Why can't I send a message to this child?

There are a few reasons a child might not appear in your Chat list, or a message might not go through. Work down this list in order. The first two are about your church’s setup, the next four are about the child’s record.

If the child is not in your Chat list

1. Do you have Safe Messaging permission? Without it you cannot message any child, however senior you are. Your administrator grants it on the Site Administrators page. See How to give a leader permission to send Safe Messages.
2. Is Safe Messaging switched on for your site? It needs enabling for your church, and a Safeguarding Lead named, before anyone can use it. See How to turn on Safe Messaging for your church.
3. Are you in a group with them? You can only reach children you already work with through your group access, and that group needs chat switched on. See Who can message whom?
4. Does the child have a date of birth on record? Without one, Hubb cannot treat them correctly, and a child with no date of birth is treated as under 13.
5. Is the child in the right family? A child who sits in the wrong family, or in no family, has no guardian to approve their messages.
6. Does their guardian have an email address? A message cannot be sent to a child with no contactable guardian, because there is nobody to approve it. Your Safeguarding Dashboard lists every child in this position.

Points four to six are all family data, and the Children with no contactable guardian panel on the Safeguarding Dashboard is the fastest way to find them. See How to get your family data ready for Safe Messaging.

If you sent a message and it has not arrived

1. Look at the message in the conversation. A message that was not delivered is shown differently, with the reason underneath.
2. Approval expired means nobody approved or rejected it in time. Every guardian gets both an email and an app notification, but there are no reminders, so a busy week can mean nobody noticed. Ask your administrator to check the guardian has a valid email address on record, and remind the family that anything waiting is always in the app under Inbox, then Approvals. See What a parent sees, and how they approve a message.
3. Rejected means a guardian turned it down. You are told it was not delivered, but not why. A guardian’s reason is shared with your Safeguarding Lead, not with the sender, and that is deliberate. Where a child has more than one guardian, whichever one acted first made the decision.
4. Still waiting means it is with the parent. Your church sets how long they have. See How to choose your Safe Messaging settings.
5. If you have hit the weekly limit for that child, that is your church’s setting rather than a fault. It counts what you sent, so rejected and expired messages count too.

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Good to know

• You cannot reach children through a group chat, and that is deliberate rather than a fault. Children are never in group chats, so a group message will not reach them. Message each child individually instead, or send a mailing to the group.
• If children are being left out of a mailing or Broadcast rather than a chat message, that is the same set of checks. Without the permission, children are excluded with a warning. With it, they go to approval, and any child with no contactable guardian is excluded with a warning of their own. See Sending a mailing or Broadcast to a group that includes children.
• A child who has just turned into an adult on your records will stop going through the approval step, and that change is flagged on your Safeguarding Dashboard for your Safeguarding Lead to check.
• Administrators: most reports of this turn out to be family data rather than permissions. Check the dashboard panel before you start changing settings.
• If a parent says they never receive approval requests, the email address on their record is the first thing to check.