Faithful Safeguarding Podcast with Petros

Ep 7 Proactive Safeguarding in Diverse Sectors with Simon Davies

• Madison Clarke • Season 1 • Episode 7

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In this episode of Faithful Safeguarding, Madison Clarke speaks with Simon Davies, a former Australian Federal Police Detective and experienced safeguarding consultant. 

With over 25 years in investigative work, Simon shares his insights on the importance of addressing low-level concerns before they escalate, the role of transparency in rebuilding trust, and why external safeguarding support can be a game-changer for organisations.

They also discuss the development of a safeguarding decision-making app, the increasing challenges of peer-on-peer abuse in educational settings, and the benefits of face-to-face training in promoting a proactive safeguarding culture.

Key Takeaways:
🔹 Safeguarding is a preventative approach, ensuring harm doesn’t occur.
🔹 Low-level concerns, if left unaddressed, can escalate over time.
🔹 The 'What Should I Do?' app helps guide individuals in reporting concerns.
🔹 Outsourcing safeguarding can be a cost-effective and practical solution.
🔹 Peer-on-peer abuse is an increasing concern in schools and youth settings.
🔹 Victim support should be prioritised from the outset of any investigation.

Discover more on some of the key mentions and resources from guest Simon below:


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Faithful Safeguarding, the podcast dedicated to promoting safety and well-being within faith communities. I'm your host, madison Clark from Petros, a not-for-profit dedicated to safeguarding and protecting those most vulnerable in our communities. Each episode will bring you expert insights, real-world experiences and practical advice to help you implement effective safeguarding practices in your faith organization. Together, we can create environments where everyone feels safe, valued and protected. Thank you for joining us on this important journey. Now let's dive into today's episode.

Speaker 1:

In this episode, simon Davies shares his extensive expertise, built over 25 years in safeguarding and investigative work, to discuss key strategies for creating safer organisations. Drawing on his experience as a nationally awarded former Australian federal police detective, simon emphasises the importance of addressing low-level concerns, implementing social media checks in recruitment and the benefits of partnering with external safeguarding organisations. As one of the organisers of the International Safeguarding Conference, he offers unique insights into the evolving safeguarding landscape. With a background in managing misconduct, advising educational and religious institutions and conducting complex investigations, simon provides practical advice on mitigating risks, protecting vulnerable individuals and fostering accountability. His discussion is invaluable for organisations aiming to strengthen their safeguarding frameworks.

Speaker 1:

The views and opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are solely that of the guests and do not represent the opinions and beliefs of the Petros organization. Simon, it is so wonderful to have you here on the podcast. What our audience may not know is that you have founded two safeguarded consultancies. What inspired you to start these companies, and maybe you could tell us a little bit about how they address safeguarding challenges across the different sectors that you work with?

Speaker 2:

Good question, maddy. I have to be honest, I wasn't inspired to be brutally honest. The sort of universe caused me to fall into this kind of work. As you know, I'm a former detective with the Australian Federal Police. I was there for about 14 years and through that work I had exposure to family law, family violence and child protection work, but didn't particularly even know what safeguarding was. It certainly wasn't a term that was in Australia's consciousness at that time.

Speaker 2:

In Australia's consciousness at that time, and whilst I was at the federal police, I saw an advertisement in the paper for a position with Catholic education, basically overseeing all of the professional standards functions for the Archdiocese of Melbourne, which is a very large educational system, and I thought, oh, that sounds interesting, maybe I'll go along to the interview.

Speaker 2:

So I did and they offered me the job on the spot and I took long service leave from the federal police and haven't looked back really.

Speaker 2:

So I sort of fell into it but have developed a love for it and a real passion and I stayed at Catholic education for many years and then moved to the Jesuits, or the Society of Jesus as they're known in Australia, and did a similar role there. So professional standards, overseeing professional standards across Australia for the Jesuits and then started my own consultancy being Safeguarding Services in about 2017. But, as I said, through the journey I guess I've seen the real lack of safeguarding within Australia. I know it was a very big concept in the UK and has been for a long time, but it was sort of new to Australia at that time. And then we had the Royal Commission start as well in Australia, so that ran for five years. So during those years I think safeguarding really came into the consciousness of Australia and now you know it's certainly a word known by everyone who works in volunteer organisations, schools etc. So it's been a real learning curve for Australia, if you like.

