Safe Ministry Records Online (SaMRO) 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.
You can read about the SaMRO here. At the end of that page are links for a more detailed document and the spreadsheet template for data transfer.
Any problems or questions, email Neil Atwood
This is a guide to the basic functions of the system, but if you have any questions not covered here, please contact us directly.
This guide assumes that you already have the basic details of your church members set up in the system (something we assist with)
Basic Functions
Assuming you are logged in, and you have located the record of the person concerned:
Note that ALL these fields are required for proper WWCC records.
Go to the ‘Person’ menu and select ‘List All’ from the drop down.
That will display a list of everyone in the system in your church.
Using the links to the right of each persons entry, you can View that persons record, Edit that persons record, or create a note about that person.
List all persons from your church
Go to the login page, and simply enter the provided username and password to give you access to your church records.
Using the system
The Office of the Children’s Guardian requires all employers to keep historical information pertaining to WWCC details of our volunteer and paid workers.
This means that we need to keep accurate records of all renewals and verifications of people with a WWCC in our church who are working with children.
Likewise, it is highly recommended that we do the same with Safe Ministry Training information.
SaMRO has a Notes Template function to assist with both these items.
So when (for example) a person renews their WWCC and you then re-verify them, this is the process to follow in SaMRO:
So this means that the persons normal record view will always have the current data in it, but any previous information for WWCC or Safe Ministry Training will be attached to their record and viewing via the Notes function.
The system is based around family units, and so even a single person needs to belong to a family (of one).
Under the ‘Family’ menu, choose ‘Add’ and the following screen allows you to enter basic information for a new family.
Note that you can enter multiple family members on this one screen.
Once filled in, click the ‘Create’ button at the bottom of the screen to save the details. Individual family members can then be edited to add or change details.
Here’s a list of all the currently used fields in the system:
WWCC
Safe Ministry Training
Current Ministry Position
A key part of the Safe Ministry Records system is that you cannot delete a person from the system.
This is because records of people must be retained for an indefinite period. This allows historical records of people’s WWCC and Safe Ministry Training details to be recovered if a complaint should be made against someone in the future.
However, it is not efficient to have your church’s records to be cluttered with people who no longer attend there.
So if a person moves away from your church or dies, you should simply edit their record, and change the ‘status’ field to ‘archived’.
Then, they will not appear in your day-to-day lists or reports, but their record can be accessed if required, by running the report set up under the menu ‘Persons’ > ‘Reports’
See this entry for more details
With the Safe Ministry Records system, every person in the database also belongs to a family.
So when you add person to the system, it also creates a family for that person.
That means that when you add another member of an existing family to the system, you should edit that family in order to add the record for that individual.
To add a person to an existing family in your records:
Login into your parish account at https://safeministry.org.au/records
Under the ‘Family’ menu, choose ‘List All’ and browse to the family you wish to edit.
Choose ‘View’ from the Actions column. Something like the screen below should appear.
At the top right of the lower panel, you can see the link to ‘Add member’.
Click on that and you can enter all the details for that person.
More Advanced
We have to keep historical data for WWCC expiry and verifications. This means you cannot just overwrite the old information with the new.
We also strongly recommend you keep historical data for Safe Ministry Training.
This is how you manage that:
So this means that the persons normal record view will always have the current data in it, but any previous information for WWCC or Safe Ministry Training will be attached to their record and viewing via the Notes function.
Reports are one of the most useful features of the system.
If you go to the ‘Person’ menu and select ‘Reports’ from the drop down, you will see a number of pre-defined reports.
To see any of these, click on ‘view‘.
To change the report click on ‘configure‘ (warning: this may change the way the report works. Contact us if you need help to change a report).
Click on ‘email‘ to email every person listed in the report.
Click on ‘delete‘ to delete the report (not recommended)
Using ‘Create a new report‘ link at the top of the list, you can build any report that you wish. For assistance, please contact us by email
Reports
Because we are required to keep Safe Ministry Records almost indefinitely, we need a way to deal with people who leave your church or who die.
We cannot simply delete their records, because we may need to provide information from their record at some point into the future. So our system is set up so you can’t delete people, but you can Edit their record and change the ‘Status’ field to ‘Archived’.
This removes that person from most day-to-day functions, but they can be easily retrieved should they be needed (see information under ‘Reports’)
Change status of person
These operate entirely invisibly, and will send emails (and soon, an SMS) to the Safe Ministry Rep in your church and the individual concerned when:
This assumes that the correct expiry dates are in the system for each person in your church.
Professional Standards Unit - Anglican Church Diocese of Sydney
© 2019 Professional Standards Unit
Anglican Diocese of Sydney