We have already helped several dioceses to roll out Safeguarding Hubs, and we will be pleased to guide you each step of the way.
For those who want to plan ahead, these are the steps that we will be taking.
Step 1 - Familiarise yourself with Stage 1
If you've not recently seen them, spend a few minutes watching these two videos:
- Safeguarding Hubs - Overview (4 min)
- Safeguarding Hubs - Stage 1 (6 min)
Step 2 - Give it a try
We'll create a demo hub that can be used by diocesan staff. Discover how easy it is to create a new role and then assign someone to it,
Step 3 - Customise the help text for key roles (optional)
We are aware of some variation within the Church of England regarding diocesan advice about certain roles (e.g. do PSOs need a barred list check?). Therefore, you might want to customise the DBS and training hep text for the following roles:
- Parish Safeguarding Officers
- Churchwardens
- PCC members
You can customise the help text via the Settings section of the Safeguarding Hub Tools.
Please let us know if you need access to the hub tools.
Step 4 - Decide who to initially invite
There are two different methods for inviting people to be Hub Owners:
- Method 1 - Email invitations
This is the best mehod if you want to start by inviting Hub Owners from a few chosen parishes. - Method 2 - Online invitations
This is the best method for inviting Hub Owners from a larger group of parishes (e.g. all parishes that have reached Level 3 on their dashboard).
Step 4 is to make a decision about which method you want to use.
Step 5 - Notifying your parishes
Before issuing any invitations, you need to tell both incumbents and PSOs about Safeguarding Hubs. You will probably want to point them to this page...
https://www.safeguardinghubs.org.uk/introduction.php
You may want to give some advance notification to all parishes via your usual communication channels (e.g. newsletters and website). Alternatively, our Email Sender makes it really easy to target parishes that are already using Safeguarding Dashboards
Step 6 - Invite people to be Hub Owners
As mentioned in Step 4, there are two different methods for inviting people to be Hub Owners:
Step 7 - Tell parishes about their online invitation
This step is only relevant if you have switched on online invitations. Use our Email Sender to send the following email to the relevant parishes.
I am very grateful for everything that you are doing to make our parishes safer.
I'm also pleased to tell you that we have invested in some new tools to help you with safer recruitment and people management.
A Safeguarding Hub is an extension to your existing Safeguarding Dashboard, and the tools can be switched on in three stages:
- Stage 1 - DBS and training records
- Stage 2 - Role descriptions and person specifications
- Stage 3 - Safer recruitment and People Management
This 4-minute video explains the features and benefits of each stage..
.safeguardinghubs.org.uk/overview.php
If you go to your Safeguarding Dashboard you should find an invitation to register for your Safeguarding Hub.
Our Diocese Board of Finance has invested in Safeguarding Hubs to make safeguarding easier for you. I commend it to you.