How to use your Safeguarding Dashboard

Oversight only works if it is easy. The Safeguarding Dashboard pulls everything your Safeguarding Lead needs to look at into one page, so the job is a few minutes a week rather than a trawl through records. You will find it behind the shield icon in the left of your web office, and the shield in the top bar carries a count of items waiting for attention.

Only your named Safeguarding Lead can see this area. Full site administrators cannot, however senior they are. Our own support team can see it through their support login, so we can help if something is not working.

Unless a panel says otherwise, the dashboard shows activity from the last 30 days.

What each panel tells you

Five counters run across the top, giving you the headline numbers at a glance. Underneath, each one opens out into detail.

• Messages awaiting review. Safe Messages you have not yet marked as reviewed. This is the number on the shield badge, and clicking through takes you to the full list. See How to review Safe Messages.
• Recent age-status changes. Accounts that have moved from child to adult or guardian, either by someone editing a date of birth or by an age category override. It is here so you can check the change was genuine rather than a way round Safe Messaging.
• Rejected approvals. Messages a parent or guardian turned down, with the reason they gave. Treat these as high priority: a parent rejecting a message is telling you something.
• Children with no contactable guardian. Children who have no guardian in their family, or whose guardians have no email address. Messages to these children cannot be approved, so they cannot be sent. This panel is your to-do list for tidying family data. See How to get your family data ready for Safe Messaging.
• Expired or unactioned approvals. Messages that expired because no guardian approved or rejected them in time. You can see when it was sent, who sent it, which child it was for, whether the guardian was notified, and when it expired.
• Senders nearing the weekly limit. Leaders who have sent 80% or more of the weekly limit to at least one child in the last seven days. Rows at or above the limit are highlighted. See How to choose your Safe Messaging settings.

A sensible weekly routine

1. Open the dashboard and clear Messages awaiting review, reading each message and marking it as reviewed.
2. Look at Rejected approvals and follow up anything that needs a conversation.
3. Check Recent age-status changes and satisfy yourself each one is genuine.
4. Work through Children with no contactable guardian, or pass the list to whoever looks after your people records.
5. Glance at Expired approvals and Senders nearing the limit to see whether your settings need adjusting.

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Good to know

• The dashboard is a prompt, not a policy. It tells you what to look at. What you do about it is your safeguarding process, and that sits with people rather than software. See Safe Messaging and your safeguarding policy.
• A quiet dashboard is a good sign, not a reason to stop looking. Empty panels say plainly that there is nothing in that period.
• Several panels have a search box, which is useful when you are following up one particular child or leader.
• Because only one person can hold the Safeguarding Lead role, it is worth agreeing who covers the reviewing when they are on holiday, and reassigning the role if they will be away for a while. See How to turn on Safe Messaging for your church.
• A lot of expired approvals usually means your approval window is too short for your families, rather than that parents are ignoring you. There are no reminders, so a busy week is enough. See What a parent sees, and how they approve a message.