Voluntary Action Leeds (VAL) has been working in partnership with LCSP to deliver support around safeguarding in faith communities. This project follows on from a research project undertaken by VAL to explore perceptions of safeguarding and statutory services within culturally diverse communities, which showed a disparity between different cultural understandings of abuse and neglect, and a lack of trust between some communities and statutory partners. These findings are mirrored in VAL’s work to engage with smaller third sector organisations, which are often culturally specific, around concepts of safeguarding. Although faith is just one aspect of a person’s culture, this can have a considerable impact on a person’s understanding of keeping people safe.
VAL have now produced a report on this work which will be shared across the Partnership to consider a response to the learning. This report not only provides evidence of good practice which can be built on, but also opportunities to further strengthen safeguarding arrangements with faith-based organisations. The engagement with faith organisations has started to build up a more trusted network, and the results of this have been evident in VAL’s wider work. For example, VAL led on engaging third sector organisations with buildings to open as Welcome Spaces over the winter months. Previously, VAL has had limited success in engaging places of worship in this programme during its first year of operation in 2022/23. However, since the Safeguarding in Faith project worker has begun to work closely with faith organisations, they were able to refer Leeds Grand Mosque and Guru Nanak Gurdwara to the Welcome Spaces programme.
Work undertaken in 2024-25 highlighted a number of learning points from engaging with faith organisations:
- Engaging faith-based organisations takes more time and energy than expected
- Intermediary partners (including third sector organisations) can be crucial in engaging groups where there is very limited trust, language or other barriers
- Once a relationship and trust has been established with faith-based organisations, this can be a fruitful way to reach a wide range of culturally diverse communities
- Existing networks are limited, and in need of additional resourcing to be more effective and representative
- More focused engagement is needed with management committees of faith organisations
- Some ‘parent’ denominations can become a barrier to supporting smaller faith organisations
- Consider language used with smaller faith organisations, and connotations of ‘safeguarding’ that may be unexpected
- Any future work with faith organisations should consider that it takes time to develop positive relationships, before organisations are ready to engage
This report will be presented formally to the LSCP in quarter 2 of 2025 with a view to sharing the learning and opportunities for developing this work further. In addition, The LSCP in Leeds and Birmingham have linked up with 24 safeguarding adult and children partnerships across the country to develop a Faith Based Toolkit in partnership with Faith Associates. Faith Associates are experts and pioneers in the development of faith institutions for many years and have had an impact in many areas of governance and sustainability.
The goal is to provide faith institutions with a customised, user-friendly safeguarding guide that reflects the cultural sensitivities of their respective faiths in West Yorkshire and the wider West Midlands regions. It will be written in six versions each tailored to specific faith traditions. Getting the content and wording right to accommodate both adults and children’s safeguarding partnerships have proven to be more challenging than expected however, there is now an agreement to take this toolkit back out for consultation with faith-based organisations with a view to publishing this toolkit publicly in summer 2025.