Skip to main content

​
Safeguarding History

The safeguarding history provides a complete chronological timeline of all concerns and actions for a child or staff member. This guide explains how to view, export, and securely share safeguarding histories.

​
What is Safeguarding History?

A safeguarding history is a comprehensive record showing:
  • All concerns recorded about a person
  • All actions taken in response
  • Chronological timeline of events
Only users with the Safeguarding Lead or Deputy Safeguarding Lead role can view and send safeguarding histories. Managers can’t, unless they also hold one of those roles. Staff who are excluded from a child can’t open that child’s history.

​
Accessing Safeguarding History

​
From Child Profile

  1. Navigate to Children in main menu
  2. Select a child
  3. Click the Safeguarding tab
  4. View complete safeguarding history
Accessing safeguarding history from a child profile

​
From Concern Details

  1. Open any safeguarding concern
  2. Click View Full History link
  3. See all concerns/actions for that subject
Viewing full safeguarding history from a concern

​
Sending History

Pigeonhole allows you to easily send the safeguarding history to a 3rd Party (e.g. another nursery/school) in a secure way. You can access the send history dialog Send safeguarding history button The secure share dialog will then appear. Secure share dialog for sending safeguarding history Here you can enter the recipients email and a cover note that is included in the email that will be sent to them.

​
Seeing where a history has been sent

Every time a history is emailed, it is recorded. Open View History and scroll to Sent by email at the bottom to see each send: the recipient, who sent it and when, the cover note, and whether the recipient has downloaded it yet (Not downloaded yet or Downloaded with the date).
The Sent by email section listing a recipient, who sent it, the cover note and a Not downloaded yet badge

​
Signatures in the history

The downloaded and emailed history includes each concern’s status, including Awaiting sign-off, and who signed it: who raised it, if your setting asks for a signature, and each DSL who signed it off, with the date and time. The drawn signatures themselves are left out, so a copy of someone’s signature isn’t sent outside your setting.

​
Who has read each action

For each action, the downloaded and emailed history lists who it was assigned to and whether each named person has read it, for example Jo Smith (read 03 Oct 2026) or Sam Lee (not read). If someone read an earlier version of the staff notes, it says so. Actions assigned to All staff show All staff without read status.

​
Why Secure Sharing?

Standard email is NOT secure, as safeguarding data is highly sensitive, email can be intercepted and attachments not encrypted. Pigeonhole Secure Sharing ensures data is encrypted and secure. 3rd party’s are emailed a link with the encryption password which they can use to download an encrypted file which contains the safeguarding history for a child and all attachments. Recipients then have to enter an additional OTP (one time password) code that is emailed to them before the download is available to them.