Safe Church Practices

Safeguarding God's Children

The Diocese of Atlanta takes the subject of safe church practices very seriously.  We have used the Safeguarding God's' Children training program in the diocese since its inception in 2004. In 2006, we added the online training program, Safeguarding Online,  Both programs were developed and advanced by the Church Pension Group, in partnership with Praesidium, Inc., the curriculum designer.

Diocesan Policies for the Protection of Children and Youth from Abuse may be downloaded by clicking on the sidebar.  These policies have been adopted by the Diocese of Atlanta, based on the Model Policies developed by the Church Pension Group and Praesidium partnership. They include information and guidelines on screening, interacting, monitoring, training, and reporting with regard to adult supervision of and interaction with children and youth.

Safeguarding God's People

Safeguarding God's People is the new training program being introduced into the diocese which is for protection of adults with regard to sexual harassment and sexual exploitation.  There are two distinct programs:

Preventing Sexual Exploitation in Communities of Faith    For congregations: To help parishioners recognize the signs of potential  sexual exploitation in church leaders, and  For ministries: To make church leaders aware of the signs of sexual exploitation so they can help prevent it in their congregations, and

Preventing Sexual Harassment of Church Workers. -- For church workers (employees and volunteers): Sexual harassment as defined under federal law, examples of  types of illegal harassment, and explanation of the worker's rights and responsibilities  and  For managers and supervisors: Explanation of their responsibilities to prevent and respond appropriately to allegations of sexual harassment  Clergy and lay staff, leaders and certain volunteers will be required to attend these courses as they are rolled out over the next couple of years.

New model policy guidelines on these programs will be implemented in the roll out as well, similar to the way they were introduced in Safeguarding God's Children programming.

For questions concerning Safe Church Practices in the diocese, please contact Linda Scott at 404-601-5353 or 800-537-6743 x 155 or email Lscott@episcopalatlanta.org.

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