Safeguarding Dashboards calculates the progress that every participating parish is making towards mandatory requirements.  This progress is expressed as a percentage score - where 100% means that a parish is fully compliant.

A diocese can see the average score for all their parishes, with a graph showing the trend over the past three years.

There are two reasons why progress scores dropped in September 2024:

• Review dates were added to several dashboard lights.
• Parish dashboards were upgraded in most dioceses.
   

Review Dates

The answers to most dashboard questions need to be reviewed from time to time.

Although the dashboard usually asked when a question was last reviewed, it was not always the case.  Therefore, in May 2024, this omission was rectified by allowing parishes to enter any missing review dates.

In September 2024, any dashboard light without a review date turned red.

This didn't mean that parishes were less compliant.  It simply meant that some parishes hadn't yet entered their missing review dates.
 

Dashboard Upgrade

Most parish dashboards were upgraded in September 2024 to bring them up to date with the latest national requirements.  This was the first major upgrade in six years, and several new lights were added to the dashboard.

Given that the upgraded dashboard had more lights, it was inevitable that progress scores would be lower than before.

This didn't mean that parishes were less compliant.  It simply meant that there were more lights that needed to be turned green.