Guidance for nominated people

Thank you for committing to support your parish in safeguarding children and adults. You are not alone in this role, the responsibility for Safeguarding within a parish lies with the Incumbent, working with the PCC to ensure that there are good policies and working practices in place to protect vulnerable groups.

Some parishes have two nominated people one for safeguarding children and another for Adults who are at risk; and some have a Nominated Person whose role spans all safeguarding issues. Whatever the local arrangement it is good for the PCC to meet regularly with the Nominated Person. This helps to ensure that Safeguarding issues are always part of current discussions and decision making. It is important that you are a trusted person to confide in who knows when to seek advice from the diocese/ local authority.

There are three main parts to the role which are; advocacy, reporting concerns and policy.

This is a summary of your roles and responsibilities:

Be known to the congregation and clergy and be able to respond if there are any safeguarding concerns.

Help support, develop and implement PCC policies and practices and to be familiar with the activities undertaken by the churches and those groups using church premises.

Give advice and support to those leading activities for children and adults at risk, including how to make the activity as safe as possible.

Know how and when to access further support, training and advicee.g diocesan safeguarding officer, social care.

Be involved in the recruitment of volunteers and employees.

Be responsible for maintaining the list on behalf of the PCC of those who work with children and vulnerable adults in conjunction with the evidence checker.

Be a part of the annual APCM review of the PCC policy, complete the safeguarding checklist and for this to be then submitted to the Diocese.

Review with the PCC that appropriate insurance cover is in place.

There are lots of ways in which the diocese can support you. We:

Put on training on how to safeguard children and adults and respond to concerns.

Produce a regular newsletter to keep you updated.

Provide support and advice to you, including an out of hours helpline.

Arrange regular meetings of nominated people where you can share best practice and learn from each other.

Not sure where to start?

  1. Work through the church/benefice checklist download from this page, and see what activities are priorities for the year ahead, you can initially work alone on this or with your clergy and PCC – but bring your discussions to a PCC meeting so that the issues can be shared and safeguarding owned and supported at this important level.
  1. Make sure your parish has registered with CCPAS for all its DBS checks, get in touch with us if you aren’t sure – check through the DBS pages on the diocesan website. (You may have other Evidence Checkers, or it may be you that does that too!)
  • Through the DBS pages of the website download the Register as an Evidence Checker form and send it to us – we will complete the church reference for you and pass it on to CCPAS.
  • CCPAS will send you a personal access code that you can use any time you need to do a check online.
  • The processes for ensuring safer recruitment and DBS checking are on this link:
  1. Keep a record of all who have a DBS check in your church/benefice so that you know when a recheck is due. There is a helpful template on this website page that might help you here.

Remember at any stage, please don’t hesitate to be in touch if we can help!