Safe Messaging: a guide for parents and guardians

If your church uses Safe Messaging, a leader from your child’s group can send them a short message through the week: a word of encouragement, a note that they were missed, a question about how a match or an exam went. You are in the middle of every one of them. Nothing reaches your child until you have read the whole message and approved it.

How it works

1. A leader writes a message to your child.
2. The message is held. It does not go to your child.
3. You are notified, and you can read the message in full. You also see the last few messages of the conversation, so you have the whole picture rather than one line out of context.
4. You choose to approve it or reject it.
5. If you approve it, it is delivered to your child. If you reject it, or if you do nothing within the time your church has set, it is never delivered and the leader is told.

How you will hear about it

Every message waiting for you is sent two ways, so you have two chances to catch it. You will get an email saying a message has been sent to your child that needs your approval, with a link to review it, and a notification in your church app saying approval is required. Either one takes you to the same page.

If your child has more than one parent or guardian on their record, all of you are told. Whoever gets there first decides, and the rest of you are told what was decided. Nobody is left guessing, and approval never waits on one person being free.

There is one notification per message and no reminders, so it is worth acting when you see it. If you miss it, the message simply expires and is never delivered.

Finding anything waiting for you

You never have to rely on catching the notification. Anything waiting is always in the app.

1. Open your church app and go to Inbox.
2. Tap the Approvals tab, alongside Messages and Notifications.
3. Anything waiting for you is listed there. When there is nothing, it simply says no messages are waiting for approval.

Seeing your child’s conversations

You can look at your child’s messages whenever you like, not just when one is waiting for approval.

1. In the app, tap Chat.
2. At the top of the Chat list, use the dropdown showing your own name and choose your child instead.
3. Open any conversation. You will see everything your child sees, with no message box, and a line at the foot confirming you are viewing their chat read only.

If you do not have the app yet, our guide on installing the church app on your phone takes two minutes.

What you can be sure of

• You see every message before your child does. There are no exceptions and no private channel.
• You can look at your child’s conversations at any time, so you always know exactly what they see.
• Only leaders your church has specifically authorised can message a child, and only children they already work with through their group.
• Messages are one-to-one and text only. No photos, no files, and children are never part of group chats.
• Your child cannot start a conversation with an adult, and cannot reply at all unless your church has chosen to allow it. It is switched off as standard.
• If your church does allow replies, your child’s replies come to you for approval too, in exactly the same way.
• Every message is kept and can be seen by your church’s named Safeguarding Lead. Nothing can be deleted to hide it.
• Nobody needs your child’s phone number, and there is no separate app. It all happens inside your church’s own app.
• There is a limit on how many messages a leader can send your child each week, so contact stays occasional and purposeful.

If your child is under 13

Younger children usually have no login of their own. You read the approved message to them, or show it to them, from your own account using the steps above. That keeps a young child’s church contact inside your family, where it belongs, and means children without a phone are not left out.

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Good to know

• You are not obliged to approve anything. Rejecting a message is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and you can give a reason. Your church’s Safeguarding Lead sees rejections and the reasons given, so it is a real signal, not a dead end.
• If approval requests are not reaching you, check the email address your church holds for you, look in your junk folder, and make sure you have your church app installed with notifications switched on. Whatever happens with notifications, the Approvals tab in the app always shows anything waiting.
• Each church sets its own approval window and its own weekly limit, so the exact timings depend on your church rather than on Hubb.