Opinions on whether this is appropriate

[fm2]

Married man (MM) in his 50's works for a small local charity that helps people in financial difficulty with food, clothes, signposting to services and similar. Once a week, he runs a drop in centre, where clients can come and get help, chat and have a free meal and a hot drink.

Please could I have your opinions on these scenarios?

1. MM has a whatsapp chat with a long term female client on his personal whatsapp, with messages set to disappear every 24 hours. I saw this a few months ago and I told him I thought it would be best from a safeguarding/accountability point of view if the messages weren't set to delete. He told me that she set it up this way, then he blocked her on Whatsapp and said he would email her through the company email address instead from now on. I have since noticed that she is back on his personal whatsapp with 24h disappearing messages set up.

2. MM has a whatsapp chat with another long term female client on his personal whatsapp. Messages aren't set to disappear, but past conversation has been deleted, and the most recent messages are:

her: "i can't make it to (name of drop in group) this week"
him: "i miss you" (sad face emoji)
her: "i miss you too" (sad face emoji)

By long term, I mean that the women have been using the drop in centre for over 6 months, which makes it more likely that they would be considered vulnerable (but I don't know their situations).

I don't think anything untoward is going on in either scenario personally. My main concern is that I don't believe this is the way that someone in this role should be interacting with clients, especially with it being a charity. It's not necessarily the conversations themselves, but the fact that they are being deleted, and aren't being done through the charity's communication methods.

He has a paid role at the charity and I am just a volunteer (but I'm not around on the drop in days). He has his personal whatsapp set up on his work laptop, which I need to use sometimes, so he isn't actively hiding anything, as he leaves it open.

If I'm being a bit OTT then I will just ignore this and leave it. If I am right to be a bit concerned, should I talk to the MM (considering I have already tried that in scenario 1), his boss, or his DW? I know them all well enough to have a conversation, but I don't want to cause unnecessary drama if I am being ridiculous.
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Speak to his boss. Creepy opportunistic sleaze in a position of power, ugh.

its a potential safeguarding issue. I’d report to his manager.

I work in that type of environment and what you're describing would be a massive breach of use of technology policies and safeguarding and professional standards policies. I'd 100% be taking that directly to a senior line manager who is above this guy and ideally whoever oversees safeguarding. You should have a whistleblowing policy for the organisation which is what you need to do. This man could at best be blurring professional relationship lines, at worst he could be grooming and exploiting vulnerable women. Do not go to him again or to his wife this needs a proper investigation.

I agree with the other respondents, I'd definitely go to his line manager. But can you get some screenshots of his personal messages to the clients on to your phone? If he has them on disappearing, he could deny it and there's possibly no proof.

Also - the 'I miss you' message response from him is wholly inappropriate and unprofessional. Sounds like the knob is encouraging these women to become dependent on him..yuck, he should not be in this position.

Definitely inappropriate and he's abusing his role and clearly overstepping. Report it and if it's all innocent so be it but I think it's likely not.

I have since noticed that she is back on his personal whatsapp with 24hr disappearing messages set up.

Client 1: He was only paying lip service and removing her was a pretense.

Client 2: That conversation was unethical and way out of line.

@fm2, I would absolutely report his serious breach of professional behavior to his boss. He is exploiting these vulnerable women — sneakily developing inappropriate connections for his own gratification via his personal platform, and is hiding the evidence by using disappearing messages or deleting.

Report him asap.