A contact log is the formal record of contact with family or professionals — a visit, a call, a meeting, a letter. It's more than the routine "family visits" daily log: this one carries purpose, outcome and concerns, and it feeds contact planning.

Log one

Open the young person's record, then Contact logs under Daily life & records, and choose Log contact.

Three fields are required:

Contact type — Family or Professional
Method — Phone, Visit, Video call, Meeting, Letter, Email or Other
Date and time of contact — defaults to now; change it for contact you're writing up later

Then Parties present, Purpose, Outcome, and two switches — Planned contact and Supervised — both of which start on.

Concerns

The Concerns box is the one to take seriously. As soon as you type in it, ARC shows:

If concerns relate to safeguarding, inform the manager / DSL promptly.

That is a prompt to speak to someone, not an action ARC takes. Writing it here does not tell the DSL. The entry gets a Concerns badge so it stands out on the list, and that's all it does.

What the badges mean

A saved entry shows Logged, its type, and — where they apply — Unsupervised and Unplanned badges. Unsupervised contact is a safeguarding signal, which is why it is flagged rather than left in a field.

Manager sign-off

A manager can sign off any entry, whether or not it has an outcome. Doing so turns the status to Reviewed with their name attached. It can only happen once — a second attempt is refused with "This contact log has already been signed off."

A manager can also send a record that is awaiting sign-off back to a named member of staff for changes, or undo a sign-off if something was missed. See Send a record back for changes, or undo a sign-off.

Editing

Update reopens the form. Only what you change is sent, so adding to the outcome later won't blank the purpose someone else recorded.