Safe Ministry Records – A guide

February 2019

Introduction
The recent Royal Commission into institutional response to child sexual abuse has made it clear how important accurate, detailed records of the people who work with children in our churches – whether paid or volunteer.

For this reason, it is very important to ensure that proper record systems are in place in our parishes for the accurate and consistent recording of safe ministry information in a way that is up-to-date, comprehensive, accessible, sustainable, long lasting and secure.

This document seeks to set out the basic requirements for proper record systems and the options available to parishes in this area from a ‘best practice’ perspective.

Implications for parishes

1. Security/Privacy
2. Bare minimum v best practice.
3. Choosing your record keeping method 

Accuracy

The highest priority is to make sure that you are keeping (or start to keep!) the highest quality records that you can, using whatever system you are currently using, or upgrading to a better system (see later).
A common situation in churches is that the actual data entry is often delegated to an admin person in the church office. This is perfectly acceptable, but it is still the responsibility of the Safe Ministry Rep to make sure the data is accurate and up to date.

Here are some tips:

• Plan to regularly check the actual records yourself
• Design a simple process/procedure to ensure accurate and consistent data entry.
  EG: All WWCC and Safe Ministry Training information for the records must come through you first, then go to data entry (if that is handled by a different person), then is checked by you, say once a month, or a couple of times a term.
• When checking the records, if it is a standalone file (ie: a spreadsheet or similar) take the opportunity to back it up. Create an organised approach to backups, making sure at least one back up is kept in a location other than the church or your computer.

Security/Privacy

With the presence of sensitive personal information (D.O.B. and other contact information), we need to be confident in the level of security around these records.
So, for all electronic records, password protecting access to the Safe Ministry record file/system is essential.
Any paper records should be stored in securely locked cabinets – preferably fire resistant.

Access to the Safe Ministry records should be restricted to the Safe Ministry Representative, Rector and perhaps a Warden. The exception to this would be if Safe Ministry records are kept as part of a church management system that ministry staff all have access to.

What data

Post-Royal Commission we have a strong imperative to keep the best quality records possible. This is a description of exactly what data is required to be kept to satisfy both Diocesan and State Government requirements.

Name
Address
Phone
Email

WWCC Number
D.O.B
Expiry Date
Date Verified
Result
Who verified by (Note: State legislation now requires us to keep records of ALL verifications. We cannot simply overwrite the last verification details with the new information.)

Date of last Safe Ministry Training
Type of training (Essentials or Refresher)
Name of Trainer (if f2f,  otherwise ‘onl;ine’)
Location of training (‘online’ for most now)
Expiry date of training (Note: The Diocese now requires us to keep records of ALL Safe Ministry Training information. We cannot simply overwrite the last verification details with the new information.)
Ministry Position
Date commenced ministry
Interstate or overseas workers: – police check and references Information
Note field (for additional unstructured info)

Obviously, the more information that is added, the greater the complexity, and the more care needed to be taken in maintaining the records.

In addition to the above, you will almost certainly need an addition filing system – either electronic or a paper-based file for miscellaneous documents such as: Volunteer Application Forms, Safe Ministry training certificates, copies of police checks, references, etc.
Many if not all of these could be scanned and stored electronically.

Choosing your record keeping medium

This is a strategic, long term decision (unless you are a very small church), and so careful consideration should be given to the choice of recording method to avoid potential loss of data and time consuming re-entry of data.
Post The Royal Commission we now know that we need to keep such records indefinitely  – due largely to the very long time between an offence occurring in a church and the reporting of that offence (currently an average of 22-23 years). So HOW we record this information needs to take into account the ability to maintain the integrity of the data over a very long period of time.

Elvanto and Church Community Builder for mid-large sized churches.

Many middle-sized and larger churches are now using powerful cloud-based, Church Management Systems such as Elvanto or Church Community Builder.
These offer great flexibility and power in the way information can be stored and reports generated.
They offer flexible layout options, excellent access control, powerful reporting functions, and access from any internet-enabled device and provide backup redundancy, ensuring that the data is safely backed up.
You can even minimise the paper aspect of your Safe Ministry Records, because these tools allow you scan documents as pdf’s and upload them to form part of an individual’s records.

So if your church is using one of those CMS’s, you are probably in a good position in terms of using a system that can grow with you, is secure and safely backed up.

See the Appendix for sample screenshots as examples of how these systems can be used for recording a person’s safe ministry data.

Smaller churches

If your church is not large enough or chooses not to use systems like Elvanto, what are your options?

• Spreadsheet
  This is the most common tool used by smaller churches. While it is perfectly acceptable in terms of having the capacity to store the required data, there are limitations to spreadsheets and the do require careful attention in order to make organised and consistent backups, securing the file(s) with strong passwords. Key limitations are: lack of ability to store electronic version of paper documents and no data checking on entry, no ability to set up automatic reminders.
  Auxiliary paper records.
  These are the copies of documents like: Safe Ministry Training certificates, volunteer application forms, references, police checks, WWCC clearance screen prints, etc. Even in fully electronic recording systems, it is hard to escape these, so provision needs to be made for them. Just keeping a manila folder in a filing cabinet is not really sufficient, they should be organised in a manner that makes documents easy to find, they need to be kept securely with access limited to the Senior Minister, the Safe Ministry Rep. and perhaps Wardens.

• Google Docs. Some churches who use the free Google software internally for rosters and the like, have also adopted it for safe ministry records. However, this is strongly not recommended, as there are significant privacy issues related to the Terms and Conditions of Use that Google impose on users. This is also the case with most other companies that offer free cloud-based applications. Because Safe Ministry records include sensitive personal information, it is strongly recommended that an alternative system is adopted.
• Other non-cloud software (eg: Pastoral Care, Access database, etc)
  This kind of software is less flexible and is unlikely to provide the kind of features needed to store Safe Ministry records.

The ODSM offers a free, online Safe Ministry Record system for the use of any church in the diocese. It’s called SaMRO.  See the next tab for more information.

To help our churches maintain the high standard necessary, we now offer Safe Ministry Records Online (SaMRO). This is a database designed for any church to use as a safe, secure easy to use system for maintaining the electronic aspect of parish Safe ministry records. It is hosted, run and maintained by the ODSM and is offered at no cost to any church in the Diocese of Sydney.

For more information, please see the SaMRO page

An archive of SMR Newsletters from the Safe Ministry Parish Consultant can be found here:
https://safeministry.org.au/archive-of-smr-newsletters/

Note that these archive start from April 2020 (when changed newsletter software)

Content to come…