Internet, Photographs and Mobile Phones

Once approved foster carers are required to be reviewed annually as to their suitability to foster (see 12.9 Review and Termination of Approval of Foster Carers). As part of the annual review process, checks will be made upon the foster carer’s social media/internet. We will ask for your consent to undertake social media checks but reserve the right to complete them without your consent, to ensure the welfare of any child/children placed. It is the responsibility of the fostering service to ensure prospective and approved carers are suitable to work with children and young people and will be setting an example as good role models for the children and young people in their care. The checks information should be recorded on the analysis of social media checks form and shared with the team manager, fostering independent reviewing officer (FIRO) and if appropriate panel.

In terms of good practice, it is recommended that foster carers:

1. Set maximum privacy settings to social media accounts. This is to limit access to posts; as other settings may open their content to a wider audience, leading to their privacy and that of your family, friends, children in your care to be potentially compromised;
2. Review their security and confidentiality settings regularly and reset them if necessary;
3. Should consider the consequences before posting anything on social networking sites and the impression it may give to those who access the information. Anything posted online could end up in the public domain to be read by birth parents, children / young people, or social care;
4. Should not share any information relating to their fostering role and daily routines for safety, or which can identify a child or former child in their care;
5. Information and photographs of children in their care must never be posted on social media sites without consent from the local authority, parents, and the children, if they are of an appropriate age. Once an image is on the internet it can be viewed and stored by other people within their friends’ network and may reveal the location of the child / young person. Therefore, this could lead to implications for carers own safety and that of the children they are caring for. This will need to be reviewed annually within the safer caring document, alongside delegated authority;
6. Immediate family and friends, who are aware of their fostering role, should also be reminded of expectations around social media and the dangers of identifying a fostered child;
7. Can be linked to a foster child’s/young person’s social networks, if both parties feel comfortable with this, however, this will need to be reviewed if a child/young person transitions to a different placement. Adding a young person as a ‘friend’ means you can assess/monitor their contents, but it also means they can access yours. Before doing so, discuss this with your supervising social worker and the child / young person’s social worker;
8. Should maintain appropriate professional boundaries and should not have family members of looked after children as ‘friends’. Nor should employees of the fostering service and foster carers be ‘friends’ on social media websites. This will need to be discussed and reviewed with family and friends’ carers, where the dynamics can be more complex;
9. Must inform their supervising social worker, the child social worker if they have any concerns of a safeguarding nature.

In addition to undertaking social media and internet checks, Nottinghamshire County Council will provide advice and information about the use of the internet to foster carers as part of preparation to foster training and post approval training. If the respective prospective foster carer(s) or foster carer(s) need any technical support around settings for their social media, they can approach their supervising social worker, who can assist or identify appropriate training.

Different ways of communicating with friends are important to a child/young people and are now a way of life from an early age. When a child is placed with you, find out their background and whether the internet, photographs and mobile phones contributed towards any abuse so that you can plan their use safely for all children but particularly those where it has been an issue. You should ask the child's social worker for advice and information.

Your knowledge of different media will vary but it is important that foster carers develop their understanding of different electronic devices, the internet and social media, and that you learn how to safeguard children when using the internet and mobile devices. Foster carers should also be aware of and alert to the signs of grooming behaviour. Grooming is when someone builds an emotional connection with a child to gain their trust for the purposes of sexual abuse or exploitation.

If you are concerned that a child/young person is being bullied over the internet or phone, you should talk to them about it, record what is happening in the daily record and speak to the child's social worker as soon as possible.

The placement plan should identify any risks or issues associated with the use of a computer, mobile phone or gaming equipment particularly in relation to bullying, sexual exploitation, radicalisation or other risk-taking behaviours and where appropriate assess the risk and how safely to manage the child or young person's use. The use of social media/electronic communication as a way of maintaining contact with family and friends should be outlined in the child's Care Plan (see also Contact Between the Child, their Family and Others Procedure)

You should try and take part in a child's web browsing particularly for a new child in placement; school homework is an ideal opportunity for this. Explain the web's positive and negative sides and tell them that if they are not sure about a site they should talk to you. Children should not be permitted to use sites that are also used by adults unless risk assessment has been carried out, in consultation with the social worker. These arrangements must be outlined in the child's Placement Plan and must be reviewed regularly.

Some useful guidelines are:

• Time limits on computers should be agreed with the child/young person;
• Appropriate internet security should be used on the computers to avoid access to inappropriate material;
• You should set clear ground rules on the use of the internet;
• Computers should be in areas of the house where adults can see what is being looked at rather than in a bedroom;
• If a young person has a laptop then decide with them where and when they can use it if they are accessing the internet;
• You should show an interest in the internet and encourage young people to be open about any concerns or problems;
• Never allow a child to arrange a face-to-face meeting with someone they "meet" on the internet without first speaking to the child's social worker;
• The child should never respond to messages that are rude, threatening, or makes them feel uncomfortable. Encourage the child to talk to you about messages like this. If the child receives a message or sees something on-line that you are concerned about keep a copy and make a note in the daily record;
• Remember that people online may not be who they say they are.

Teaching the child to be cautious is important and can help when they start to use social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter.

When they do you should ensure the child's profile and postings contain nothing that might expose their identity or whereabouts.

You should go through the site's terms and conditions, explaining them to the child - it's important you both understand them.

You should try to equip the child with the skills to decide who to trust, even when they have not met the person face-to-face and talk to the child/young person about what makes a real friend.

You should be aware and understand the risks that using the internet may pose for children, such as bullying, sexual exploitation and radicalisation. The Fostering Service should have a well-developed strategies to support you in keeping children safe and to support and provide you with appropriate learning around internet safety.

