Faithful Safeguarding Podcast with Petros
Faithful Safeguarding is a short-form podcast dedicated to enhancing the safety and well-being of faith communities, focusing on providing insightful, expert-led discussions on safeguarding practices and addressing the unique challenges faced by faith-based organisations.
Topics include child protection, safer recruitment, creating a safeguarding culture, online safety, protecting vulnerable adults, disability and safeguarding, reporting and recovering from safeguarding incidents, risk management, and fostering diversity and inclusion.
Hosted by Madison Clarke from Petros, the podcast aims to raise awareness, educate, and foster a culture of proactive safeguarding among people within faith organisations.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed by guests within the content are solely the guest's and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of Petros or its affiliates.
Faithful Safeguarding Podcast with Petros
Ep 9 Volunteers: Instilling Proper Boundaries - Part 1 with Isabelle King
Volunteers are the lifeblood of safeguarding within faith communities, bringing unique perspectives and fostering trust while facing distinct challenges that require careful management.
In this episode, safeguarding consultant Isabelle King from the Safeguarding Collective, gives us an extended and comprehensive look into ensuring teams, internal and external, employed and volunteering, are well-versed in creating safe spaces for all. Host Madison takes Isabelle through the following:
• Volunteers must be supported as integral team members with proper onboarding, supervision and emotional support
• Three foundational principles: volunteers should be supported, informed, and respected
• Training must include basic safeguarding awareness, maintaining professional boundaries, and reporting procedures
• Secondary trauma affects volunteers as much as paid staff—organizations have a duty of care to provide proper support
• Faith communities face special challenges with boundaries as personal connections often overlap with volunteer roles
• Volunteer engagement has evolved from informal helpers to formalized roles with clear expectations and proper integration
• Clear safeguarding structures are essential in faith settings to prevent blurred lines and ensure proper reporting
Connect with Isabelle King on LinkedIn
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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. Welcome to another episode of Faithful Safeguarding. Welcome to another episode of Faithful Safeguarding. Today. I'm thrilled to welcome Isabel King, a dynamic, creative thought leader with extensive experience in education, training and youth safeguarding. Isabel has been at the forefront of building and sharing knowledge to create safeguarding cultures that are embedded within organizations. In this part one of our episode, we'll explore the crucial role of volunteers in safeguarding. Isabel shares her insights on the unique nature of the volunteer role compared to paid roles and discusses the essential training and support volunteers need to contribute effectively. We also delved into how volunteer engagement has evolved over the years. Keep listening to find out what special considerations faith communities should keep in mind when integrating volunteers into safeguarding roles. This episode will inform you on how to ensure volunteers are an integral part of the organisation, not a separate entity. Stay tuned for part two, where we'll continue this conversation and dive even deeper into the practical strategies for enhancing voluntary engagement in safeguarding let's dive in. 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 organisation. Isabel, thank you so much for coming on the Faithful Safeguarding podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm really excited to chat more and understand more about the role of volunteers. To start, I wanted to ask how do you see the role of volunteers in safeguarding? And then, as following up from that, what unique challenges do volunteers present compared to paid staff? So the role of volunteers in safeguarding is absolutely critical. There's no doubt about it. Volunteers are the lifeblood of most charities and organisations Volunteers. They enhance the protection we can give when we work closely with young people and adults at risk. They're very well positioned to identify signs of abuse, neglect or harm and by engaging volunteers in safeguarding efforts, they can add a layer of oversight and address any risks identified really promptly and, in some cases, better than paid staff and or other agency professional staff. They play a critical role in fostering trust and a sense of belonging through actively participating in safeguarding practices, reassuring individuals and their families that protective measures are in place. If they engage with the organisation, which is really critical. Often they all come from diverse backgrounds and they bring a unique perspective and local knowledge. By engaging them in safeguarding, organisations can bespoke their approach to meeting the community's needs and create a safeguarding culture that's both collaborative and empowering to the community.
Speaker 1:From my experience working with volunteers, they can also prove a little bit of a challenge because invariably they are doers and they can't always wait for process and procedure or legal niceties like administration or paperwork. Volunteers are often impassioned to make a difference and or right wrongs. This can be great, but their passion has to be directed and managed. Volunteers are often impassioned to make a difference and or right wrongs. This can be great, but their passion has to be directed and managed. So specific challenges a little bit listy here, I'll try not to be too bullet point. But volunteers, unlike paid staff, often have fluctuating schedules or limited hours availability, or they just decide that they don't want to come. This can create gaps in safeguarding procedures, it can break relationships and that non-consistency of being present can be very, very tricky to handle. Short-time or part-time involvement can be crucial in safeguarding, particularly if one particular person or group of people has latched on to one particular volunteer and then they don't come for three weeks. That's quite difficult.
