Managing safer recruitment

Introduction

Churches and charitable organisations that work with children and young people will want to follow best practices to ensure their staff and volunteers are suitable to work with those under 18. These best practices are often referred to as Safer Recruitment.

The specifics of Safer Recruitment at your church or charity will depend on the process laid out in your Safeguarding Policy, however this article explores an example Safer Recruitment process, the concepts of which can be applied to your own processes.

Volunteer application form

To record someone’s interest in volunteering with children or young people, and gather additional details, your Safeguarding Policy may require a Volunteer Application form to be completed.

Using the Forms functionality, create a volunteer application form which asks relevant questions about the person’s details, their history, their experience, why they want to serve and details of referees for you to obtain references later in the Safer Recruitment process. Our related Support Article on Creating Forms gives further detail about this.

Adding the Form

Give your "Safer Recruitment Form" a suitable name, such as "Volunteer Application Form" and set any optional visibility settings (e.g. that only members of your Safeguarding User Group can see it), choose which modules the form will be visible in (usually Address Book) and the Primary Response Type (usually Contacts). You may wish to include the form in the Children module if you're considering using it for junior helpers (under 18s) or you may wish to create a separate form and flow for junior helpers. Choose the level of Access and Site if relevant.

Ensure that the relevant person is added as a Manager.

Next, in the Setup tab, add Items for each area of the form, choosing from the item list on the left side. You may want to consider:

• Headings, text and dividers from the Elements sections to add titles, instructions or explanations and sections to your form
• Using items from the Person and Contact sections to collect personal information such as name, date of birth and contact details
• Using paragraphs, single sentences and lists from the Standard Fields section to collect answers to questions
• Using the name and contact details options from the Standard Fields section to collect information about referees
• Using conditional visibility to show a question based on a response to a previous question

In the Actions tab, add any Form actions that you'd like to happen automatically once someone invited to complete the form submits their response. For example, you may want to add a note to the person's profile, add them to a key date (e.g. "Volunteer Application Received”) or tag, or a specific flow, such as a Safer Recruitment flow (see next section). You will need to create the flow that you want to add the person to before you can add that action to the form.

Once you're happy with the form, you can publish it and follow the steps in our Sending form invitations article to invite the potential volunteer to complete the application form.

Volunteer application flow

For this next step, create a new Flow - see our related Flows support article for more information. Give your “Safer Recruitment" Flow a suitable name, set any optional visibility restrictions, the days flow reminder emails will be sent on and assign one or more Flow Managers who will receive Flow digests and updates. Next, add flow stages - using the+Add stage button - and add Actions and Settings as shown in the below screenshots.

Try to keep the actions in a logical order and note the Default state for each Action - some actions should have a ticked default state and others are unticked to give the User a choice when they are processing people through the Flow. Set the Due days for each stage - you can adjust these timings later if you need to extend the renewal process to suit your context.

Our sample “Safer Recruitment" Flow functions with 8 stages.

1. Interest: Application received. On the Due date (0 days after someone has been added to the Flow), ChurchSuite will send me a reminder notification that a task is due. At this stage, review the application form, arrange a further discussion/interview with the person and move them to the next stage of the flow.

2. Interview: Further Discussion. After two weeks, the flow manager will receive a notification email reminding them about any people in this stage of the flow who are due. The person responsible should have met with the applicant to discuss their application and assess their suitability for the role. A Note can be added against the person to record points from the discussion. Once the person responsible is happy to move forward, I they can proceed to the next stage - Process the person, move them to the next stage of the flow and add key dates to record the discussion/interview and the date references were requested. A separate form can be used to gather references, sending the form URL externally to the referees.

3. Checks: References. Three weeks after the previous stage, the flow manager will receive a notification email reminding them about any people in this stage of the flow who are due. At this point, if you've not heard from either referee, you may need to follow them up externally. Once one referee responds, access the flow and Process the person through, moving to the next stage and adding a key date for the receipt of the first reference.

