Church admin systems (e.g. ChurchSuite) provide a wide range of tools to help parishes with church administration. However, any parish that is using an admin system for safeguarding purposes needs to consider the following questions:

• Are you keeping a record of historical DBS and safeguarding training records?
  When a DBS check or safeguarding training is refreshed, some churches simply overwrite the old record with the new. If so, where are you keeping the record of historical DBS safeguarding training records?
   
• Are you keeping a record of the type of DBS check?
  It is not sufficient simply to record the DBS certificate number and date.  A church must also record the type of check (e.g. an enhanced check for children's workforce without a barred list check).
   
• Are you keeping evidence that each step in the recruitment process has been completed?
  For a new volunteer working with children or vulnerable adults, the recruitment process involves 10 steps.  Do you keep record of who did what and when?
   
• Can you guarantee that safeguarding records will not be accidentally deleted in the future?
  The Church of England requires safeguarding records to be kept for 25 years after the church loses contact with someone.  In many cases, this will be 25 years after they died.
   

Safeguarding Hubs

With Safeguarding Hubs, the answer to the above four questions is 'Yes'.

Safeguarding Hubs also provide the following features: 

• They provide help with producing Role Descriptions and Person Specifications (which are mandatory).
• They automatically produce Volunteer Agreements (which are mandatory).
• If your DBS provider is Thirtyone:Eight or APCS, these systems will automatically send DBS records directly to your Safeguarding Hub.
• Later this year, the Safeguarding Training Portal will automatically send training records directly to your Safeguarding Hub.