Speaker 1:

Amazing and, like you said, when you were working within the police there was quite a bit of safeguarding work without actually calling it safeguarding. You came across family violence and things like that. But how does it compare now working properly in safeguarding and being a detective?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's interesting because I sort of see them as two very different pieces of work almost, although there is overlap. Different pieces of work almost although there is overlap. Safeguarding is more, as I see it is, more preventative. You're in that preventative space to make sure the abuse doesn't occur. So that's really around training, cultural change, policy, implementation et cetera, Whereas the professional standards in inverted commas is more the something bad's happened and now we need to do something about it. It's more the reactive part of the work. I enjoyed both. The, I suppose, investigation side and the reactive side of the work can be quite draining and taxing because you're dealing with survivors of abuse, You're dealing with victim-surviv survivors which can get to you, but certainly the sort of preventative work. I guess the safeguarding side of the house is a bit more positive, if you like, if you want to look at it that way. But enjoy both.

Speaker 1:

Good good From your extensive experience. What trends or reoccurring issues do you see in safeguarding investigations today?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a good question. So we do a lot of work, both in the historical and the contemporary space, if you like, with investigations. Really, as I see it, the historic allegations typically relate to fairly how would I put it fairly intense, I guess, physical abuse of children within institutions. You know, really black and white, it occurred, it was certainly, you know, not spoken about about, and it was. There weren't witnesses and what have you. It was very covert, if you like, but it was that physical interaction between a male and a child which obviously shouldn't occur. Nowadays, though, I really see it, it's much more covert and almost grooming type behavior, if you like. We see a lot of um online activity. So adults, you know, looking at young females instagram accounts, for instance, um and and liking pictures of them on their holidays in their bikinis, you know, really inappropriate stuff, or it's it's covert communication via facebook messenger or instagram direct messaging or Snapchat, etc. A lot more harder to detect and less in-your-face and open offending, if you like. It's a lot more grooming in nature and takes a lot of time before any offending, if you like, at the sharp end, occurs. So, yeah, real change in the types of investigations between historic investigations and contemporary issues that we've seen. The other thing that we're seeing is a real under-reporting and under-documenting of low-level concerns and I know that's something we've spoken about offline before, matt is.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting that, whether it's a cultural thing, and I don't know whether it's Australia specific, but people don't want to. You know, this is an Australian expression, but dobbing their mate, you know, they see something minor and they think, oh, you know, I don't want to. You know, jim's my friend. I don't want to get him into too much trouble. It's a pretty minor thing, you know, I don't want to report it. I don't want to get him into too much trouble. It's a pretty minor thing. I don't want to report it. I don't want to make a big thing out of it. But the sad thing is Jim's done that 20 times, but I haven't seen Jim do it 20 times. It hasn't been recorded, and then it escalates into something big. And often in our work it's not uncommon for all of our investigators, once we go into an, an institution, that they say oh, you know, jim's been doing this for years. But you know, it's a real shame that it's come to this and it's like well, where's all the documentation around that? And there's nothing. So I think you know institutions really need to get better at recording and reporting the low-level things, if we call them that, and reporting the low-level things, if we call them that. It's interesting.

Speaker 2:

If I can aside for a minute, I'm researching a bit of a paper that I'd like to put together. It was a sort of I used to be in internal investigations in the police many years ago and it sort of sparked some interest in me out of that. But basically, very long story short, in New York City it would have been the 80s they looked at corrupt police and sort of their trajectory within the police force. Say, you've got a 30-year veteran police officer who's extremely corrupt we're talking mafia kind of level dealing drugs et cetera and they looked at their whole career right back to day one, and there were red flags from day one. It was little things, you know. Taking the police car home at night when they weren't allowed to, it was you know doing, doing really just testing the boundaries, if you like and I think there's a huge correlation between that and safeguarding. If you look at offenders and I've done a few jobs that have gone you know the offending's been extremely bad but it's been really facilitated over many, many years. And if you look at the trajectory of, say that teacher within a school, there were red flags from day one, but either no one pulled them up on it, no one recorded it, no one addressed it. So I think there's a lot of correlation there and I want to explore that more in more detail in a paper.

Speaker 2:

But I think where I was going with that is I think, yeah, we as institutions institutions need to get better at recording those little instances or minor instances of infractions that may lead to or may paint a picture of someone who is bad. But I can understand too that in a school environment you're busy. You see something as you're walking to your next class. You've got to get there in three minutes because otherwise the class is going to go crazy. You know I don't have time to record that, so I can see the difficulties in that as well. And I see that especially in teaching, where it's a busy environment. You know where do I get the time to record those things? So we need to think about that, I think, broadly, and maybe it's some software or easier ways to record those things software or easier ways to record those things.

