Safeguarding & Policies
LCSD takes its duty and obligation to protect all extremely seriously. We have adopted thorough Safeguarding procedures and guidelines and ask our community to work within them.
If you have any safeguarding concerns relating to any members of our community, please contact us on info@lcsd.org.uk.
Safeguarding for Spiritual Directors
As part of our community, we ask all our directors to have up-to-date safeguarding training at level C0 and C1 (Basic Awareness and Foundation) at a minimum. This can be accessed through local church structures.
If you are within the Church of England, you can access training here.
You can also access safeguarding training from thirtyone:eight. They suggest that their webinar on adult safeguarding would be most appropriate for spiritual directors.
This training should be repeated every three years.
At regular intervals, we provide a ‘bolt-on’ Safeguarding for Spiritual Direction session which is designed to be a supplement to other safeguarding training to allow us to explore the unique aspects of safeguarding within Spiritual Direction. For more details, please check our Events page for the latest courses.
Advice for Spiritual Directors
If you have urgent severe safeguarding concerns about a directee, call 999.
If you have any other safeguarding concerns, follow the procedures set out according to your diocese or church community. Keep a written record of any concerning incident or conversation, and make sure you know how to contact the relevant Safeguarding Officer before you need to do so.
Useful contacts include:
31:8 24-hour helpline - 0303 003 1111 - this is staffed Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm, with an out of hours emergency service for urgent calls. They offer advice and support about a range of concerns. See more online here.
The Samaritans - 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org (24 hour response time)
To find a local NHS urgent mental health helpline (England only), search online here.
The mental health charity Mind has a directory of crisis helplines, also downloadable as a pdf, available here.
Safeguarding
Our safeguarding policy is available for download here. This has been created with advice from the organisation 31:8, and accordingly the trustees have agreed not to allow it to be copied or duplicated by other organisations.
Privacy
Find out how the London Centre for Spiritual Direction takes care of your data.
The London Centre of Spiritual Direction (LCSD) aims to provide high quality services which meet your needs. We believe we achieve this most of the time: If we are not getting it right please let us know. We have policies in place for complaints, please see below.
Complaints procedure
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Policy
London Centre of Spiritual Direction (LCSD) is committed to encouraging equality, diversity and inclusion among our staff and volunteers, and eliminating unlawful discrimination.
The aim is for our organisation to be truly representative of all sections of society and for each employee to feel respected and able to give their best.
The organisation - in providing services - is also committed against unlawful discrimination of customers or the public. For more information please see our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy below.