Safeguarding electronic communication

Do staff and volunteers in your organisation communicate electronically with children, young people or vulnerable adults? If so, it is no different from face-to-face communication in terms of safeguarding. You need to ensure the communication platform you use is compliant.

Here are three things that are necessary to achieve this.

Accountability

The safeguarding mantra ‘Never be alone with a child’ applies just as much to digital communication as it does in the physical world. It may sound over the top, but the principle is right. Ensuring communication takes place in a safe space is essential to protect participants, as well as staff and volunteers.

On this basis, you need to have a secure record of all electronic communication taking place. If you do not, your staff and volunteers will be left open to false accusations and in the worst case, your participants will be left vulnerable to abuse. Either is a breach of your duty of care.

Privacy

Your platform needs to keep individuals’ contact details private. Once shared, you have no way of knowing or controlling who has access to this sensitive information. Not only is this a data protection issue, failure to keep contact details private creates significant safeguarding risk.

Having someone’s phone number or email address gives direct audio and visual access to them. It doesn’t matter if it’s peers (cyberbullying) or other individuals (grooming), the potential consequences of that information getting into the wrong hands are very serious.

Control

Your organisation is responsible for safeguarding its members and to do that it needs to be able to control what happens within its bounds. Take a school, for example. If it cannot set and enforce rules on its own premises, it cannot keep its staff and pupils safe.

The digital sphere is an intrinsic part of your organisation’s premises. As such, you are responsible for what happens there. You need to have control over who is part of your communications network and what they can and cannot do there.