How Would a Diocese Know What Happens in Parish WhatsApp Groups?

In July 2026 the Church of England published new guidance on when an online safety concern should go to the diocese and when it should go to the police. It sets out a ladder of concern.

At the lowest rung, to be recorded on the parish safeguarding log, are emerging boundary issues between adults and young people online, with frequent private messaging given as an example. One rung up, needing a careful written record and the diocesan safeguarding team as soon as possible, is an adult moving conversations to private messaging.

The guidance is clear that low level does not mean ignore. Keeping a record, it says, "may help identify patterns that change the threshold for action over time".

Both rungs depend on one thing: someone being able to see the messages.

In many parishes, youth communication runs through a WhatsApp group on a volunteer's own phone. Nobody else can review it. So the lowest rung of the ladder cannot be seen at all, and the first a parish hears of a problem is further up, when the chance to act early has passed.

This is not a question of effort. The volunteers running these groups are often doing everything asked of them. It is a question of visibility, and trying harder does not fix that.

What the 2026 digital safeguarding guidance asks of parish messaging

Between July and October 2026 the Church published new guidance on social media, safer working practices, lone working and digital safeguarding. Most of it is the Church's current guidance through the Parish Safeguarding Toolkit, rather than a Code of Practice carrying a duty to comply. It still reaches volunteers: a Church Officer is anyone appointed to a role, "whether they are ordained or lay, paid or unpaid".

Read together, the guidance asks parishes to:

Use church accounts. "Only use church accounts for digital spaces, do not use personal accounts."
Control access, with access controls appropriate to the platform being used.
Keep records of engagement with young people online, including date and time, the platform, who attended and any concerns raised.
Avoid private messaging between leaders and under-18s, except in a safeguarding emergency, and log any message that is sent. Young people should not have leaders' personal numbers.

The Guidelines for Safer Working Practices go further on devices. Taking photographs on personal phones "is not permitted", and a cheap phone or tablet should be bought instead. The principle is settled: church activity belongs on church equipment, even when that costs money. Messaging is the same problem without the cheap fix.

One part of this does carry a duty to comply. Under the Reporting Safeguarding Concerns and Allegations Code of Practice, a disclosure must be recorded in writing, signed, timed and dated, with the means by which it arrived, including online. Where there is no immediate risk, it is referred within one working day. The person who first receives it could be any member of the congregation.

For a volunteer whose youth group lives on their own phone, a message at eleven at night carries all of that.

The Church's own guidance on communicating with young people via WhatsApp sets out what a well-run group needs: two approved leaders actively monitoring every group with under-18s, documented monitoring, a pinned code of conduct and reporting instructions, and DBS checks and training for every adult before they join. Its recommended set-up is a WhatsApp Community where only admins post and approve members, configured through around two pages of instructions. That turns a conversation into a one-way announcement channel, and relies on a volunteer setting it up correctly and keeping it that way.

How would a diocese evidence Standard 3.6?

The National Safeguarding Standards are the language diocesan teams already work in. Indicator 3.6 reads: "The sharing of safeguarding information is not conducted through personal (non-work provided) forms of communication."

It is worth reading precisely. 3.6 governs how Church officers share safeguarding information. It does not say a parish youth group cannot use WhatsApp. But it raises a fair question for any diocese in its audit cycle: how would you evidence it across your parishes?

A diocese can set the standard, train its parish safeguarding officers and audit them. Nothing reports upward from a personal phone. If a concern surfaces in a group on a volunteer's device, there is no way to know it happened, how it was handled or whether it should have gone further.

And when that volunteer steps down, the group, its history and whatever safeguarding record it held leave with their phone.

What the Parish Safeguarding Dashboard can and can't see

Many dioceses already fund a parish tool centrally. Safeguarding Dashboards, from Clearly Simpler, is used by over 8,000 parishes across 40 dioceses, commissioned by dioceses and free to parishes. It does an important job well: it shows whether each parish has the policies, training and procedures it should.

Its default scoring includes an item for Use of Social Media. So parishes using it already have a traffic light for their social media procedure.

That green light tells a diocese a procedure exists. It cannot show what is happening inside the chat, and it was never designed to. Governance and visibility are different jobs, and the gap sits between them.

Questions to send to your parishes

Parish safeguarding officers, most of them volunteers, carry most of what the guidance asks. These questions are a way to start a conversation with them, not a test.

Which of our groups include under-18s, and whose phone is each one on?
Who, other than the person who set it up, can see the messages?
If a young person made a disclosure in a group tonight, how would we record it and refer it within one working day?
If a leader stepped down tomorrow, what would happen to the group and its history?
Would anyone know if a leader was messaging a young person one to one?

The guidance is written for work with young people. The same questions are worth asking of any group where people need protecting.

Where Jovo fits

Jovo is a communication platform used by churches to run groups that the church can see and keep, rather than groups that live on one person's phone.

Groups run on church-provided accounts rather than personal ones.
Full access controls decide who can see and join each group.
Everything is retained, including edited and deleted messages, so nothing is lost. Temporary groups are hidden from members when their purpose is over, and the record stays.
An audit trail records date, time and escalation.
Data can be exported on request.
Jovo integrates with ChurchSuite and Planning Centre.

If you would like to talk through what this could look like across your parishes, get in touch. You can also download our Safeguarding Toolkit, and read how churches can use WhatsApp within GDPR.

Sources

How to: Digital safeguarding for working with young people, Parish Safeguarding Toolkit, October 2026
Reporting Online Safety Concerns, DSO or Police?, July 2026
Guidance for Communicating with Young People via WhatsApp, July 2026
Guidelines for Safer Working Practices, July 2026
Reporting Safeguarding Concerns and Allegations, Code of Practice
Promoting a Safer Church, House of Bishops policy statement
National Safeguarding Standards and Quality Assurance Framework, 2023. Dr. Samuel Nunney, Church of England National Safeguarding Team, Great Smith Street, London SW1P 3AZ
Safeguarding Dashboards, Clearly Simpler Limited

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