An allegation that a member of staff — or anyone in a position of trust — may have harmed a child is not an ordinary safeguarding concern. ARC treats it as one record with a different lock on it.

If something has been alleged, say it to the DSL or the registered manager first, then record it. The record is evidence, not an alarm.

Anyone can raise one. Almost nobody can then see it

Raising an allegation is open to any member of the home. What happens next surprises people, so it is worth being exact.

You are	You see the allegation
A DSL for that home	Yes
The registered manager	Yes
A company admin	Yes
The person it is about	Never
Everyone else, including whoever raised it	No

The last two rows are the ones that matter.

The subject never sees it. Not if they are a manager. Not if they are the DSL. Not by direct link, not in a count, not on a dashboard. Role does not override being the subject.

Whoever raised it loses sight of it, unless they are one of the three above. A staff member who reports an allegation will not be able to find it afterwards. That is the lock-down working, and it is worth telling people before they raise one rather than after.

Allegations are also kept out of ordinary counts, lists and summaries, so they cannot leak by appearing in a total.

Raising one

In Raise Safeguarding Concern, turn on Allegation against a member of staff. ARC shows the consequences before you go any further:

Locked to the DSL, registered manager and company admin only. The subject staff member and the wider team will never see it, and it will never appear on the on-call summary. It is marked as needing a Regulation 40 notification, and the LADO referral is due within one working day. ARC does not notify Ofsted or the LADO: make both yourself and record them on the concern.

Then record:

The Subject (staff member) and their Subject role / relationship — which covers agency staff and volunteers as well as employees
Optionally a Risk-management decision: Suspension, Redeployment, Restricted duties or No action, with a Decision rationale
The title, case summary and initial disclosure, as for any concern

Three things happen automatically

Flagging the allegation, on its own:

Locks the visibility. It cannot be a standard concern, and there is no control anywhere to unlock it later.
Sets the Regulation 40 signal to required. An allegation against staff is notifiable. You cannot turn this off — and ARC does not notify Ofsted. See Record a Regulation 40 notification.
Starts the LADO referral clock.

The LADO clock

ARC sets the referral due one working day on from when the allegation was raised, counting Monday to Friday — so an allegation raised on a Friday is due the following Monday. Bank holidays are not modelled, so treat a bank-holiday Monday as the day it is, not the day ARC shows.

If the deadline passes with no referral recorded and the case is still open, the panel shows LADO referral overdue.

Recording the referral stops the clock. You record the LADO advice received and the agreed actions, and both go on the concern's timeline.

ARC does not contact the LADO. You make the referral through your local authority's own channel and then record that you made it.

The allegation panel

Once open, the concern carries an Allegation against staff (LADO) panel holding the subject and their role, the risk decision and rationale, the referral due date and the date referred, the advice and agreed actions, the Reg 40 requirement, and any linked disciplinary record.

The disciplinary record is linked, never merged. A disciplinary process is an employment matter with its own standard of proof, and an employment outcome must never change what the safeguarding case says.

Closing it

An allegation closes against one of the five LADO outcome categories and nothing else. ARC shows each one's meaning as you choose it:

Substantiated: there is sufficient identifiable evidence to prove the allegation.
False: there is sufficient evidence to disprove the allegation.
Malicious: there is clear evidence of a deliberate act to deceive and the allegation is entirely false.
Unfounded: there is no evidence or proper basis supporting the allegation; the person may have misunderstood what they saw or lacked the full circumstances.
Unsubstantiated: there isn't enough evidence to prove or disprove the allegation. It does not mean false, and implies neither guilt nor innocence.

Only false and malicious say anything about the person who made the allegation, so choose malicious only when there is evidence of a deliberate intent to deceive.

A closure summary is required too. See Close a safeguarding concern.