Security is important, especially when checking in children. Use the sections in this article to set up additional security parameters in your Check-Ins account.
One of the best way to ensure security is to keep updated background checks on your volunteers. We've partnered with Checkr to automatically track background checks, but you can use any background check provider and manually track those checks.
Important
You need permissions in People to track background checks.
You can require Volunteers to have a cleared background check on their profile before they're allowed to check in.
From the location, check the box in the Background Checks section.
If a Volunteer tries to check in without a cleared background check, they will see an alert that doesn't allow them to check in.
Tip
For teenage volunteers, you can manually add cleared background checks that expire on their 18th birthday.
Make sure you know which child belongs to which adult by creating households. Households are the foundation of all family units and will help your volunteers know who to trust each child to.
Once your household is set up, add Trusted People, those who don't live in the same house but can drop off and pick up the child, and Not Authorized people, those who should not be allowed to pick up a child, to the child's profile.
Tip
Make sure the household adults and trust adults have a mobile number listed in their profile, so they can receive a text if you need to get in touch with someone during service.
When checking in on a Self or Manned Station, all household adults and trusted people will be listed in the Checked In By dropdown.
On the check out screen, you can choose who to check out, as well as see trusted and not authorized people.
-
Highlighted arrows show who will be checked out.
-
Choose who is checking out the people. The default is set to the person who checked in the child, but you can easily switch it to someone else by clicking on their image.
-
If the person checking out the child is not shown, make sure they're authorized to pick them up by selecting Find out who.
If there are any Not Authorized people on the child's profile, they will show on a Manned Station.
Security labels have a 4 character code--alphanumeric by default--that changes each time a person checks in. The label enables a member of the household to pick up a child with the matching security numbers.
Caution
Only the person who checked in the child will receive a security label. For this reason, there's not a way to re-print a security label. If the person who checked in the child loses the security label, you need to adopt a protocol for allowing someone to check them out.
The default setting is one security label per household, which allows the parent to show one security label to pick up all household members, even if they are in different locations. If you want to have multiple security labels, you can create a custom Dymo label, change the quantity of security labels to 2, or use an optional label for people to choose when they check in.
If you want two security labels to print when checking in a child, you can add the security label to the location and change the amount to 2.
Every location has an optional label allowed to print. The label will print on the name tag, and the person checking in can choose to print an additional Security tag.
At the first check-in, select the optional label by clicking the child's name to go to a details screen. Check-Ins will remember the selection the next time they check in to that same event/location, so the additional label will print.
Put a protocol in place for when a household adult or trusted person loses their security label. This will ensure the safety of the child needing to be checked out, as well as the volunteers helping the person check out the child.
Many churches check the person's ID to confirm they are an active part of the household or listed as a trusted person.
If each person has a profile picture, the volunteer could type in the Security Code from the child's name tag on a Manned Station to see who checked the child in. Pictures of all trusted adults, as well as anyone who's not authorized to check them out, will show on the screen, allowing the volunteer to verify they can pick up the child.
When it's time for kids to be picked up, you can choose to check them out on a Roster or Manned Station or even on the Admin side.
However, if you choose not to check kids out, we recommend removing their name tag. Here are some reasons:
-
This shows that they are not supposed to be in the classroom and allows your Security Team or Leaders to know that if a child has a name tag, they need to be in a classroom.
-
When you remove their name tag, you can put the name tag and security label on a Check Out Sheet to show who has been checked out.
-
As you remove name tags, keep them and make a big ball out of it!
When you need to contact a parent, you want to make sure you're reaching out to the correct person, and that they can come to the classroom in a timely manner. You can use any of these methods to reach out to a parent.
From the a Manned or Roster Station, search for the child, and select the messaging icon to send a text.
Choose the recipient(s) and message you'd like to send, and then Send Message(s).
The recipients are household adults and trusted people. You can add recipients from a person's profile.
From the information on a name tag, you have access to the phone number of the person who checked in the child, which means your church doesn't need to invest in an expensive pager system, and the parents don't need to walk around with an extra device.
Some churches even use a free texting app, so the text can come from the same church number each time, and the volunteer's phone number is protected.
A parent can then be notified from a screen cue in the service. Most presentation softwares allow a person to add a scrolling message.
Designated Household Number
If you wanted to use a number that was designated to a family, you could put the assigned number in a Custom Field on their profile, and then add that field to the label. The number will print on their name tags each time they check in.
Consecutive Number
You could add a consecutive number to a person's name tag. When a person checks into an event, they'll get a number added to their name tag in the order they were checked in.
If you've added the consecutive number to the security label, when you need to notify their parent, you can use the consecutive number to notify them.