Youth Work Online

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Post your policies

The Policies, guidelines and boundaries for interacting online thread is one of the longest running here on Youth Work Online - yet at a quick glance through I realised that no-one has actually ever provided a clear copy of a Youth Work Online policy, or a guidance document for youth participation workers operating online.

I'm guessing that by now quite a few have been written - and it would be great to share those for others to learn from.

So - as a starter for ten, attached is my first attempt at a brief, but fairly comprehensive, write up of guidance on Safe & Effective Engagement With SNS For Youth Professionals, written as part of a training offer for youth services I'm in the middle of developing.

Have you got Social Media or Social Networking policies written sitting on your hard drive? Or in draft? Or perhaps a one-pager of guidance? Or even just a few preliminary notes?

If so - hit reply and share them in the forum here (look for the Attach Files option and you should be able to upload word documents and PDFs). When it comes to policies and guidance, efforts shared are efforts saved.... (and thus we can unlock lots of effort surplus that we can all turn to the real task of providing great support and engagement opportunities for young people...)

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Permalink Reply by Chris Cook on March 17, 2009 at 9:49
Hi Tim
Your document has a copyright at the bottom about contacting you before distributing or reproducing. I guess you're ok if I share this information with my colleagues?
Chris
Permalink Reply by Tim Davies on March 17, 2009 at 10:08
Hey Chris

Yes - I'll try and modify that statement shortly.

The document can be shared with colleagues by e-mail / in hard copy etc. - just at this stage with version 0.1 I'd prefer for copies not to be posted on other sites etc. but for people to link back to the copy here - so that when version 0.2 comes along shortly I can update this post, and put version 0.2 under a more permissive licence...
Permalink Reply by Hilary Mason on March 17, 2009 at 10:16
Hi Tim

We're just at the stage of pulling our policies and guidance together. Chris is part of the working group on this. We are working on various strands at the moment, bringing together purpose, policies, review of equipment etc altogther into our strategy. It's just as it is an extra for all of us progress is slow. As soon as we have anything then we will post.

Thanks
Hilary

ps appreciate the sharing of yours, it's really helpful
Permalink Reply by Helen on April 14, 2009 at 15:09
Have only just seen these documents *shame on me* really useful - thanks loads!
Permalink Reply by andi kewley on January 17, 2010 at 20:31
hello Tim

thanks for sharing your work. I hope you (or others) may have views which will help me:

i have been looking about for a bit now at various documents/research etc on social networking sites (SNS) trying to put together a guidance/policy document that will suit the youth project i work in. All the guidance i have seen to date (including yours) such as NYA's youth work and social networking report (sept 08) begin by stating workers should have seperate work and personal SNS profiles, and that workers should refuse friend requests from young people from their personal.

This takes an extremely professionalised view of a worker and doesnt take into account workers whose personal/professional lives are indistinct e.g. workers who were once young people of a project and have a legacy of such young people as 'friends' both online and in real life. Similarly workers who are based in communities and areas where they have grown up and have friends and relatives as 'friends' who may also access a project as users of that project and so have both a professional and personal relationship with a worker.

Because of this i find i am falling at the first hurdle in terms of writing a document of comparable substance to those i have read. It seems pointless to write an unhelpful document that fails to reflect the reality on the ground and which i believe will prove unworkable.

i believe a policy should be there to support and guide workers in their practice, to ensure standards of ethical and moral care etc are upheld, not to catch out workers who are placed in a situation that will brand them as irresponsible because technology is moving so fast we havent had the time to think the issues through policy-wise. Surely this dilemma cannot be limited to youth work? and i cannot be the only person who is facing this dilemma?

replies appreciated, thanks Andi
Permalink Reply by Tim Davies on January 18, 2010 at 11:14
Hey Andi

Really good issue to raise.

