Safeguarding Officer Guide
How academy owners and organization admins appoint a safeguarding officer and publish a safeguarding policy, and how reports are received, followed up, noted and closed in Hajime.
Applies to: Safeguarding officers · Academy owners and managers · Organization admins
An academy or an organization can name one safeguarding officer, publish a safeguarding policy, and receive concerns through a public report form. Hajime gives the officer an email alert for each new report, and gives the people who can sign in to your academy or organization admin a place to read the reports, add notes and close them. The officer role does not open anything on its own, as the steps below show.
What the Role Is
The safeguarding officer is the contact person for safeguarding concerns raised against your academy or organization. Appointing one records a name, an email and an optional phone number. That person receives an email whenever a report arrives.
The record does not give anyone an account or a permission. Reading reports and changing them is open to the owners and managers of the academy, or the admins of the organization, and to Hajime platform administrators, whose access is logged. If your officer is not one of them, they receive the email alert but can't open the reports in Hajime until you give them one of those roles.
Appoint an Officer
You need to be an owner or manager of the academy, or an admin of the organization. In your admin menu, choose Safeguarding Officer.
- Under Appoint a Safeguarding Officer, fill in Full name and Email, and Phone if you want.
- Choose Appoint Officer.
Only one officer can be active at a time. While one is active the page shows them under Current officer and the form is hidden.
If no officer is appointed, the academy dashboard shows No safeguarding officer is appointed as an item that needs your attention. It links straight to this page.
Replace an Officer or End Their Term
Choose End Term next to the current officer and confirm End this officer's term?. The term is closed and the form comes back so you can appoint the next person. The old officer stays on record with an end date: nothing is deleted. There is no separate edit screen, so to fix a typo in a name or email, end the term and appoint again.
Publish the Safeguarding Policy
The policy is a document you upload in Documents, under the Safeguarding Policy section.
- Open Documents and choose the Safeguarding Policy tab.
- Choose New Lineage, give the document a name and choose Create Lineage. A lineage is the named series that holds every version of the document.
- Choose Upload Document and add the PDF, up to 20 MB.
The policy does not appear on your public academy or organization page, which show only your rules and modules. People see it when you link it to an event, as part of that event's documents. A newer upload becomes the current version. To have coaches and staff of an event confirm they have read it, link it to the event: see Require Conduct Acknowledgment for Your Event.
"Policy Missing" and "Officer Missing" Warnings on Events
On the page of an event that allows minors, the readiness panel for organizers can show a Safeguarding section with up to two warnings:
- This event's organizing body has not appointed an active safeguarding officer.
- This event's organizing body has no linked safeguarding policy document.
Each has a Fix link to the right page. The second warning stays until a safeguarding policy has a current uploaded document: a policy lineage with no uploaded file still counts as missing.
These are courtesy warnings. They never block registrations, check-in or publishing. If the event is organized by an academy that is affiliated with an organization that has an officer or a policy, the warning does not appear for that item. Events that don't allow minors show no safeguarding warnings.
[Screenshot placeholder: the Safeguarding section of the event readiness panel with two warnings and Fix links]
How a Report Arrives
Anyone can report a concern without an account, from the Report a safeguarding concern link at the bottom of your public academy or organization page. The form asks for:
- Category: Abuse, Harassment, Discrimination, Violence or Other.
- What happened?: at least 20 characters.
- Date it occurred (optional).
- Contact for follow-up (optional): an email or phone, only if the reporter wants a reply.
After sending, the reporter sees a reference code to quote later. A short human check protects the form from bots, and repeated submissions from one address are limited.
If you need to raise something yourself, use this same form from the public page. Hajime has no separate internal form.
The officer's alert email carries the reference code and the category, and asks them to sign in to read the report. It leaves the description out on purpose. If no officer is appointed, the report is still saved and nobody is emailed, so check Safeguarding Reports regularly in that case.
Read and Follow Up on Reports
In your admin menu, choose Safeguarding Reports. Reports are listed newest first, each with its category, reference code, date and a status badge: Received, Investigating or Closed. Open one to see the reference, reporter contact, date, and the full description.
Notes
Under Officer notes, write in Add a note and choose Add note. Notes show the text and the time they were added, in order. You can't edit or delete a note once saved, so write them as a record.
Status and Closing
A new report starts as Received. From the Status block you can:
- choose Move to Investigating while you work on it;
- choose Close report, which asks Close this report? and offers a Closure note (optional).
A closed report can be reopened with Move to Investigating, which clears its closure note. A report can't go back to Received once work has started.
The closure note is saved with the report. The report page does not show it again afterwards, so keep the substance of the outcome in a note as well.
Who Can See Reports and What Is Logged
Reports filed against an academy can be opened by that academy's owners and managers. Reports filed against an organization can be opened by that organization's admins. An organization admin does not see an affiliated academy's reports, and event organizers don't see them either unless they are one of those admins. Hajime platform administrators can open reports too, and their access is logged. Anyone else is turned away.
Every time someone opens a report, and every status change (with the old and new status), is recorded in the audit log together with who did it. Adding a note is not logged separately.
A reporter's description is shown as formatted text and is never run as code.
How This Relates to Minors' Data and Retention
Reports are separate from the minors' registration, guardian and consent records. They are not tied to a registration or an event, and Hajime has no function to delete or edit a report or note. What organizers and coaches can see about minors, and how long consent records are kept, is described in Minors' Data and Data Rights for Organizers and Coaches. If a report concerns a minor, avoid copying health or contact data outside Hajime.
What You Can't Do Here Yet
Intake, status and notes are the whole toolset. There is no way to reply to a reporter through Hajime, assign a report to someone, attach files, or link a report to an event or athlete. Follow-up with the reporter happens outside the product, using the contact they left.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the reporter see what happens to their report? No. They receive a reference code at submission and nothing afterwards.
Can the officer be someone outside the academy? They can be named as the officer and will get the alert emails, but to read the reports they need to be an owner or manager of the academy, or an admin of the organization.
Is the policy public? Not on its own. It is not on your public academy or organization page. The people of an event see it once you link it to that event.