Speaker 1:

That's so fascinating to think about how often those low level concerns, like you mentioned, sort of build up to paint a bigger picture of something that can be quite dangerous and cause a real issue.

Speaker 1:

And it's really trying to make sure you have a culture where people do feel that they can dob in their mate and that actually guarding is more important, and it's funny here at Petros with we have a real basis in psychology and human psychology and thinking about how you can have the best policies and practices in the world, and I know that Professor Jo Clark, our CEO, she would echo this. But if the culture isn't there where people feel confident to report and and feel empowered and I want to go back to low-level concerns, but before that, this conversation made me think of a conversation we've had previously about an app that you potentially are developing or have developed, but sort of a rolling out to help people have that confidence in their concerns and understand when they should report or when maybe they don't need to. Could you maybe expand on that and tell me some more?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. It's called what Should I Do and people can look it up at whatshouldidocomau and we'll put the link in the bio, but it's basically a decision-making app. So, myself and my colleague, it's been about two years to make. But it's really about what we found in Australia, certainly in Victoria, where I live.

Speaker 2:

There's a range of legislation that relates to child safety and safeguarding and through multiple investigations and debriefs, we'd say to people well, what type of concern was it? What did you need to do legislatively, et cetera. And people were not confident in that decision-making and they didn't really know what to do. They knew they needed to do something, but they weren't quite sure. So we thought we took that away and thought how can we make that easier for people, especially in school environments and other type of environments that deal with children?

Speaker 2:

And we developed an app and basically, to put it very simply, it's an app that asks you about six questions, and it's child-friendly as well. So the first question is who are you essentially? And the reason for that is to then change the language into child-friendly language if it's a child user, or keep it at an adult level if it's an adult user. And then it really just asks you five very basic questions about what's occurred and then it provides you some advice and, in your context, so you should report this to the police and it will provide you the closest police station's telephone number and address, or you should report this to your CEO. Here's their details and contact number. So it really synthesises very detailed and lengthy legislation into five or six questions. So we're hoping that, yeah, people find that very useful.

Speaker 1:

Amazing. It's like having a safeguarding officer in your pocket.

Speaker 2:

Look, it really is. It's a starting point at least, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a brilliant idea, amazing. And going back to low-level concerns, then, how do you think that organisations can proactively address these low-level concerns to prevent them from escalating into significant safeguarding issues?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, great question. I think one is policies from safeguarding policies that I see that they're really looking at that extreme case, that abuse case, that high-level issue, and it talks to that, but no policies that I've seen are very good at talking to these low level issues. What do we do about them? So everyone just sits there looking at each other. We're a bit lost because there's no policy to guide us. So that's key is to have a policy framework that supports this concept.

Speaker 2:

But I think the other big issue that I see is and it may be a generational thing, but I think people struggle having difficult conversations. I've seen Maddie do something that's slightly inappropriate or it's a boundary violation it's pretty minor but she's my friend or I don't want to get someone offside, I don't want to have a colleague offside. I really feel managers struggle these days with difficult conversations. They don't they want to be everyone's friend, they don't want to be the manager and I think there needs to be more training around that and more support of management to be able to have those difficult conversations and feel confident in that space.

Speaker 2:

It's not an easy space to be in. I know that from policing. It was always difficult conversations, but we really need to support managers to realize and it's difficult people stepping up they might've been in the same environment or same organization their whole career and they've been there from day one. They've been the line worker and they've suddenly stepped up into management. How then do I have a difficult conversation with someone who was my friend last week and I was going to their house for a barbecue? That's a difficult transition to make, but we need to support those people through training and professional development into learning how to deal with those sort of issues better.

Speaker 1:

I see the exact same thing that people really aren't trained to be managers. They're really good at their role and they get promoted, and then they don't have the support or the skills to necessarily support their staff and make sure that they feel also supported and can also have those really difficult conversations.

