When managing your Student-Led Project’s social media webpages or independent websites, you must follow the guidelines below to ensure that you are abiding by the Volunteering Service’s safeguarding procedures.
- You must not communicate directly with children, young people, or vulnerable adults. All of your project beneficiaries should be recruited through your project’s partner organisation. If you receive direct communication from your project’s beneficiaries or any child, young person, or vulnerable adult, you must inform your partner organisation and Project Supervisor immediately.
- Only upload photos of your project beneficiaries if you have obtained consent from the partner organisation to include these on social media webpages and/or your project’s website. Your partner organisation should have their own consent forms but if not, you can send them the Volunteering Service’s consent form. You will need to obtain parental consent for participants under the age of 18, so always ensure that you obtain consent for photographs before your events or sessions take place.
- You must obtain consent from your volunteers before uploading images of them.
- If you receive a request to remove an image from your website or social media accounts, from anyone in the photos, you must remove the image immediately and inform the Student-Led Projects Team about the request.
- If you plan to use your social media accounts or website to recruit volunteers, you must wait until your project’s risk assessment is approved before starting recruitment. Also, do not forget to email us the full names and UCL email addresses of any volunteers that you recruit.
- Never share private or confidential information and do not share any personal or identifiable information about your project’s beneficiaries. This includes the name of the partner organisation. You must obtain consent from your partner organisation before naming them in a post.
- For safety reasons, you must never share the address details of the venue where your volunteering sessions take place.
- Ensure that you always follow the guidance within the UCL Data Protection Training.
- Implement a social media review process within your Project Leader or Volunteering Team so that any inappropriate content can be flagged immediately before being publicly shared.
- Store social media login details in a safe and secure place and keep a record of who has the access details so individuals are held accountable. Also, change your login details on a regular basis.
- Where you are expressing your own opinions or experiences, clarify this in your posts.
- Always be respectful and professional in all communications.
We are happy to share posts that you have uploaded to your project’s Instagram to the Volunteering Service’s Instagram. We repost content from our Student-Led Projects on Fridays. If you would like your content reposted on any other day, email [email protected] to submit your request.
If you have any questions regarding the information on this page, email [email protected].