4. Checks: Reference 1 out of 2 received. 2 weeks after the previous stage, the flow manager will receive a notification email reminding them about any people in this stage of the flow who are due. As with the previous stage, if you've not heard from the second referee, you may need to follow them up externally. Once the second referee responds, access the flow and Process the person through, moving to the next stage and adding a key date for the receipt of the second reference.

5. Checks: Reference 2 out of 2 received. 2 weeks after the previous stage, the flow manager will receive a notification email reminding them about any people in this stage of the flow who are due. At this stage, decide whether the person is suitable to continue through the application process and on to the next check. If so, process them through the flow to the next stage and also check the action to add them to another flow for a DBS Check, if they need it. See the related support article on DBS Checks for more information.

If they are not suitable to continue, contact the person to explain why and only run the Move to Stage Completed action to mark them as completed and remove them from the flow. Add a Note against the person to record any relevant information.

6. Checks: Awaiting DBS. The flow manager will receive a notification email in 6 weeks reminding them about any people in this stage of the flow who are due. Once the DBS flow has been completed and DBS certificate received, Process the person to the next stage. Add a Note against the person to record any relevant information.

7. Volunteer Agreement Form. Now that all the relevant checks have been done, if satisfied that the person is a suitable volunteer, an appropriate person should meet the applicant to discuss any relevant policies and expectations of the role. In this meeting, a volunteer agreement form will be completed. Once the form is received, Process the person to the next stage of the flow, completing the following actions: Adding a Key Date that the person is approved to volunteer; adding to the relevant Ministry within the Rotas module; adding to the Safeguarding Training flow, so that the person can receive the relevant training; move to next stage.

8. 6-month check-in. 6 months after the previous stage, The flow manager will receive a notification email in 6 weeks reminding them about any people in this stage of the flow who are due. At this stage, an appropriate person will formally check in with the volunteer. If the volunteer needs additional support or check-ins, add a Note against the person to record this and edit the due date to a future date. If they applicant is happy and the standard ongoing support and supervision from their team leader is adequate, add a Note against the person to record this and Process the person through to Completed.

Processing new applications

As new people respond to the Volunteer Application Form invitation, they will also be automatically added to the Safer Recruitment flow, based on the form actions.

On the occasion that you need to manually add someone to the flow, go to their profile page in Address Book, click on the Engagement tab and use the Add button in the Flows section.

Add to the relevant flow and select the stage you wish your contact to be added to.

Open the “Safer Recruitment" Flow.

In a separate tab in your browser, open the “Volunteer Application form” and review the responses. Based on the responses, prepare for communication with the applicant, inviting him to a meeting to discuss his application.

In the first stage, click the Process button for the person you’re assessing.

At each Stage in the Flow, you have the option to change the Due date, perhaps to postpone processing them to a later date and the option to change which User is Assigned to action the person in this stage. After updating, close the process page by clicking the "X" in the top right corner if you wish to ensure no further actions are processed. On the Process pop-up, review the Instructions.

At each Stage, there is an Add note option on the Details tab of the pop-up and you can read previously added notes left by yourself or other users - helpful to keep track of phone call conversations, tasks completed or responses the person may make. You can also view the person’s contact details - particularly useful if you’re making a phone call to arrange a meeting.

Once you’ve arranged the meeting, head back to the Actions tab and review the ticked actions - you may want to update the Due date for the next stage to the day after your meeting is set. Click Process and all ticked actions will be processed. By default (unless you untick some of the actions) this will mean the person will be moved to the next stage with a the processing due date set.

You'll get an email notification when the next stage is due for processing if you've added yourself as the flow manager. At that next stage, find the person in the correct stage of the Flow and click the Process button. Follow the instructions and, once the instructions are completed, select the relevant actions and Process again.

As you receive each Flow reminder notification, continue to follow the Flow stage Instructions, add optional Notes and Process the appropriate Actions to move them to the next Stage.

Note the Flow status and details of any Forms the person has responded to are shown on the contact's profile page within the Engagement tab.

Historic Key Dates also show any previous Safer Recruitment activity on the Key Dates tab.