Following public criticism, several embarrassing cases resurfacing from the past and a painstaking subsequent review of procedure, the Church of England has published its “model protocol” for handling child protection cases.
The publication follows the announcement of the key principles of the review of past child protection cases by Church of England dioceses on 25 October 2007.
The House of Bishops’ Standing Committee finalised the protocol at its recent meeting, the Church announced yesterday.
The full guidelines will now be made available to dioceses for implementation over the next 18 months. They are available at: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/news/pr10007.html
The full protocol, which forms part of what the Church of England describes as its “commitment continually to develop best practice in this area”, can be found on the C of E website [Adobe Acrobat PDF format]: http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/childprotect/cpreviewprotocol.pdf