The Diocese of Southwestern Virginia is committed to ensuring that its churches, schools, and institutions live out our baptismal promises by providing a safe environment free of abuse, exploitation, and harassment.
The Safe Church, Safe Communities courses teach how exploitation, abuse, and harassment occur, the awareness we need to prevent such occurrences, and how to respond should an incident of abuse, exploitation, or harassment occur. The courses also focus on safe use of technology and the ministry to and with vulnerable adults.
Training Information
Safe Church certification training is offered online and in-person.
Below is the procedure to set up and complete the certification training online with Praesidium Academy, the online Safe Church training platform partner of The Episcopal Church.
- Complete a Safe Church Enrollment Form to set up a new online account. If you already have a Praesidium Academy account and need to reset your password, click here to recover your account.
- Check your inbox as well as spam, junk, and promotions folders for a welcome email from [email protected]. If no email is received or to reset your password, click on the link in Step 1 (above) to recover your account. Click on the button in the welcome email to activate your Praesidium account and enter some additional information to complete your account setup.
- Complete all Safe Church Required Courses.
- Download your transcript and send a copy to your parish’s Safe Church Recordkeeper. **Clergy: Please also send a copy of your transcript to Kristen Hester for your diocesan clergy file.
For future in-person training dates, please see the events calendar
Certification & Background Checks
In accordance with the policies of this diocese and The Episcopal Church, clergy, lay leaders, staff, and volunteers who are required to be Safe Church certified must complete a recertification every three years. See the training requirements listed below to find out those individuals needing certification in Safe Church, Safe Communities.
Safe Church, Safe Communities policies also require background checks every five years for all staff (clergy will still have background checks done through Oxford), those working with children and youth (paid and unpaid), wardens, treasurers, and program leaders as a best practice policy. Credit checks should be run for those with access to church finances (treasurers and wardens). For more information, click on the link below.
Policies
We provide a formal document for the Policy for the Protection of Children and Youth.
We provide a formal document for the Policy for the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation & Abuse of Adults and Protection of Vulnerable Adults.
Presiding Bishop Curry on Safe Church
Clergy Discipline: Title IV
Clergy discipline in The Episcopal Church is addressed under a church-wide structure of canon law commonly known as “Title IV.” Title IV details the grounds and processes for ecclesiastical discipline in the Church. It is shaped to encourage accountability, justice, reconciliation, restoration and pastoral responses. However, its focus is to address claims that clergy may have engaged in conduct constituting an offense under the Canons. For more information about Title IV, please visit The Episcopal Church’s Title IV website at https://www.titleiv.org/.
In the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, discipline of priests and deacons is addressed by this process and involves both the Diocesan Disciplinary Board and the Diocesan Bishop.
Suspected misconduct of Episcopal priests and deacons in Southwestern Virginia, may be reported to one of the two available diocesan Intake Officers. Southwestern Virginia’s Intake Officers are listed below.