It might be useful to step back to the principles (rather than rules) that are important here:

1) Youth Workers & Volunteers working with young people should reflect the positive messages they give young people through their public behavior;

2) Workers & volunteers should be clear about where the boundaries are in the support they offer to young people, and should avoid setting up false expectations;

3) Services/projects should ensure that workers & volunteers are not put in the position of having to deal with information or situations that they are not confident or comfortable to deal with;

4) Providers of services/projects should make sure that they do not create situations in which workers or volunteers could cause harm to young people;

And also to look at any legal frameworks and guidance - e.g:

5) Any workers or volunteers with unsupervised access to young people need to be CRB checked;

6) Moderators of online services for young people need to be CRB/ISA checked (I'm not 100% sure if this has come into force yet... will try and find out...)

You can see why, with these principles, the guidance for statutory sector youth workers - where the boundaries (2) are often different from those in voluntary settings. However, for more voluntary settings, (3) and (4) are particularly important as volunteers may have both less training to deal with difficult situations, and may be subject to less ongoing supervision.

I'm not sure where exactly this would leave guidance. It seems to me that, even with the privacy settings of a network like Facebook, it's difficult to avoid seeing content from young people that a worker/volunteer may not wish to see/should not see outside their work/voluntary role.

It might be that guidance can encourage projects with the forms of relationships you talk of to focus on:

a) Volunteers/workers making sure that personal information, photos and updates on their profiles are only accessible to the people added as 'friends' on the networks;

b) Volunteers/workers to be aware of any existing 'friend' connections they have with young people they work with - and to remember that their online activities are, in this sense, public activities which they should be accountable for - and which should not undermine their positive youth work;

c) Where new connections are to be formed, these should be formed through non-friend mechanisms on social network sites, E.g. 'Fan Pages' and 'Groups' and the senior worker in any context should always be invited to be an administrator and supervisor of these spaces.

d) Volunteers/workers should be given clear guidance on who to contact if they have any concerns about young people's safety online.

Those aren't precise terms of guidance... and they may still be a bit inflexible for what you were thinking of - but let me know if you think they might be more appropriate for the contexts you are dealing with...
Permalink Reply by Joanne Jopling on January 18, 2010 at 21:44
Just in reply to Andi on this subject, for a very long time i had the young people i worked with on my online profile, believing in if you walk the talk then why should we have seperate accounts. However I changed my mind for several reasons... one was that the young people ... like to collect "friends" so they were going through my friends list and adding my friends. I had several phone calls from my freinds and family concerned that these young people were adding them, and leaving messages on their profile. This made me seriously think about if i was putting my friends and family at risk ? my dad sixty years old having lots of young women add him as a friend ? another problem i encountered was that my son was suddenly being harrassed by "my work". another issue was that I am responsible for what is on my profile, but i could not be accountable for what they saw on my friends profiles, or any views that they might hold. To me there was a clear issue safegauring all. It was then I set up a work profile, after explaining to everyone that i was going to be deleting them and I explained why.... no one was concerned or upset.

just some things to think about......

Joanne
Permalink Reply by andi kewley on January 19, 2010 at 0:49
First thanks really appreciate the responses

@ Tim:
Thankyou!! These suggestions are more along the lines of what i have been thinking, and certainly it’s the most helpful bit of writing that I have come across as of yet… hopefully it will help me to form the basis of a policy/ set of guidelines…(will keep you informed as to what I come up with). I imagine anything we come up with will need to be trialed/ updated fairly regularly according to changes in technology/ our experiences, but whilst it is useful to have a bit of paper, it is the conversation/ exploration of the issues that is in some ways most useful from a practice point of view anyway.

Whilst I don’t think anything too rigid will be practicable, I guess the emphasis for supporting any ‘local’ worker will be the same online as it is ‘in real life’; that of creating awareness of the need to act with consideration that those actions may/will be judged in accordance with their work role and responsibilities… in any small community ‘there are no secrets’, the difference is that in real-life memories (e.g. of that drunken night out) fade, online the evidence is there ‘forever’.


@ joanne:
thanks that does give some food for thought, I certainly have not experienced every aspect you have identified (thankfully). I initially excepted some ‘ex’ young people (now adults) that I worked with very closely in another part of the country, as a way to keep in touch more than anything else after moving. I have also trialed being friends with a couple of young women from my current workplace. The first being over 18, and since then another 2 over 16yrs. I also knew the parents of all concerned and approved them on the basis:
1) they contacted me, first online and then face to face
2) we had a discussion regarding privacy ~ what I could see of them, and what they would see of me and other considerations, such as their parents views.
3) that they went away and had a think about whether they were comfortable with that
4) that it was a trial for both of us

So far, the young women have all been very respectful, and contact (on both sides) has mainly been ‘in role’ or seeing me in an advisory capacity.

