The Diocesan Safeguarding Team is on hand to support you in your PSO role. Working together with you, we share and maintain best practice safeguarding advice so that our clergy, volunteers, advisers, and lay people are safe within our churches and in the communities that we serve.
The Diocesan Safeguarding Team offers advice, support, and guidance to anyone in the diocese about on all aspects of safeguarding.
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Advice and support: telephone, email, and face-to-face consultation about a range of issues.
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Casework: management of complex cases, joint working with statutory agencies, consultation, and advice.
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Support for survivors: direct support and advice, provision of Authorised Listeners.
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Supervision of offenders and those who pose risk: working with individuals who have criminal convictions, or where other safeguarding risks are identified, to ensure that they, and all members of the church community, are safeguarded.
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Policy and practice: signposting to national and local policies and practice guidance.
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Training: safeguarding training to clergy and other leaders, including training on-site and online.
Team contact details
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Louise Whitehead, Head of Safeguarding
Email | 07391 868 478 -
Erica Hegg, Area Advisor for Oxford and Dorchester
Email | 07341 866 832 -
Tsungai Muchegwa, Area Advisor for Buckinghamshire
Email | 07435 550 685 -
Charlotte Wilmshurst, Area Advisor for Berkshire
Email | 07443 700 159 / 01865 208284 -
Melody Stack, Safeguarding Training & Policy Adviser
Email | 01865 587041 -
Helen Walker, Safeguarding Training & Policy Adviser
Email -
Linda Carpenter, Safeguarding Training & DBS Administrator
Email | 01865 208267 -
Charlotte Dover, HR & Safeguarding Team Administrator
Email | 01865 208278
The support you will recieve from us
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Your Area Safeguarding Advisor will arrange to call you to welcome you to your new role. This will give you an opportunity to ask any questions that you may have.
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You will get another call from your Area Safeguarding Advisor following your Induction training to discuss your role to date and your development plan.
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We are currently exploring PSO mentoring for new PSOs to link them with a more experienced PSO who will volunteer their time.
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We offer quarterly PSO safeguarding drop-in sessions to support parishes with safeguarding queries. Please visit the diocesan website to register for any sessions that you might want to attend.
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We also offer Training, DBS, Dashboard and Safer Recruitment drop-in sessions, which are led by our DBS Administrator and Safeguarding Training and Policy Adviser, to offer advice and support to Parishes.
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There are safeguarding resources available from Thirtyoneeight on Safeguarding Sunday, which takes place each Autumn.
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Please look out for the quarterly safeguarding newsletters from the diocese. These are automatically sent to every PSO on our database. You can also subscribe using the button below.