Speaker 1:

And something we've started doing is offering training on managing challenging interactions because, like you said, just those difficult conversations are really hard to have, especially when it's your friend or someone you've known for a long time. And I think when you can give people the groundwork like you said, have training for it, then we've really noticed the difference in the way that people work and I think that staff prefer it when they know their managers can address important things with them in a really proactive, healthy way.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and I think it's even more so. It's more pronounced in sort of faith-based environments You've had, you know, priests, for instance, who have grown up together, they've lived together all their lives and one of them becomes the bishop, or one of them becomes the provincial, et cetera. How do they have a difficult conversation with someone they've lived with for 30 years and have to continue living with? It's not nice. It's like a family context and no one likes having a difficult conversation, especially with a family member, if you like.

Speaker 1:

So something that our clients are facing is trying to make sure that they have social media checks for new recruits coming to the organization. Is that something that you offer or that you have in place, or you can sort of recommend how organizations can go about doing that?

Speaker 2:

Great question. It's not something we currently offer, although for a number of our clients, we do currently do what's called a reputational check. We do currently do what's called a reputational check, so that might be where a person's been appointed to a CEO position and we find out that they've got Nazi leanings online, et cetera. But it's reputational focused, but it could easily be recalibrated to be a safeguarding focus. I think that the problem here is, as you're well aware, is cost for organisations. They're facing a lot of financial challenges in many areas, but this big uplift in safeguarding now of policy implementation, training, implementing safeguarding officers, et cetera but it's certainly something that we'd be keen to look at and develop. Given that we already do reputational checks, I think it could be tweaked easily to be a safeguarding check. That'd be a great idea for new hires.

Speaker 1:

Definitely, and it sounds like you guys are really well positioned to deliver that. You've mentioned cost there as a challenge. That is, you know, a reoccurring theme for organisations and I was wondering, in your work with faith communities, education and disability sectors, what are the other unique safeguarding challenges with each sector and what they face, obviously cost being one of them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think, just to you know, not to pull our own chain, but in terms of an offering that we've seen a big uplift in, is the outsourcing of professional standards. So really, instead of having someone sitting in as a safeguarding officer in an organization for 365 days a year, what we're offering to organizations is to say, hey, if you need us three times a year, we're at the end of the phone. It's a lot cheaper than paying someone to sit there, potentially doing nothing for half the year in terms of safeguarding. So we're finding a lot of especially faith-based organizations are interested in that and have taken us up on that and we're now performing their safeguarding function for them externally, if you like. But in terms of sector challenges, I think for faith communities, certainly in Australia and certainly worldwide, you know, as you know, we were recently last year at a safeguarding conference, an international one in Rome, and I think the big issue for faith communities is managing historical abuse cases while rebuilding trust within not only their communities but the broader the world really, and that's a challenge. You've come from a position of horrific abuse within these institutions and you're trying to rebuild from that, keep people faithful to their faith and also grow. That's not an easy challenge. I don't have answers there for that.

Speaker 2:

In terms of education, I think a real growth risk is peer-on-peer abuse. We're seeing a lot of that and I think people are still struggling with how to deal with that, and there's some great organizations within Australia, like the Australian Childhood Foundation, that specialise in that. But that's a real growth issue, I think. And if I can put a shout-out to the Men's Project, a Jesuit social services-run program called the Men's Project in Australia, and I think it's a fantastic thing. It's really teaching boys how to be men. Really, from a domestic violence perspective, domestic violence is far too high, not only in Australia, throughout the world. We have way too many deaths in Australia of women at the hands of men and I think, from my perspective, that's because we have a lack of ability to teach our young boys to be men. So a shout out to them, but I think that's a real growth area in education.

Speaker 2:

And then disability sector. I think you know it's difficult. We do a lot of work for a big disability provider in Australia and I think you're dealing with extremely at-risk people that have, you know, a non-verbal, you know find it very difficult to communicate. You know how do they speak up, how do they even report that they've been abused, and that's an ongoing issue. I think potentially we really need to embrace technology, looking at CCTV, ai and how that can interact with protection of people who are really at risk, like disabled people. So I think that's an emerging area as well is how can we protect them better? So that's probably it, across those three sectors that we predominantly work in.