Speaker 1:As I said, in safeguarding they may not always be subject to the same level of accountability as paid staff and this can make it harder if you're undertaking a safeguarding concern or there's an investigation with an external agency, for example, because again, the volunteers may relationships with individuals, may struggle to maintain their professional personal boundaries, which is absolutely crucial in safeguarding, and it can sometimes lead to reputational risk for the organisation which does put some people taking on volunteers on volunteers if it gets them off. I would also point out that a lot of insurances and legal protections are slightly different for volunteers, so again, it's about understanding where you are with your insurance and being very, very clear with insurers that you have volunteers and this is what the training that you do with them, all of these differences need careful planning and if careful planning is in place and you know what you're doing and everyone is well briefed, then volunteers could be 10 times more rewarding than actually working with paid, so amazing gems of information. Then I want to recap some of that, because it's so much important information that you've just given us. And I think what really came across was how volunteers really are the life and soul of organizations. They can be and then also can be so crucial to safeguarding. Like you said, they can be really well positioned to identify signs of abuse. If people, if they build really good relationships with the people that they work with, they cultivate that sense of trust and belonging that they work with, they cultivate that sense of trust and belonging and because often they come from diverse backgrounds, they can give really unique insights that maybe paid staff aren't as well positioned to do. And then also thinking about the potential challenges and how to avoid that. Like you said, they can be super passionate and doers, I think was the word you used but you need to make sure you divert that passion so you know the involvement is there and people are really engaged, but then the boundaries aren't overstepped, like you said. And also interesting to think about insurers and their importance in this and making sure that they're aware of the roles of volunteers and how there might be different requirements. So thank you for that oversight. It's really fascinating.
Speaker 1:And, thinking about how crucial volunteers are, we want to make sure that we're supporting them and looking after them. So what sorts of training and support are the most crucial for volunteers to help them effectively contribute to a safeguarding initiative? Okay, so first and foremost, mad maddie, I like to say training and development, because it's very easy to just have somebody in an organization and just train them to do, but a lot of volunteers come in with huge amounts of skills, knowledge and experience. So for some people they do volunteering roles for further development and for others they may have retired or there may be health issues or reasons why they're not working. But we're still developing. And of course, as we know, adult volunteers have a whole life's worth of interesting experiences to explore.
Speaker 1:So I like to say training and development, sure, so I like to say training and development, and I like to keep that emphasis on development, because not all training needs to be done in a classroom environment or in a workshop or something like that. A lot of development can be going out and meeting other charities in the local area and developing your knowledge in that way, or reading articles or listening to case studies or just engaging with supervision. So there's a whole array of things that you can do. I think it's really important, before we start talking really about what training is needed, is to really just sort of I think the expression is double down on the three areas that I think people forget and they're fundamental to any training or development that you deliver Three words supported, informed and respected. And these are critical because any of the training and development you have within your organisation that are not based on supporting the volunteers within your organisation, that are not based on supporting the volunteers, informing them and respecting their knowledge, you will find and I've seen this over a long time you will find that people will start leaving because these three things are really of value to volunteers.
Speaker 1:So let's look at supported, and by this I mean that the volunteer is made to feel from day one that they are part of a wider team rather than a bolt-on volunteer. For example, they have the same onboarding which old-fashioned is induction, but onboarding is the new term they have structured supervision, they have line management, they have clear roles and responsibilities, clear integrated HR practices that have to underpin completely and utterly any training that is given. So a good example of this would be if a volunteer is working in a safeguarding environment and it's a very messy safeguarding scenario. If the staff needs support, the volunteer will need support, and very often the staff have access to counselling and mentoring and support, but the volunteer doesn't. It's the same trauma, it's going to have the same impact, so it needs to be dealt with. So this is what I mean by supported supported, informed.
Speaker 1:I know in the past many organisations that didn't actually inform their volunteers of their processes and policies, on the assumption that they would always work with a member of staff who would know, actually forgetting to onboard volunteers and give them the training that's needed. A they're not going to give buy-in. Their whole sense is that they're being cheated, they're not getting what they should be doing, and the biggest point here is that will lead to resentment further down the line. So we need to nip that in the bud. And I think the final thing, which in a way comes back to what I've just said, is about volunteers being respected. This has to come from the very top of the organization.
