Day 1
Bill No 5: Safeguarding Rewording Approved
A Bill to amend Chapter XVI of the Constitution in relation to safeguarding was presented to General Synod this afternoon (Thursday May 7).
Bill No 5, in the names of the Bishop of Clogher, Bishop Ian Ellis, and Canon Gillian Wharton, seeks to remove mention of the names of the previous safeguarding policies and reword the chapter so that it does not refer to the names of specific safeguarding policies going forward and, therefore, cannot be out of date in this regard.
Chapter XVI currently refers to policies which are now out of date, specifically Safeguarding Trust: The Church of Ireland Code of Good Practice for Ministry with Children and Adult Safeguarding: The Church of Ireland Code of Good Practice.
Proposing the Bill, Bishop Ellis said that Safeguarding policies in all organisations were subject to periodic review and a review had been carried out of the Church of Ireland policies in the last year. He said the Bill would replace the present wording with the words ‘the current’ safeguarding policy thus not tying it to out of date policy.
The Bill passed its first two stages and will be given final consideration on Saturday morning.