You should be aware of and alert to indicators of grooming behaviour and possible sexual exploitation.

Social networking sites are websites where you can create a profile all about yourself and contact other people. You can also upload photos, music and videos to share with other people, and on some sites, chat to other people on forums. Popular social networking websites include Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter but there are others.

Social networking sites are often used by perpetrators as an easy way to access children and young people for sexual abuse. The Serious Crime Act (2015) introduced an offence of sexual communication with a child. This applies to an adult who communicates with a child and the communication is sexual or if it is intended to elicit from the child a communication which is sexual and the adult reasonably believes the child to be under 16 years of age. The Act also amended the Sex Offences Act 2003, it is an offence for an adult to arrange to meet with someone under 16 having communicated with them on just one occasion (previously it was on at least two occasions).

Radical and extremist groups may use social networking to attract children and young people into narrow ideologies that are intolerant of diversity: this is similar to the grooming process and exploits the same vulnerabilities. The groups concerned include those linked to extreme Islamist, or Far Right/Neo Nazi ideologies, extremist Animal Rights groups and others who justify political, religious, sexist or racist violence.

Children may be drawn to adopt a radical ideology through a failure to appreciate the bias in extremist material; in addition by repeated viewing of extreme content they may come to view it as normal.

'Internet Abuse' relates to four main areas of abuse to children:

• Abusive images of children (although these are not confined to the Internet);
• A child or young person being groomed for the purpose of Sexual Abuse;
• Exposure to pornographic or other offensive material via the Internet; and
• The use of the internet, and in particular social media, to engage children in extremist ideologies.

It should be noted that creating or sharing explicit images of a child is illegal, even if the person doing it is a child. A young person is breaking the law if they:

• Take an explicit photo or video of themselves or a friend;
• Share an explicit image or video of a child, even if it's shared between children of the same age;
• Possess, download or store an explicit image or video of a child, even if the child gave their permission for it to be created.

However, if a young person is found creating or sharing images, the police can choose to record that a crime has been committed but that taking formal action is not in the public interest.

The Online Safety Act 2023 introduced new criminal offences including:

• Sending a message with information the sender knows to be false with the intention of causing non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience without reasonable excuse;
• Sending a message with a threat of death, serious injury, rape or serious financial loss where the sender intends the recipient to fear that threat will be carried out (or is reckless as to whether the recipient has such fear);
• Sending or showing an electronic communication with flashing images with the intention to cause harm to a person with epilepsy;
• Communicating, publishing or showing material capable (and with the intention) of encouraging or assisting the serious self-harm of another, even if the sender cannot identify the recipients and even if the self-harm does not occur;
• Intentionally sending or giving images of any person’s genitals to another person with the intention to cause the recipient alarm, distress or humiliation, or for the purposes of sexual gratification whilst reckless as to whether the recipient will be caused alarm, distress or humiliation;
• Four offences in relation to intentional sharing or threatening to share intimate images without consent, which do not necessarily require proof that the sender intended to cause alarm, distress or humiliation. (This replaces the previous offences relating to so-called ‘revenge porn’ where there was a requirement for an intention to cause distress).

If it is OK to take pictures or videos always ask the child's permission first and make sure they are clear on who will see them and why.

You should try and take photographs regularly of the child/young person to help record their life; it may also help when putting together their Life book. See Keeping Memories.

You should be clear on who can give consent for the child to have their picture taken or be filmed for school etc.

Mobile phones and some apps offer text messaging, taking pictures, sending and receiving them, sending and receiving video clips and sound tracks, as well as access to the internet which means a child can download pictures and videos.

With a camera phone a child/young person can also send pictures of themselves, friends and where they live, which can have security implications for some Looked After Children.

It may be useful to encourage young people to share details of how they communicate with others and an agreement reached between the young person, social worker and foster carer about how safely to do this.

You need to be aware that most mainstream Social Networking sites impose a minimum age limit of 13 on their membership. This includes Facebook. It is therefore not appropriate for children under 13 years old to use social networking sites which are also used by adults.

The following is a set of guidance for what should be considered or when a child or young person has a mobile phone:

• Age appropriate use of the phones – Can the child take their phone to school? Do they need to hand in their phone at the end of the evening before they go to bed?
• Safety – does the phone have internet access and if so have the carer, social worker and child all signed the contract to agree that the carer will periodically check the phone for appropriate and safe usage? If the agreement has been made that the phone will not be checked document why;
• Where there are concerns about the use of the phone, you should report them to the child's social worker and discuss appropriate sanctions – should the phone be removed?
• Where it is considered and evidence is available to suggest that the child's mobile phone is placing the child at risk, the phone can be removed as an immediate measure. If this situation occurs, reporting to the supervising social worker or support worker and discussions about who should inform the child's social worker should be done at the earliest opportunity and action to remedy this situation taken. This should be recorded within the contract;
• Contact with birth families can often be the source of distress and upset. If the use of a mobile phone affects contact negatively with family this should be reported and consideration given to what measures can be taken by the child's social worker to address this;
• How is the credit for the phone managed? It is the responsibly of the young person to maintain credit for their personal phone with your support. Consideration should be given to pocket money, activities and any part time working undertaken by the young person. Appropriate support to encourage ordinary 'teenage behaviour' in relation to current mobile phone communication should be considered carefully. It is imperative that looked after children are not discriminated against simply because they are in the care system and they should still be given the same opportunities as their peer groups whilst being mindful of the safeguarding issues.

Mobile phone network providers operate a barring and filtering mechanism to prevent those under 18 years accessing 18 rated content. The service can be provided for both contract and pay as you go phones. You are advised to explore this with the network provider that a child/young person uses or see what other services they offer.