The Church of England and in turn the Diocese of Newcastle are committed to ensuring that the voices and views of victims and survivors of abuse are heard and taken into account in all we do.
This focus has become a priority as a result of the poor practice in the past and the wholly inadequate (and sometimes traumatic) responses to the concerns and allegations victims and survivors raised about their experience of abuse within the church.
In order for this to be a meaningful aspiration it is important that victims and survivors perspectives are central to the development of a diocesan strategy, which we intend to use to improve our practice and responses now and in the future.
We hope that the strategy and resulting action plan become an example of good practice and lead to victims and survivors feeling valued and included, and for their role and contribution to be visible if that is what they would like.For those wishing to participate less visibly in the process this will be enabled with sensitivity and confidentiality.
We are at the early stage of working in partnership with an organisation called Support for Survivors, which sadly is based in Nottingham but the Chief Executive is a member of the Church of Englands national survivor reference panel and willing to help us progress our plans in Newcastle.
If you are interested in helping us in any way with these developments we would really like to hear from you. We hope that this might be a survivor led piece of work with opportunities to develop peer support either in a 1-2-1 or group setting.
We look forward to hearing from you and we can be contacted in the following ways.
Ruth Rogan- 07825 167 016 and email - r.rogan@newcastle.anglican.org
Andrew Grant- 07741 633 670 and email - a.grant@newcastle.anglican.org