Guidelines Adopted on 10/05/2022 and will be reviewed Q3 2023 – Revision 1.0
1. Policy Statement
Online safety is the collective term for safeguarding involving the use of electronic devices and applications to communicate and access the Internet; often referred to as Information and Communications Technology.
2. Reason for Policy
This policy has been created to provide guidance and reflect all communications between church workers and children (those under 18 years of age).
We recognise that we have a duty to implement this policy and all employees are expected to comply with it.
3. Who Should Read this Policy?
- Any worker or volunteer working with Children and Young People
- All Safely Recruited and DBS checked volunteers
- All employee
4. Resources
- This policy is part of the Safeguarding Policy Framework found on The Way We Work platform
- https://twww.revivechurch.uk
4. The Policy
- Generally, maintain good and open relationships with parents and carers regarding communication with them and their children.
- Use an appropriate tone: friendly, but not over-familiar or personal.
- Be warm and friendly, but do not suggest or offer a special relationship.
- Be clear and explicit about information that you need to share; don’t abbreviate or short-cut your communications.
- Be aware in your communications with children to avoid any possible misinterpretation of your motives or any behaviour which could be construed as grooming.
- Do not share any personal information with children, or request or respond to any personal information from a child other than that which might be appropriate as part of your role.
- Only give personal contact details to children that are within the public domain of the church / organisation, including your mobile telephone number.
- If children want you to have their mobile phone numbers, e-mail addresses or similar, it must be added to their ChurchSuite record by their parent with communication preferences set.
- Only make contact with children for reasons related to the work of the church/organisation and maintain a log of all electronic contact with individuals or groups including messaging and texting.
- Where possible only use equipment provided by the church/organisation to communicate with children.
- Respect a child’s right to confidentiality unless abuse/harm is suspected or disclosed.
- Email should only be used to communicate specific information. (e.g. times and dates of events and preferably done through ChurchSuite). It should not be used as a relationship building tool.
- Email, and all other electronic communication history should be kept.
- When using email/internet for communication with children, it is advised that it should take place between the hours of 9am-5pm. Where working with children outside normal office hours workers should seek advice from their leader but there should be no email communication after 9pm.
- Use of Microsoft Teams/Zoom and any other web camera or visual communication via the internet should not be used on a one to one basis. It can be used for conference calls and is considered appropriate if a project or group uses a web camera/Teams/Zoom in a group environment for project or group purposes, and has clear aims and objectives for its use.
Social Media
- All social media interaction between workers, paid or voluntary, and children under 18 shall be limited to monitored/administrated groups.
- All interaction on social media groups shall be maintained and not deleted for safeguarding purposes
- Any private messages received from children via social media accounts shall be recorded for safeguarding purposes
- Any safeguarding concerns/allegations arising from social media shall be referred onto the safeguarding co-ordinator.
- All users of social media must be above the minimum age limit i.e. 13 for Facebook
- Workers should ensure their privacy setting ensure the highest levels of security in order to restrict children being able to see any more than what is relevant to communication within the group. Where possible workers should interact in the group as the church account not their personal account.
- All social media groups should provide links to statutory authorities such as CEOP, to enable children to report online abuse.
Consent for photographic images and videos online
- Photographs that include children will be selected carefully and will endeavour to prevent children from being easily identified.
- Children’s full names will not be used online in association with their photographs.
- We use ChurchSuite to manage permissions for use of photos and video. This is managed by their parents. It is split into ‘Internal Presentation’ and ‘External Presentation’. Images and videos will only be used where these permissions have been granted by parents.
- Use of images will reflect diversity of age, ethnicity and gender of the activity.
- Live streaming of events must be clearly advertised in advance and where children are involved permission should be sought in line with the photographic guidelines. All our Sunday gatherings are live streamed.