The Church of England is simplifying safeguarding admin by enabling the main safeguarding systems to communicate with each other.
The Church of England uses three main systems to manage safeguarding records:
- Safeguarding Training Portal - used by parishes in every diocese for safeguarding training
- Safeguarding Hubs - available in most dioceses to help parishes with safeguarding admin
- Contact Management System (CMS) - used by most dioceses to manage information about people they have contact with (e.g. clergy and churchwardens)
Streams is a background system that is invisible to parishes and dioceses. However, behind the scenes, it plays a key role in enabling the above three systems to communicate with each other.
Some of these systems can also communicate directly with DBS Providers (e.g. ThirtyOne:Eight).
DBS records
Once enabled by a diocese and then a parish, DBS records can be sent directly from a DBS provider to a Safeguarding Hub. This feature is currently available for the following DBS providers:
- Thirtyone:Eight
- APCS
Safeguarding training records
Work is underway to send training records directly from the Safeguarding Training Portal to a Safeguarding Hub. This feature will be be available before the end of 2026.
Streams
Streams is a background system that is invisible to parishes and dioceses. However, behind the scenes, it plays a key role in enabling other systems to share information with each other.
How is this funded?
The national Church of England and 25 dioceses contributed to the Safeguarding Systems Together (SST) Project, which has funded most of the initial development work.
From 2027 onwards, dioceses that choose to use the new SST features will pay an Annual Fee that covers:
- License fee for Streams and SST features in Hubs
- Support for parishes with SST features in Hubs
The cost of support will be reviewed towards the end of 2027.