Speaker 1:Volunteers are not just volunteers. They have a wealth of experience, they're an integral part of the team and they add so, so much value. They may not have the experience and the skills in the same environment. They may need developing, tweaking, twisting and just sort of pushing in the right direction. But the fundamentals are there. So let's go back to the training that's needed. So for volunteers to effectively contribute to safeguarding initiatives, it's essential to provide them with comprehensive training, development and ongoing support. And by this I mean and this is what I've done myself and that's something we'll come on to I'm kind of feeling there'll be a question later on around what have I done in this area.
Speaker 1:But the basics are basic safeguarding awareness training. Now, in the UK that's a mandatory responsibility. All volunteers must understand the principles of safeguarding, including what it is, why it's important, potential signs. Okay, so that's completely everybody. No questions. Depending upon the type of groups you're working with and the level of ability and the level of knowledge type of groups you're working with and the level of ability and the level of knowledge, there also should be specific training to the needs of the people that they're working with. So if they are people with disabilities, then you need to have disability awareness training. If you're working with children or the elderly, you need to have that appropriate training, and that's completely different for every organisation.
Speaker 1:Volunteers must also be taught how to maintain professional boundaries. Now, I know a lot of organisations still haven't blocked this, but it is absolutely critical. This includes understanding things like personal space, understanding confidentiality and appropriate and non-appropriate interactions. Why is it crucial? Because it helps prevent situations and it keeps volunteers safe, which is ultimately what we need to do. Volunteers must have really clear training on reporting procedures and legal requirements. For me, that's part of your basic safeguarding, but I do know that a lot of organisations separate that according to the role and responsibility and level of the individual is undertaking, so flexible can be moved together.
Speaker 1:The next one I think is extremely important this is about how to manage situations, particularly where they may witness or suspect abuse, and it's about how to handle, quite frankly, distressing circumstances. Volunteers are particularly vulnerable to what's called secondary trauma. So by listening and observing something that is very distressing and it may not be distressing to everybody, but it might be distressing to that individual dependent upon their backgrounds and their own environments, they can absorb that trauma. So again, just to remember that training goes hand in hand with follow on support. Training can never happen in a vacuum. There has to be something that takes it out of the training room and turns it into something that is practical and consistent. Volunteers should receive regular supervision and support.
Speaker 1:Now again, I'm just going to pull on experience here. I know that you can train to your blue in the faith around supervision. Supervision is there. All you need to do is x, y and z. But what's important is you train people to make the best of supervision, to understand its purpose and to understand how to ask the questions and what had to go in Simple things like in supervision, you may be asked to reflect. Well, some people may never have done that, so you need to explain what it means and why is it important, which is a key piece of information as well. So I think, depending upon the area that you're working in and also the type of issues that you're going to be coming across, it's important to add in other training.
Speaker 1:Now this in the last decade has really ramped up in the UK, but I'm sure also in many other places. Mental health is huge, so not only do we need to teach safeguarding skills, now we need to also teach volunteers to be able to recognise when they're burning out, to recognise the signs and symptoms of stress. We have programmes in the UK and they're called Mental Health First Aid Training and that's kind of what it is. It's that initial what happens when a trawler is about to hit or has hit. What are the first things that you need to do? I think there's also areas like extremism and radicalisation that, sadly, are really pushing into the world of safeguarding. Things like the hidden abuses that you never know, whether you're the volunteers themselves or other members of staff as well as people that you're actually forcing are experiencing relationship abuse behind the scenes and being able to sort of come in and be able to offload and, again, being an organization that's trauma-informed. And I know many, many organizations now, large and small, who are really focusing into that trauma-informed practice that we're all seeing now we need to respond to.
Speaker 1:I just want to stay on that emotional resilience and self-care, because this is an area of growth and development in safeguarding at the moment the emotional toll of working well, actually everyday life, life. I mean you only have to switch the telly on at the moment and you know you're getting quite a lot of negativity. So that whole self-care element is critical to employers and in the UK we have something called a duty of care and the duty of care means that the employer is responsible for ensuring that stress and emotional impact is reduced and opportunities are put in place for support. So that's different to supervision. So supervision will identify and try and sort of place and construct a safe environment environment but actually having somewhere where the volunteer can go to download emotional things that are worrying them, concerning them, which could be mentoring or counselling, or an employer work scheme. They should all be open to volunteers as much as they are staff.
