synod Mission Services, and Rev Jenny Ducker – Safe Church Resourcing Minister, Synod Mission Services, and heard from them about their roles and the bigger picture around culture of safety.
We’ve had presentations by members of the group about risk assessments their congregations have developed, and we have responded to each other’s questions and shared resources. Our upcoming November gathering is going to focus on safety in relation to vulnerable people. Members of the community have also provided feedback on the recently released Synod wide safety policies.
So far, over a dozen congregations have been represented at the gatherings, and we hope this will grow as word spreads about how useful participants are finding the sessions. We are being church together, building deeper connections across the Presbytery and with Synod Mission Services staff.
Together we are encouraging a culture of safety.
Rev Andrew Smith, Congregation Futures Presbytery Minister
The community is a group of safe church volunteers throughout the Presbytery committed to imbedding a culture of safety within our congregations. We affirm our faithful commitment to the protection and safety of all, in particular children and vulnerable adults to whom we have a particular duty of care.
For More Information
Contact the Culture of Safety team at cultureofsafety@nswact.uca.org.au or visit their team page on the website.