8 reasons why dedicated safeguarding software is essential for schools

By Chris Forrest

Account Manager, CPOMS

Child protection software has become a huge time saver and method of proving competence in safeguarding record keeping in the few years that CPOMS have been offering its services to schools across the UK.

So far, almost a quarter of all schools in the UK use CPOMS as a method of recording and monitoring child protection, safeguarding and wider pastoral care for children. There are numerous reasons why designated safeguarding leads and SLT have made this such an essential tool, but the same advantages crop up over and over. Using CPOMS as an example, here are eight of the most 'buzzed'-about advantages that child protection software offers:

1. Chronologies: Gone are the days when building a chronology for a child involves four filing cabinets, three emails on two different accounts and a post-it note. A chronology for any individual or even across the school can be produced instantly.

2. Communication: Instead of running around school with a piece of sensitive paper, email alerts go directly to the relevant member of staff at their usual school email address. You can even see when each member of staff has read each entry, for extra peace of mind.

3. Movement between schools: When children transfer to your school or out to their next school, their full child protection history will move automatically through CPOMS (once consent has been given). If the other schools doesn't have CPOMS, you can either upload everything when a child joins, or download everything easily from CPOMS to pass onto the next school.

4. Governor reports: A full set of reporting tools allow you to press a couple of buttons to find some very specific information on incidents in school.

​5. File alerts: Instead of taking a register of staff names and asking everyone to sign when they have read your safeguarding policy or most recent training documents, you can send out an alert and see exactly if and when each member of staff has had the time to read it.

6. All in one place: UPN, attendance, DOB - the details that crop up on different forms and submissions to outside agencies are all in CPOMS, so you don't have to use many different systems to fill in one piece of paper.

7. Uniformity: Staff in school are constantly being told to write down key details about safeguarding incidents. Who is writing it? When did the incident occur? Who else was involved? All the necessary fields are either automatically added, or included in the form itself so that all staff can easily add high-quality and useful safeguarding information.

8. Service: The support team receive as much praise as CPOMS itself. A filing cabinet doesn't come with a support team! When something is as important as child protection, people need to feel well-supported with their tools. There are many reasons why schools recommend CPOMS to other schools, but the service and support is probably the strongest one.

When so much time is saved and so much "just makes sense", it's clear to see how safeguarding can come to rely on the benefits shown here. If you'd like to learn more about how you can improve your school safeguarding, visit www.cpoms.co.uk and book a demonstration, or read 100+ testimonials to find more reasons why it is becoming so popular.

Best thing I’ve bought in my first year as head was definitely @CPOMSUK - safeguarding software! Absolutely love it!

— Doug Stitcher (@therenegade78) October 23, 2017

Great feedback from today's #DSL training, thank you to everyone who came! @CPOMSUK improves information sharing and record keeping pic.twitter.com/TzFbbExexC

— KD Safeguarding (@kdsafeguarding) October 17, 2017