Speaker 1:I think the final thing I'm going to say because I can feel as if I'm rambling on a bit here is that training is there to update and safeguarding is an amazingly dynamic, fluid space. In the 30 years I've been in safeguarding, I cannot tell you the changes that have occurred and I think what is absolutely crucial is that volunteers are kept up to speed all the time. Um, I think that's wow, that's incredible. Thank you for all those insights. You know you give such a amazing practical advice.
Speaker 1:I think there's so many things that um listeners can take from this and I think, think, if they take anything, those three points you mentioned about support, informed respect, making sure that volunteers are supported, they have the same onboarding processes, that they're informed, they know safeguarding processes from the start and that respect that they are an integral part of the teams and I love how focused around volunteer well-being that you are. You know you talk about secondary trauma and how it's an organization's duty to develop that emotional resilience. And I know at petros something that we offer is, uh, decompression sessions, which is different to supervision, but it enables people to come and, like you said, then it might not even be work related. It may be something in the home that they're facing but has been triggered by a work event, because we take ourselves with us wherever we go, and I think it's so important that organizations do treat volunteers with the same respect and support that they do their paid staff, because they are so integral. So thank you for that and making that really clear. And it makes me think as well with all your, like you said, over 30 years of experience in safeguarding and in operational leadership, how have you seen volunteer engagement evolve within safeguarding practices over the years?
Speaker 1:Where do I start? That's just such a huge question because essentially, we've gone from volunteers being largely informal, supportive roles that aren't seen as part of an organisation to one that is completely integral, well-supported, and I think the key here is formalised. I think that's massive. When I talk to people now and I go around talking to lots of organisations of all different sizes on a daily basis and one of my first questions is where are your volunteers? What I like to hear is oh well, they're completely integrated. So you know, when we talk about staff, we mean volunteers too.
Speaker 1:But where I hear an organisation say, oh yes, well, we have a separate safeguarding policy for them, we keep them separate because there's different legislation, I start to get a bit anxious. So with improved training, with clear expectations, better systems for communication, support, I think that volunteers are better equipped to identify and respond, and I think that's really. I also just have to emphasise the fact that we're in a position of sort of constant flux and change here. So if you were to take a really helicopter view of the sector, I would say at the top end you've got people who see a whole workforce and at the other end you've got people who still see it very, very disjointed and connected. So I'm going to talk about the middle to upper bit, which is about getting to that space where everything is in the right place to be, that supportive environment where volunteers can be engaged for safeguarding. I'm going to give some headlines here, pretty much as I've done before, clear expectations do need to be set.
Speaker 1:There is a difference. A lot of people assume that a volunteer doesn't need a job description of any kind, and that would have been the case many years ago. But there are now legal requirements for a job description to be in place for volunteers. Now anybody listening to this will immediately realise that we don't use the term job description when we refer to volunteers. We use a term called role descriptor, and there's a big difference between the two, and the main difference is a job description is a legally binding contract, whereas a role descriptor is defining the role that a volunteer should be doing. But you do need to don't want people to go away thinking that they've got to write a job description, but volunteers most definitely do need to know what they're doing on a daily basis.
Speaker 1:Modern safeguarding practice emphasises the importance of regular supervision and support for volunteers, so I think that's absolutely integral to operational leadership. But this goes beyond just supervision and support. It talks about things like making sure there's check-ins, peer support, there's debriefing sessions and access to experienced staff and mentors. Volunteers are also given opportunities to discuss challenges and seek guidance. And, maddy, as you just said, I mean you call that decompression sessions. I actually call them those as well, but then I was trained. You know, I've been to Petros training and I find that really interesting.
