Safe Hands Management System

The Safe Hands Management System (SHMS) is an online Club Management Tool introduced in 2021 to support clubs in proactively managing safeguarding. All of our clubs have now been invited to use it with many of our clubs pro-actively using the system to manage their safeguarding provision.

The ECB are continuing to review the existing compliance rules to ensure that they remain fit-for-purpose in allowing clubs to demonstrate their commitment to safeguarding in the recreational game. They are regularly checking that the club safeguarding officer is compliant.

SHMS has the following benefits to clubs:

• It offers a secure platform for storing and managing information about club volunteers, no need to keep paper copies of the skills and qualification spreadsheet;
• It’s integrated to ECB systems, meaning all information, and dates of qualifications and expiries is continually up to date;
• It allows clubs to proactively manage their safeguarding responsibilities;
• There’s a dedicated Support Team dealing with any queries;
• It demonstrates that your club is committed to making cricket a safe sport for all;
• It’s a requirement for access to ECB funding; and
• Your club is entitled to free Public Liability insurance through Howdens on completion of an Insurance Risk Assessment accessed through SHMS.

The best advice for the SHMS administrator is to:

• Ensure all data on the SHMS is up to date for the 2025 season and that the club portal is an accurate reflection of the volunteer workforce:
  • Have any new volunteers as club officials been added to the system?
  • Have any roles been updated or club officials removed that no longer hold role(s) within the club?
  • Has a check been made on officials accepting their role or has the invitation been re-sent? Please note that any invitations that have not been accepted will expire after 45 days. Reminders will have been sent after 7 days and 21 days
  • Has the DBS and qualification status for all current officials been checked?
    • We may be able to help if struggling with this.
  • Have all teams and programmes information for the club been added?
• Initiate any required DBS checks as soon as possible. Doing them early means that they hopefully will complete promptly rather than into the season when they can take longer to complete.
• Have all DBS applications been completed by the applicants and verified?
• Update & complete all sections on the portal that are relevant to your club even if this means you are not able to meet all requirements to achieve club compliance.
• Set a monthly reminder to access the system to check the club status throughout the season. If officials have delayed DBS applications the reminder may need to be weekly.

If a club is required to reach a state of club compliance for a specific purpose (e.g. Clubmark accreditation) then we will review this on a club-by-club basis.

Your Club and Community Cricket Officer can offer help and advice in the first instance and your club will have their contact details or contact safeguarding@dcfcricket.com for help.

If there are any tasks to be completed that you need support with, visit the SHMS Help Centre here or email Safehands@ecb.co.uk