Safeguarding Policy

Pebblhub is committed to the safeguarding and welfare of children. Our platform is designed to support nurseries and childcare settings in fulfilling their own safeguarding obligations — not to replace them.

This policy applies to Pebblhub as a technology platform. Nursery operators remain the responsible party for their safeguarding procedures, designated safeguarding leads (DSLs), and compliance with statutory guidance such as Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) in England or equivalent frameworks in other jurisdictions.

Pebblhub employees who have access to production data are subject to:

•Background checks — all staff with access to customer data undergo background screening appropriate to their role and jurisdiction.

•Access minimisation — only engineers with a documented operational need are granted access to production environments. Access is reviewed quarterly and revoked immediately upon role change or departure.

•Two-factor authentication — all internal system access requires MFA.

•Contractor controls — third-party contractors with data access are bound by equivalent confidentiality and security obligations.

Nursery operators are responsible for conducting their own DBS checks (England) or equivalent vetting for all staff who use the Pebblhub platform with access to children's records.

Pebblhub enforces strict role-based access controls to ensure staff only see data relevant to their responsibilities:

•Admin — full access to all records, billing, staff management, and reporting.

•Teacher / Key Worker — access to children in their assigned rooms or key groups only.

•Parent / Guardian — access to their own child's records only. No access to other children's data.

Nursery administrators can add, remove, and modify staff access at any time through the admin dashboard. Access changes take effect immediately.

Pebblhub provides a structured incident reporting module to help nurseries document safeguarding concerns:

•Staff can log incidents with a description, severity level, date/time, and photo attachments.

•All incidents require admin review and approval before the record is marked as resolved.

•A full audit trail is maintained — showing who created, edited, and approved each incident report.

•Incident records cannot be permanently deleted by nursery staff — only archived, preserving the audit trail.

This module is designed to support — not replace — a nursery's duty to report serious safeguarding concerns to statutory agencies (e.g. local authority children's services, LADO).

All data access and modifications within Pebblhub are logged:

•Every login, record view, edit, and deletion is timestamped and attributed to a named user.

•Audit logs are retained for a minimum of 12 months and are available to nursery administrators on request.

•In the event of a safeguarding investigation, Pebblhub can provide access logs to support the nursery's reporting obligations.

If Pebblhub becomes aware of a potential safeguarding concern related to the use of our platform, we will:

1. Immediately notify the nursery's designated safeguarding lead (DSL) or primary account holder.

2. Preserve all relevant data and restrict further access to that data if instructed by the nursery or a statutory authority.

3. Cooperate fully with any investigation by statutory agencies, law enforcement, or regulatory bodies.

4. Report data breaches involving children's data to the relevant supervisory authority (e.g. ICO in the UK) within 72 hours where required.

If you have a safeguarding concern related to a child in a Pebblhub-registered nursery, your first point of contact should always be the nursery itself and, if necessary, your local statutory children's services.

If your concern relates to how Pebblhub's platform or staff have handled children's data, contact us immediately:

Email: support@pebblhub.com

Subject line: "Safeguarding Concern"

We treat all such reports with the highest priority and will respond within one working day.