The safeguarding audit log

Safeguarding records are read as well as written, and who read them is part of the record. Every time someone opens a young person's safeguarding file, ARC notes it.

The banner across the top of the file says so plainly: "CONFIDENTIAL: SAFEGUARDING WORKSPACE - CHILD PROTECTION RECORD", and "Access logged for audit purposes." Nobody is being watched without being told.

Only the DSL sees it

The Audit & Access Log panel appears at the foot of the safeguarding file for a DSL for that home, and for nobody else. Not managers, not company admins, not seniors — the same log that records everyone's access is visible to one role.

That is deliberate. An access log a manager can read is an access log a manager can be tempted to read about themselves.

What it shows

Select Audit & Access Log to expand it. Four columns:

Newest first. Ten rows to start, then Show All with the total.

What it does and doesn't cover

It is an access log. It answers who looked, not who changed what.

• Changes to a case — notes, referrals, actions taken, status changes, external actions, the closure — are on the concern's own Escalation & Review Timeline.
• Changes to the record itself are in version history, which is a manager's view.

The three together are the full picture; none of them is the full picture on its own.

Repeat visits

ARC doesn't log the same thing twice in quick succession — opening the file again within five minutes, or reopening the same concern within a minute, doesn't add a row. So the log reads as visits rather than as clicks, and a row is a person coming back to it.

Using it

Read it when something doesn't sit right: an access from someone with no reason to be in that file, a pattern of visits around a date, a concern opened repeatedly by someone who isn't working the case. It is evidence of who knew what, and when — which matters as much in a child safeguarding practice review as the case notes do.