I have had numerous conversations before and after this with young people along the lines Joanne talks about. 99% of young peoples requests I ignore/ refuse along with a discussion or explaination of why.

I have also set up a fb page for my workplace (unfortunately I think neither the group or the page is ideal) which is administered by only senior (and enhance CRB checked) workers.

Whilst I am in a position of limiting contact online and in real life with the young people I work with the same cannot be said of all my colleagues. They might be sister/brother, aunt/uncle, life-long friend, cousin etc to young people or the families of young people who come into the project. Whilst some avoid the issue by not having a SNS at all, I also think, why should they? And it is this area that I am seeking guidance for.

@ both of you:
Anyhow really appreciate the comments/ suggestions so far – got me thinking which is what I was after =)
Permalink Reply by Joanne Jopling on January 19, 2010 at 19:38
Hi Andi

i have to say that 95% of the young people i had on my profile were no bother at all.

We have facebook and it works fantastic... we get emails and contact young people all the time on it, young people leave messages if they cant come in or want any of us to ring them etc etc .... all the staff access it as it is on all day long in the office. Young people know we have it on and its easy for them to contact us on it and know they will get some kind of response (saves on text message and phone call costs for them) so they use facebook.

we also do a lot of "challenging" around young peoples posts and things they write,photographs and i think because they have such a good relationship with us.... they accept that, we also use it to send out "keeping safe online" messages.... some of that challenging happens online and some of it face to face... depending on what is posted, temperment, attitude of young person..

however going back to "friends"

Two of our workers are young women who were once young people who attended the project as a user, when we introduced taking young people we worked with off our personal profiles, we hit the issue of when the young workers were in groups, they obviously made friendships and long lasting friendships and there were several people who were kind of related. After discussion we decided that it was okay to keep these people on personal profiles. I also have three young women that I know still on mine, but only because i have a close relationship not only with them but their families too. I think you just need to justify to a degree why these people are there on your profile and i think if it is valid then thats okay. but that is just my opinion based on the conversation we had with the staff team around this issue.

just read your profile Andi and Im a year behind you on the YMCA lol

Joanne
Permalink Reply by Katie Bacon on January 20, 2010 at 18:32
Hello - My name is Katie Bacon, just realised I'd not linked the DEvon Youth Service online social media risk assessment for other youth professionals to view and amended as they need.

THere is more info on my webpage (free)

Thanks Katie
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Permalink Reply by Jon Jolly on March 31, 2011 at 20:54

Having started the original Policies, guidelines and boundaries for interacting online thread, I thought I'd better come back here and post the policy we developed!

To be honest, it's not particularly comprehensive. In writing it we had three main aims; to be clear and concise, to give guidance for staff using personal accounts, and to give guidance over use of 'official' accounts run by the organisation. We run a range of activities, not just youth work projects, so I had to make it slightly more general.

Some of the content was adapted from Tim's Safe & Effective Engagement With SNS For Youth Professionals and the Social Networking Policy on the Birthtofive website (an early years and childcare resource), while we wrote in the rest.

Does anyone have any comments or suggestions?

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Pauline Walton on May 4, 2011 at 9:42

I have looked through your draft policy and it is really shaping up nicely.  It would be really helpful to me if I could incorporate a direct web link to the current policy so that I can quote it in my Church safeguarding document.  Even in draft it would help because it's so current.

In our case, it seems to me that most of our work is face-to-face and the principles Tim has outlined above are much the same in digital communication - minimise 1-2-1. 

Of course you can't exclude it entirely since often that's how pastoral care can start, but we are taking the view that the adult must make it clear that he/she will need support from others and that no conversation can be treated as confidential.  The adult must declare the discussion to a member of the Pastoral Team.

I particularly like the way Tim has taken the guidance from the point of view of the responsible online adult - this is very helpful and would add significant value to the general principles I need to put in the Church's policy.

 

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