AREA MEETING TRUSTEES ANNUAL RETURN 2018
The Charity Commission has published its response to the consultation it held on the Annual Return 2018. It includes the changes that will apply to charities for their financial year-ends on or after 1 January 2018. These changes are aimed at promoting transparency and accountability and many of the new questions that will be in the  2018 Annual Return require the Commission to publish further guidance on how they expect the questions to be answered. One question relates specifically to safeguarding:

Area Meeting Trustees will also be interested to know the other new questions:

New documents in QGroup
 

Following the Safeguarding Conference in January 2018 we have now uploaded further documents on our QGroup - you can wander round the templates and documents here: https://groups.quaker.org.uk/groups/safe/  Templates and guidance for many situations and occurrances are freely accessible. If there are additional documents you would like to access do let us know.

Safeguarding – what if...?
I am the clerk of Local Meeting Nominations Committee, and as it is the end of the triennium I am approaching people about different jobs. Yesterday in the entrance lobby I was chatting to a man who has been coming for about a year, asking him about a minor role. Another member of the Meeting who knows him in another context saw me talking with him, took me aside and told me that in the other context he has been warned off charming himself into the homes of vulnerable elderly women. Getting Friends (and the world at large!) aware of guarding against the abuse of vulnerable adults is difficult. It occurred to me that Nominations Committees need to be very aware of this - what if an unsuitable Friend was appointed as an overseer? Should QL suggest that Noms comms should be aware? I guess overseers too need this as part of their training, and elders too?
Response...
This is a very real issue for Quakers in Britain. My suggestion would be that 'potential predators' be protected from their own risky behaviours and thus it is important for a few people to share the knowledge. I would hope that whoever first finds out shares the information tenderly with the relevant overseer and clerk to local nominations committee. It may also be necessary to share with clerk to AM nominations committee.  Sadly a challenging balance as we want to embrace people into a loving worshipping community but on occasion we can put the individual and vulnerable adults at risk of harm if we don’t share relevant information.

At the start of the year we appointed a new organisation to administer our criminal record checks. The change to DDC (Due Diligence Checking, who took over after CAS closed) has involved a fair amount of work from Friends as we've had to set up new verifiers and accounts for each Meeting. Many thanks to you all for your help and patience to make this happen.

Updates to DDC accounts. My colleagues who look after our central database of role holders - contacted at updates@quaker.org.uk - are now looking after enquiries and changes to DBS verifiers. So if you want to change your DDC account holder then please let "updates" know. Please note that the changes are batched up each month so it can take a while for the new account holder to get their login details from DDC.

Those of you who have made an application through DDC will have seen that we have pre-defined roles. It hopefully makes applications easier - the pre-defined roles vary depending on whether the person will be supporting children or adults, is paid or volunteers, helps with unregulated or regulated activity. For instance, most children meeting helpers will use the role 'Children and Young People's helper - volunteer'. Pre-defined roles mean the right level of check will be made. During these first few months we've realised some roles weren't covered by our initial list and so we've added some more. When you make an application, if the list of roles doesn't seem to cover the role you need, please ask DDC for advice. And let me know at safe@quaker.org.uk if a new role needs adding.

PVG scheme in Scotland. Friends in Scotland, please note that if you wish to make a PVG Scheme application, you still need to use a paper form - this remains the current requirement of Disclosure Scotland. The first DDC screen has an option 'Send PVG form' (there have been some delays at DDC in getting the form finalised but I hope they will be available very soon). Meetings can ask DDC for a supply of forms to hold locally. For Meetings in Scotland, please only use the online application option on your DDC account if your role is for unregulated activity. This will be a 'DBS Enhanced Check' which includes the relevant checks with Scottish police forces. The Scottish Government has just opened its consultation on possible changes to the PVG scheme - if you want to contribute you have until 18 July (please follow this link).

I'm working on a flowchart to show the steps involved to make a DBS or PVG application. I'm also working on a 'Frequently Asked Questions'. Both of these handouts will hopefully be available at Yearly Meeting. I'll add them to the QGroup shortly afterwards.
 

Advice from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.
Two useful articles from NCVO. One ‘Oxfam and Haiti: Next steps for charities’ looks at the intense media coverage that has now become a wider conversation about international aid and charities in general.  The other from their volunteering development manager Shaun Delaney looks at how we can deal with harm and abuse should it arise, and the role of criminal records.  We’ve also added links to some of their resources in the Qgroup.

Charity Commission and Scottish Charity Regulator updates

Press release from December 2017: Safeguarding is a key governance priority for all charities, says charity regulator Trustees should take steps to ensure no one who comes into contact with their charity suffers distress or harm, as well as safeguarding children and adults at risk, says regulator of charities. The Charity Commission’s new safeguarding strategy says that safeguarding is a key governance priority for all charities, not just those working with groups traditionally considered at risk. The strategy explains that trustees should ensure their charity provides a safe environment for staff, volunteers, and anyone who comes into contact with it. Safeguarding is one of the three areas of risk facing charities that the Commission priorities in its work, alongside fraud and financial abuse and mismanagement and the extremist and terrorist abuse of charities. It says trustees always remain responsible for safeguarding, even if some aspects of it are delegated to staff. The Director of Investigations, Monitoring and Enforcement at the Commission, says what trustees need to do in practice will depend on their charity’s circumstances: The public rightly expect all charities to be safe environments. So all trustees should make safeguarding a governance priority. Of course, what trustees do in practice will depend on the context of their charity’s work, and trustees should take a proportionate approach. Charities working with vulnerable groups such as children and adults at risk for example, will need to ensure their safeguarding policies and practices comply with relevant safeguarding legislation and regulations. But all trustees should think about the people that come into contact with their charity and consider the steps they can take to prevent them from coming to harm. For new trustees, the Charity Commission has just produced a welcome pack of induction information.