Meeting safety

Britain Yearly Meeting’s advice on safeguarding

Safeguarding is protecting children, young yeople and vulnerable adults (also known as 'protected adults') from harm.

The trustees of each Quaker meeting or organisation have responsibility for safeguarding.  This includes having procedures in place so that cases or suspicions of abuse can be reported.

This information is designed for local meetings, area meetings and yearly meeting work organised centrally. Quaker bodies and organisations not within the structure of the Yearly Meeting may fall outside this remit, but will still have responsibilities in this area.

Quaker Life Department (QL) has written these pages to assist meetings keep up-to-date with good practice around safeguarding issues, and to provide meetings with details on where to find information.

Quaker Life has issued a factsheet Safeguarding: Checklists for good practice by meetings [PDF: 49kb - new window] to help meetings identify their strengths and any weaknesses in this area. A recently update Meeting Safety [PDF: 240kb - new window] is now available.
 

Meetings should be aware that England and Wales, Scotland and Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man each have their own schemes and legislation.

Meetings needing to receive a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) or Disclosure Scotland forms should contact Philip Iddon on 020 7663 1029 or email philipi@quaker.org.uk. He will send them out with the necessary CAS forms. Please do not keep a supply of forms. One or two spare will be more than enough.

To report an additional verifier, and receive guidance notes for verifiers, or for Quaker specific queries contact Michael S Booth on 020 7663 1023 or email  michaelsb@quaker.org.uk. For some queries, you may be referred to other organisations.

Please send correspondence to Philip or Michael to:

Quaker Life
Friends House
173 Euston Road
London NW1 2BJ