Socialheads
Choosing a messaging platform
for care and youth work
The requirements worth holding any supplier to, including us. Written for a real procurement, and our own answers are at the end.
Most services arrive here from the same place: a team chat tool the organisation already pays for, and a staff WhatsApp group where the coordination actually happens. Start with the staff team, because that is where names and photographs end up on personal phones. Messaging the people you support is the second question, and a bigger one.
First, work out which category you need
Three different kinds of product answer "how do we communicate safely", and they answer it in three different ways. This is the part worth slowing down on.
A case management system records about people and does it well, but nothing reaches it until somebody sits down and writes it up. A consumer messenger cannot belong to your organisation, because the account belongs to the person, which is the consequence of a product designed for private life. Team chat tools are staff first: outsiders can be admitted as guests, but the unit is a workspace member with a licence, not a supported person with recorded consent and a named worker.
Most services need more than one. The one to buy next is the gap you actually have.
Eight questions to ask any supplier
In roughly the order they matter. The line under each is the version to say out loud in a demonstration, because a screen answers it faster than a claim does.
Who can start a conversation, and with whom?
A conversation between a worker and someone your service supports should begin deliberately, not because two people happen to have each other's numbers.
Ask a supplier: Can a worker and a person we support end up in a conversation nobody authorised?
Is consent recorded, and can you show it a year later?
Consent is a record you may need to produce long after the moment, not a tick box at sign up. It should name the person, the date, and the version of what they were shown.
Ask a supplier: Show me one person's consent record, and what changes the day they withdraw it.
Can you answer "who saw this, and when"?
An audit trail earns the name when it covers reading as well as writing. Readable by your own governance roles rather than recoverable by the supplier's engineers, and editable by nobody.
Ask a supplier: Can we read the log ourselves, and does it record reads and exports as well as messages?
Is oversight proportionate, and does it keep people's dignity?
A record any senior person can browse freely will change how staff and the people you support talk, which costs you the very information oversight exists to surface.
Ask a supplier: What does a manager see by default, and what do they have to do to see more?
Where is the data held, and who else in the chain touches it?
Residency is a question about the whole chain, not the headline: the database, the backups, the file storage, the chat delivery, the notifications, and the support staff who can reach any of it.
Ask a supplier: Send me the subprocessor list with the region of each one, and your processing agreement.
What happens to the record when a worker leaves?
This is the moment most communication records disappear. On a personal handset the trail ends with the handset. In a governed system the service keeps the conversation.
Ask a supplier: Show me a conversation from six months ago whose worker has since left.
What does leaving the supplier look like?
Ask this before you sign rather than at renewal. What you can take out, in what format, how long you have, what it costs, and what happens to your copy on their side afterwards.
Ask a supplier: If we give notice, what exactly do we get, when, and when is our data gone from your systems?
Will the people doing the job actually use it?
This one decides all the others. A tool slower than the thing it replaces gets added alongside it, and the WhatsApp group carries on doing the real work.
Ask a supplier: Show me this on a phone, mid shift, rather than on a slide.
The worker-leaves question is written out in full: what happens when a worker leaves. It is a useful script to run in any demonstration.
Where Socialheads stands against this list
Staff messaging first on Core, and messaging with the people you support on Safeguarding Plus. Our answers sit in the comparison on the features page, next to ChatPro, WhatsApp and Teams, filled in from what each product says publicly.
The detail behind the security answers, including what a break glass access looks like and how long records are kept, is on trust and security.
Straight answers
What is the difference between a case management system and a messaging platform?
A case management or safeguarding recording system records about people: assessments, plans, concerns, chronologies. A messaging platform is the channel the conversation happens in, and it holds what was said, by whom, and when. Most services need both, because nothing reaches a recording system until somebody writes it up.
Can we just use Microsoft Teams or Slack for this?
For staff messaging alone, sometimes yes, and it is worth checking properly before you buy anything else. Two things decide it: whether your team genuinely uses it, because most services that have one also have a staff WhatsApp group, and whether you need people outside the organisation in the conversation, because there the unit is a workspace member with a licence rather than a supported person with recorded consent.
Is WhatsApp against the law for social care or youth work?
No. There is no rule naming an app. UK GDPR and your regulator ask whether your organisation controls the processing, can evidence it, and can produce the record when someone asks. A group on personal handsets makes those questions hard to answer, which is a governance judgement rather than a legal prohibition.
Should we require end to end encryption?
Decide which property your setting actually needs. End to end encryption means only the two devices can read a message, which also means nobody can produce the record when a safeguarding lead, an inspector or a court asks for it. A safeguarding record usually wants governed access instead.
Who is responsible for compliance, the supplier or us?
Your organisation is the data controller and carries the duty. The supplier is your processor and acts on your instruction. No software can hold that duty for you, ours included. Ask any supplier to spell out which parts stay with you.
Which regulator will ask to see this?
It depends on the setting. A children's home or a school in England answers to Ofsted, and a children's home also has Regulation 44 visits. Adult social care in England answers to the Care Quality Commission. Whichever applies, inspectors do not ask to see a messaging platform. They ask what contact a person had, how the service responded, and how you know.
How much should a platform like this cost?
Enough that the supplier is not funded by advertising or data, and predictable enough that you can budget it. Ours is published: Core, for staff messaging, from £3,000 a year, and Safeguarding Plus, which adds consent and safeguarding oversight for messaging the people you support, from £7,500. There is also a Social Impact Rate from £3,500 a year, which is Safeguarding Plus at a reduced rate for smaller services and charities.
When should we start looking?
Earlier than feels necessary. A data protection impact assessment, a processing agreement, a security review and budget approval take a few months in most services and longer in a local authority, and all of that runs before anyone signs in. Start the conversation with us now and the two tracks run together, so the product side is never what your timeline waits on. If you need to move quickly, tell us and we will tell you what is possible.
Take this list to every supplier on your shortlist. When you are ready to run it past us, we will show you the screens rather than the slides.