Speaker 1:

Great information, thank you, and great solutions too. You know lots of unique challenges but ways that they can be addressed and, like you mentioned, with faith communities, potentially outsourcing and having that work come in could be cost effective. But I remember also one of the papers from the international safeguarding conference I wasn't there but I read some of the papers suggested that particularly within faith communities it's really wise to outsource some safeguarding, because then you don't necessarily come up against issues with figures being revered or it's your fellow brother who is, like you said, that family dynamic. You can avoid that in a way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. And even if it's not occurring, it's the perception Outsourcing it allows that the general public see that, okay, there's not that perception that that could occur, but totally agree.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, and you've mentioned, within faith communities, one of the potentially most biggest challenges is rebuilding that trust from previous convictions. What best practices can organisations adopt to manage serious misconduct cases while maintaining trust within their communities?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think there's some key elements there. It is transparency. I think transparency is a huge one. Often these institutions have been extremely closed. Everything's been secretive. Even internally it's been very secretive. So even when someone is sidelined or let go, it's come as a shock to members within that community, let alone the broader public. So I think transparency is key. I think independence is extremely important. I think gone are the days of HR departments or others internal investigations occurring. I think the risk of bias there is just too high, and trust, and even if it isn't evident, I think just the perception is too great. So, outsourcing of investigations and those processes I'm thinking to communicating outcomes Often, you know, communities are affected by these issues.

Speaker 2:

Investigations occur, there's a lot of fallout, a lot of pain within communities and then they hear nothing. And how do communities heal from that? So I think there needs to be, whilst protecting people's privacy and acknowledging privacy legislation, I think certain things should be said. It's a careful narrative that needs to be crafted, but I think it's important to communicate things to the communities that it's over and that we've moved on and we've learned from something. And on that I think debriefs are very important.

Speaker 2:

A lot of the time, sadly, we see we do this big investigation into something and then it's okay, that's over. Now let's go back to business as usual. There's been no learnings from that investigation process and I think the other critical issue which probably is what I should have mentioned first is is providing support for victims and, um, and reinforcing preventative measures, so all of those things like training and what have you, but I think really support for victims from from day one, as soon as they come forward, is pretty cool definitely so that balance between privacy and communication, making sure there's debriefs and then supporting the victim, sort of a great point to end on is got to be there from the start and really important.

Speaker 1:

We've also spoken about the importance of training, especially for managers, and I was wondering what's your opinion on training and professional development and the role it plays in fostering a strong safeguarding culture, and how can it be improved? What have you seen good ways to improve that?

Speaker 2:

I think it's huge. In fact, um, we have our own learning management system, called um church learn, which is predominantly faith-based um, because what we saw was there was a real need there to. You know, we've all done um learning management systems where you click um you, you go to your colleague, to your colleague, and you get the answers from them and they say, oh, it's ABC when you do the test at the end and we all race through it. That's pretty common, especially through COVID as well. What we saw was that lack of connection with the training. So we've really tried to look at organizations' charisms, their belief systems, et cetera, and really tie that into the training. So there's some connection there. It's not this generic off-the-shelf training that I'm doing. Even in cybersecurity training and fraud prevention we try and bring in that faith element and charism, so there's some connection to it, bring in that face element and carries them. So there's some connection to it. And we try and customize the learning experience, that environment as well, because we all know too, when we've done online training it's a case study that that either will never happen to us, it's totally out of our area of operation and it doesn't really resonate with us. So we're trying to make sure the training specific to that, that environment and giving real-life examples that could potentially happen in that learning environment.

Speaker 2:

In saying that about online training, I think nothing beats face-to-face. I think there needs to be that ability for learners to interact with not only the presenter but with each other as well. And I think certainly when I conduct face-to-face training, the richness comes not from me speaking, it comes from the end of the presentation and the question time and usually that goes longer than the presentation I've just presented and, yeah, a lot of richness comes out of that. So but I think training and continual training and continual upskilling, professional development, whatever you want to call it is critical. You know we can't live without it. We need to develop as people and we need to continue to be open to learning.

Speaker 1:

That's great. What a great thought to end on. It's so wonderful to think of all the training opportunities that are available now for people and how not only face-to-face, but, as you said, the questions afterwards and the interaction with peers and the learning that come from. That is really great, thank you Well, thank you so much for your time. I feel like I've learned so much and it's so interesting the work that you do and how broad it is and yet how detailed you go into. So thank you for sharing.

Speaker 2:

Absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Faithful Safeguarding. We hope you found our discussion insightful and inspiring. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more people dedicated to safeguarding of faith communities. If there is a person or organisation who you think would benefit from this episode, please hit the share button. For additional resources and information, visit our website at petrosorguk. Stay tuned for our next episode, where we'll continue to explore important safeguarding topics with leading experts. Until then, stay safe and keep making a difference.