SAFEGUARDING

 

General Superintendent Statement of Commitment to Safeguarding

Elim is committed to creating healthy churches and safe spaces for all. We recognise the ways in which children and adults can be at risk of harm or abuse, so endeavour to create a culture to minimise opportunities for abuse to occur.

Children rely on adults to keep them safe, therefore all our churches working with children, either directly or indirectly, are committed to safeguarding children in their care. We seek to do this by providing a safe, stable, and nurturing environment where children can reach their full potential.

Similarly, within our churches there are adults in need of protection, care and support due to vulnerability, whether that is a permanent or temporary state. We are aware too that within our churches there are relationships of trust, which flourish best within healthy churches and environments, where there is openness, transparency and accountability.

We firmly believe that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, and all involved in the life of our churches and activities have a role to play in keeping children, young people and adults safe.

Chris Cartwright – General Superintendent

Please click on this link to see our safeguarding policy including contact details of our safeguarding co-ordinators.

If you wish to raise a concern regarding safeguarding within the Elim organisation, this form can be used to notify the National Safeguarding Coordinator. A copy of the form will also be emailed to the person completing the information.

If you have any safeguarding concerns or queries please get in touch with our church safeguarding coordinator Louise Leale and deputy safeguarding coordinator Amy Le Prevost.

Safeguarding information: Online Sexual Abuse

Recent news stories have highlighted that:

  • since covid in 2019, there has been an increase in sexual abuse of children between ages 7-10 online. This included indecent images and children coerced into performing sexual acts on themselves and others in front of a camera.

  • before the pandemic there were 5000 images online of this nature, shockingly last year 63,000 images were online which amounts to an increase of just over 1000%.

  • children as young as nine are being exposed to pornography online

  • a quarter of 16-21 year olds admit to viewing pornography whilst still in primary school

  • half of 16-21 year olds had viewed pornography by the age of 13

  • 79% of 18-21 year olds had seen pornography involving sexual violence as children.

A child being exposed to pornography is considered as sexual abuse in itself. Given these horrendous statistics it is inevitable that families within our church have been, are and will be affected by this topic. We wanted to bring your attention to this issue as arguably, circumstances like these are such that we as a church are called to acknowledge, educate ourselves and act accordingly in order to respond, support and prevent as much as possible.

Here are some of the resources available as support around this topic:

 Support for pornography addiction:

 Filter, accountability and recovery software:

  • Google safe search

  • Victory: Covenant Eyes

  • Brainbuddy: Quit Porn Forever