Speaker 1:Actually, the good old fashioned way of expressing a decompression um session and you may disagree with me on this is just having a darn good rant about everything that has been wrong, and then it gives you the opportunity to go, take a step back and then start unpicking what's been said, and that's a really good way of doing it. Doing it five, five weeks down the line doesn't help. You need to do it in the moment. I completely agree with you. It's definitely about having a good rant and physical decompress. Yes, one person once said to me I was a professional ranter, but the good thing is that you have to then come out and be positive and move forward. Don't get stuck in the rant by having somebody that you can rant with in a safe way and actually help you structure your pullout of whatever it is that's caused the ants is really important.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to talk now a little bit about the use of technology. Now, I'm not particularly pro-technology in many areas. Use of technology Now, I'm not particularly pro-technology in many areas, but I do recognise and see the importance of having good reporting systems. Now, there is a lot of safeguarding reporting systems and databases out there. I'm not going to name any, but I will say it's really worth shopping around. And also, I would say, from an insurance point of view, check, check, check where that organization places its data, because sometimes it's outside of the UA or UK area and you need to be very, very clear on your GDPR. That's a little golden nugget there, because I fell into that trap.
Speaker 1:Volunteers in the past relied very heavily on paper-based documentation and actually a huge part of a volunteer's role these days is accessing computers. So, going back to the training, I didn't add that one in, but IT skills are rather important and I probably could do with that myself. Also, employers very often feel that they shouldn't give access to volunteers to all the IT systems for security reasons. My argument is if you're trusting a volunteer into your organization and you've done your homework, they should have everything that they need to do their job in a professional way. I think current technology is both positive and negative. I'm not going to talk about the negative, but I think we all know what that could lead to. Maybe a podcast on another day, but many organizations now use online training platforms and digital reporting tools. They're all well and good, but at the end of the day, you have to make sure that A the e-learning or the learning they've done online is understood and can be practically applied. And sometimes it's a combination of e-learning followed up by a group talk and a scenario go through Check that they have understood.
Speaker 1:I've done quite a bit on wellbeing and mental health, but it's extremely important to know that the distance that we've travelled in recognising the role of the volunteer and in that whole emotional and mental health space as we were saying earlier, maddy has massively come on since then. But I think one area that we perhaps don't celebrate too much and don't look at is around broader inclusivity and diversity, so I'm just going to quickly talk about this. So volunteer engagement in the early days was very much limited to specific groups, with volunteers often from a very narrow demographic. However, these days we look to recruit volunteers to emphasise the inclusivity and diversity in the space and in the communities that we're in, where we actively seek volunteers from diverse backgrounds, including cultural, ethnic and socioeconomic groups, as well as those with varying life experiences. That enriches the whole safeguarding space and efforts to create a safer environment for everybody.
Speaker 1:I think probably one of the last things I'm going to say here is around empowerment and agency volunteers. Many volunteers in days gone past were very much culpers, as I've said, and very much in the background. There's been a massive shift towards empowering volunteers and in fact, many job centres and many employability schemes encourage volunteering for those who perhaps don't have many skills or have experienced significant trauma themselves, as it gives them a way, a form of agency, it gives them a voice and it empowers them to start sort of making decisions for themselves. And I think this is a massive tool and a massive shift from where we were a few years ago, when we're not only recognising volunteers as really valued members of the team, but also it's about what volunteering can do for them, but also it's about what volunteering can do to them. Thank you so much Talking about the transition for volunteers and how they, you know, were maybe more on the sidelines of organisations and now how it's so important that they're really integral and they're part of those formalised processes.
Speaker 1:And when I think about volunteers and how integral they are, I think about faith communities and how volunteers often serve as the backbone of community engagement. What special considerations should be taken when integrating volunteers into safeguarding roles in these faith settings? I think I'm going to probably come back with just a one-liner, but don't be disappointed, there's loads more coming. When I've worked with organisations that are faith-based, I think it's absolutely key. Having a structure, a safeguarding structure, is absolutely crucial. Keeping it is imperative and, as I say, I've worked a lot with faith groups and I think that's really, really important. It's talking to a framework or a structure, or however your organization defines it, because it is so easy when you're in a faith context, particularly in a faith context, to kind of blur lines, and I'm just going to talk through some things here that I think are worth just pointing out. We've talked about it several times before, about the importance of having a role descriptor and, alongside a role descriptor, having really clear boundaries. I'm a massive believer in personal and professional boundaries. They have to keep you safe, actually as much as it is about keeping the organisation safe.
