What Safe Messaging is, and how it works

A child mentions at church that they have a big test coming up. Later that week their leader sends a short message: I’ll be praying for you, it was great to see you on Sunday. It is a small thing, and it tells that young person they are known and they belong. Safe Messaging exists to make those small things possible through the week, and to make them safe.

Two people always see every message

Safe Messaging rests on two things happening every single time, with no exceptions and no way round either of them.

• A parent or guardian approves it. Every message is held, and the parent reads it in full before it goes anywhere. If they reject it, or simply do nothing in time, it is never delivered. See What a parent sees, and how they approve a message.
• Your Safeguarding Lead oversees it. Every message is permanently recorded, whether it was approved, rejected or left to expire, and your named Safeguarding Lead can see all of them. See How to use your Safeguarding Dashboard.

How a message travels

1. A leader with Safe Messaging permission writes to a child in Chat, in the ordinary way.
2. The message is held rather than delivered, and the child’s parent or guardian is notified, by email and by a notification in your church app.
3. The parent reads it, along with the last few messages of the conversation for context, and approves or rejects it. If they reject it they can give a reason.
4. If approved, it is delivered. If rejected or expired, the leader is told it was not delivered. The parent’s reason goes to your Safeguarding Lead rather than to the leader.
5. Either way, the message and its outcome go into your Safe Messages record, permanently.

Where a child has more than one guardian, every one of them is notified. Whoever acts first decides, and the others are told what was decided. Separated families are handled properly without anyone having to think about it.

The limits built in

• Only leaders your church has specifically authorised can message a child at all, and only children they already work with through their group. See How to give a leader permission to send Safe Messages.
• Messages are one-to-one and text only. No images, no files.
• Children are never part of group chats, so there is no group route to a child.
• Children cannot reply unless your church chooses to allow it, and a child can never start a conversation with an adult. See Replies from children, and how they are approved.
• A weekly limit caps how many messages one leader can send one child, so contact stays occasional. See How to choose your Safe Messaging settings.
• Accounts that change from child to adult are flagged for your Safeguarding Lead to check, in case the change was made to get round the approval step.
• Every route to a child is covered, not just chat. Mailings, Broadcasts and text messages to children go through the same approval.

Where to go next

Our guide Setting up Safe Messaging, start to finish puts the whole setup in order, with a link to each detailed guide and a tick list at the end. If you are starting from nothing, start there.

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Good to know

• Safe Messaging is switched off when your site is created. Ask our support team to enable it, then your church names a Safeguarding Lead and switches it on. See How to turn on Safe Messaging for your church.
• It is available on church management plans, included at no extra cost.
• It applies across your whole site rather than group by group, and turning it on tightens contact with children rather than opening it up.
• Nobody has to use it. It is an option for leaders who want it, not something imposed on a children’s team.
• It sits under your existing safeguarding policy and your denomination’s guidance. It is a tool for the trained people who already do this well, not a replacement for them. See Safe Messaging and your safeguarding policy.