The Parish Safeguarding Dashboard has been designed to display a clear and simple Dashboard on a mobile, tablet or computer. It allows the Incumbent, Parish Safeguarding officer and other authorised users to see the current status at a glance.
The Dashboard tracks parish compliance with policy and procedure, and uses a traffic light system to alert when an action is due to be reviewed. From the Dashboard, users can produce Safeguarding Action Plan reports to show all actions, both completed and outstanding, or to show only the outstanding actions, which can be used to assist in focusing on completing the outstanding tasks and also presented to the PCC.
The overwhelming feedback from parishes is that it is easy to use and makes life simpler for Parish Safeguarding Officers. To see the dashboard in action, you can watch a short video here and if your parish is not already using the Dashboard and you want to start using it, email louisa.mccabe@peterborough-diocese.org.uk
Further information can be found on the Safeguarding Dashboards website.
Once you have been sent an invitation email and you have registered, you will be able to access your dashboard from: https://www.parishdashboards.org.uk.
The Parish Safeguarding Hub is an extension to the Parish Safeguarding Dashboard, which parishes can opt-in to using if their Dashboard is at Level 2 or Level 3. It allows for the secure storage of the training and DBS records of all volunteers, PCC members and employees of a parish, and includes features to track compliance with the Safer Recruitment and People Management Code of Practice for new and existing volunteers and employees.
Further information about the Hubs, including the Service Agreement, can be found on the Safeguarding Hubs website.
Updates to the Dashboard and Hub
Clearly Simpler will be emailing users of the Dashboard in September to advise of the changes that will be made to the Dashboard in January, and there are also some changes being made to the Hub to following the updated Safer Recruitment and People Management Code of Practice.
In case you do not receive the email from Clearly Simpler, the changes which are going to be made to the Dashboard are as follows:
- New Dashboard lights will only come on in January – there will be a new one for all levels in relation to DBS checks for church wardens and PCC members. At present there is only a light asking about their training.
- Advance notifications – at present lights turn amber at 3 months to the deadline. Clearly Simpler are giving you an option to opt in to be emailed 3 months prior to the expiry date, and the light will then green until 1 month before the deadline.
- Email options: You will need to select the frequency to receive email notifications; the options will be: each task, once a day, once a week, or once a month.
- Schedule of tasks: In the reports menu, there will be a new report called “schedule of tasks”, and will list in order of deadline outstanding and upcoming tasks to review. You will be able to select a time period for upcoming tasks of 6 months, 1 year, or all tasks (up to 3 years).
The changes to the Hub are as follows:
Multi-Factor Authentication has been strongly recommended for Hubs with 50 or more volunteers recorded and mandatory for Hubs with 100 or more volunteers, for security. This is going to change to strongly recommended for Hubs with over 20 volunteers recorded, and mandatory for Hubs with 50 or more volunteers recorded. This means when you log in to the Hub, you will need to request that a code is emailed to you to gain access.
Safer Recruitment and People Management processes – as part of the compliance with the new code of practice, from September there will be the option to switch on for each role the tracking of supervision and support meetings, so that roles which require regular check-ins can have these recorded.