The Church’s safeguarding office is to be relocated from Birmingham into the headquarters of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales at Eccleston Square, central London.
The Catholic Safeguarding Advisory Service (CSAS) will move to London before the lease expires on its current offices in February 2015. In a statement, the trustees for the Catholic Trust for England and Wales (the legal entity of the Bishops’ Conference) said the relocation fulfils the 2007 Cumberlege Commission which called for CSAS to be fully integrated into mainstream church structures.
CSAS is funded by the bishops’ conference and provides advice on child-protection matters to the Church. In recent years it has completed safeguarding audits of all 22 dioceses in England and Wales. Its work is overseen by the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission which lists the same Birmingham address as CSAS on its website.
Both organisations replaced the Catholic Office for Child Protection and Vulnerable Adults that was set up following the Nolan Report of 2001.
Adrian Child, the director of CSAS, said that while his body is not independent, “I think we’ve built up a reputation of impartiality and I feel reasonably confident that will continue in the new premises.” Mr Child added there had been discussions about CSAS having a separate switchboard and postal address, adding that it might be difficult for some victims of abuse to come through the Eccleston Square switchboard.
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