Summary: Safe Ministry Check lets you recognise and record training a trainee has already completed, whether at another church or through their professional life. This can reduce how much training they need to do. There are two ways to do it: the trainee can report their prior training themselves (Option 1), or an administrator can mark their training as complete (Option 2). Note: recognising prior training is a feature that can be turned on in your Organisation Settings.
Key terms
Trainee: a person in your organisation completing their safe ministry training and checks.
Trainee portal: where trainees log in to do their training and submit their checks.
WWCC: Working With Children Check.
Option 1: The trainee reports their prior training
Invite the trainee to log in to their training profile at Safe Ministry Check and start their training.
The system asks whether they have completed similar training before. If they have, they enter the specific training and its completion date, then tick the areas it covered from a checklist.
All trainees then watch two videos, whatever their prior training:
"Safe Contacts and Processes"
"Speak up: Raising your concerns"
These videos are exclusive to Safe Ministry Check. They explain your Safe Ministry Contacts and how to report concerns, which is why they're essential: they're specific to your organisation.
What happens next depends on the trainee's prior training:
If their training was at the same level: after the two videos, they agree to your organisation's Code of Conduct and submit their Personal Disclosure Statement, referee details and WWCC information.
If their prior training didn't cover the material: the system directs them to the relevant videos first. They then watch the two videos, agree to the Code of Conduct, and submit their Personal Disclosure Statement, referee details and WWCC information.
Option 2: An administrator marks the training as complete
As an administrator, you can manually mark a trainee’s training as complete by following these steps:
Go to the trainee's profile.
Under Course Progress, click Update.
Choose External Safeguarding Training Provider as the training method.
Select the completion date.
Add any relevant notes (such as course name and provider).
Click submit.
This method will mark the entire course as complete.
The trainee still needs to provide their checks: WWCC, references, Personal Disclosure Statement and Code of Conduct agreement. They can do this by logging in to their trainee portal and opening My Safe Ministry Checks.
Tip: Review the trainee's history to see whether an administrator or the trainee marked the training as complete.