Speaker 1:Volunteers in faith-based settings very often have personal connections within the community and to those that they serve in the role as a volunteer, especially in smaller or close-knit communities. So it's really important to keep those professional boundaries clear, and I use the word professional because there has to be that space between what they can do in a role. Let's say they're a priest. What they can do in the role of a priest is very different to what they can do when they're in a care setting or what they can do in another setting. So they need to be really aware of those dividers. Many faith communities are built on personal relationships, which happens in other organizations and in other spaces. It's very prevalent within the faith communities and blowing the line between being a volunteer and a personal connection. So one minute they're a volunteer going in and supporting a family and then they say to the family oh, don't worry about that, it's not in my role as a volunteer, but I don't mind taking Joey down to the local shop. You've just crossed a safeguarding line there. And it's about understanding, kindness and compassion and where the safeguarding lines are. So safeguarding policies should outline the need for the volunteers to keep those professional boundaries, and the only way of delivering that, I think, is face-to-face and scenario-based training, which is when you put things into a scenario or a case study, it clicks, whereas if you do it online yes, yes, yes, I know all about this, I'll just click to the next page. Oh, click to the next page Because as an employer you have to understand that your staff whole staff and volunteers really get and understand the context they're working in.
Speaker 1:Screening and recruitment really important. In the olden days we didn't have DBS checks obviously UK based and I know many other countries do do checks as well it's massively important to ensure that volunteers are DBS checked. There used to be tendencies oh, there are only volunteers, we don't need to do them. Are DBS checked? There used to be tendencies oh, there are only volunteers, we don't need to do them. Yes, you do, because, if nothing else, they are a person who people trust. They're in position of trust, which in itself is a legally defined term. So rigorous screening, as much screening as the job requires, as a secular organisation would have, faith communities often have very particular theological or doctrinal beliefs when recruiting volunteers.
Speaker 1:So organisations should ensure that during the interview process they're really exploring the volunteers' beliefs and values and then checking that those values meet the needs of the community that they are actually servicing, but always ensuring that safeguarding practices and policies come first. So spiritual and emotional sensitivity and this is an area where I know a lot of organisations can often get themselves tangled. Faith-based settings may offer spiritual support as part of their safeguarding efforts, for example, counselling, prayer or pastoral care need to be trained on how to offer that spiritual care, to keep themselves safe and to not overstep their role or inadvertently cause harm by saying, oh yes, this is an issue that we can deal with in counselling, we're dealing with it. We're dealing with it, but without recognising that actually, other authorities need to be informed because of the nature of the information that they may be sitting on. So that's something that they need to be very, very clear about, and in some faith contexts there can be a perceived imbalance of power between a religious leader and vulnerable, potentially vulnerable, individuals. So volunteers need to be aware of that dynamic and how it can create opportunities for manipulation, coercion and, honestly, abuse.
Speaker 1:Volunteers need to be aware and respect the diversity within their faith community and I briefly touched on that previously and I think a term that was used way back in the 60s is creeping back into the consciousness of people working in safety and it's called cultural competence. This is ensuring that volunteers are really sensitive to the needs of the individuals from different backgrounds, such as refugees, immigrants, individuals from diverse or exclusive religions or cultural traditions. They have a really good understanding of what those groups are actually believing in. Sometimes you may find that, for example, training. I remember once I gave some training on a Friday afternoon and I opened it up to everybody and I couldn't understand why some groups were saying, no, it took me a while to plot Friday afternoon not a good idea. Lots of things like that, just connecting your understanding of their communities and things like fasting, holidays or spiritual rituals, connecting in with your organisation and the way that you work.
Speaker 1:I think empowerment and education is hugely important in the space of faith-based communities. Volunteers can play a huge role in educating members about their rights, self-care and recognising abusive behaviour within a faith context. But they should also understand that their responsibility is not to protect the reputation of the faith community. But they should also understand that their responsibility is not to protect the reputation of the faith community but to safeguard the well-being of all. Probably just two more things, if I have the time to just quickly shoehorn this in.
Speaker 1:Faith communities may face situations where religious teachings or beliefs conflict with safeguarding laws or ethical standards, for example, teachings on forgiveness versus reporting abuse. Volunteers should understand the importance of prioritising legal and safeguarding obligations, and employers must understand that context and provide that support and guidance. And sometimes that has to come outside of a face environment. So having a critical friend, a critical partner organisation or maybe someone who can be that critical friend to the organisation, particularly if you're a small organization, it's really, really useful. I think those are the key things that I would mention. Um, that really stand out for me. That's perfect.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for those insights. I know that there'll be a lot of people listening who are part of faith groups and communities, who work with volunteers on a daily basis and can really take these points into account. So thank you so much for your time, isabel. It's been really wonderful hearing your insights and chatting. My pleasure. 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 favourite 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.