Our training starts from the survivor perspective, bringing empathy and understanding to your religious organisation’s processes.

Beyond Just Words, enables the listener to bring together the skills to: listen to and ‘accompany’ a survivor, instilling trust and confidence in them; combining an understanding of safeguarding procedures with empathy. Enabling faith organisations to really accompany the survivor in their healing – going ‘beyond just words’.

When it comes to safeguarding within religious organisations, it can be very challenging: there are the bishops overseeing dioceses; clergy in charge of often more than one parish; Diocesan Safeguarding Co-ordinators; Parish Safeguarding Reps and then the Parish communities. In addition to these are the religious orders, living in community or in parishes. A ‘one size fits all’ safeguarding training is not appropriate. Policies and procedures are essential, but if the survivor is not at the centre of these, then they are soul-less.

Beyond Just Words provides bespoke training from the survivor perspective, the training presented will be unique to your organisation.

The training will be presented by survivors who will talk about how the church helped or hurt them on their journey to healing. There will be suggestions as to how to make the church a safe place to come whether it be at diocesan or parish level.

We have trainers with extensive experience in different religious organisations and secular community. Their unique backgrounds and survivor-based perspectives means that they know how to answer common questions that may come up during your training, as well as advising on providing support to survivors to enhance your safeguarding procedures.