Palm, S. (2025). Child safety in faith communities: Moving from words to actions. Sexual Violence Research Initiative.

Abstract

This learning brief forms part of SVRI’s Community of Practice on Faith and Gender-based violence. Its insights emerge from discussions with 30 participants within a newly designed three-month virtual course – Faith and Helping Children Thrive without Violence. This course was co-designed and piloted as a main activity of its 325-member working group from over 60 countries in 6 continents1 . It centres the lived experiences, stories and practice-based knowledge of selected working group members through structured learning dialogues in early 2025 between participants around 32 short audio-visual contributions which focused specifically on faith and violence against children, and which were provided by other working group members. This brief draws on their voices and insights from diverse faith traditions and countries around the world as well as offering access to videos (5-10 minutes each) from just four of the course contributors that formed the course backbone. Whilst many faith institutions are developing child safeguarding policies, practitioners insist that more work needs to be done to ensure these paper policies translate into practice through building a shared culture of safeguarding if faith institutions are to move from words alone to action.