These are the basic principles, drawn from the Church of England's guidance document Safer Environment and Activities, which you should always follow when running activities in church with children and young people:
Avoid lone working:
Those working or volunteering with children on behalf of the church should avoid situations where they are on their own with a child. This includes ‘formal’ situations such as youth groups, choirs and bell-ringing, and so on, and less formal setting such as before and after those groups, giving lifts home, and so on.
Observe an appropriate age gap:
A five-year age-gap between children and those working with them is highly advisable. This may not always be possible with, for instance, trainee youth-workers, but in that instance the group should be led by other adults who are at least five years older than the young people in the group. For young helpers this should also apply; a 17 year-old helping in the children’s work should help with those 12 years old or younger.
Follow the Code of Safer Working Practice:
The Code applies both to running activities safely and to recruiting people safely. In general terms, you must make sure that all those involved in any activities in your church with children and young people are following that Code.
Safer Touch:
Given what we know about how abusers groom victims, it is particularly important to highlight one section of the Code of Safer Working Practice, namely around the safe use of touch when working with children. Research shows that many child sexual abusers regularly initiate touch and then gradually sexualise that touch, conditioning the child to accept this as normal. It is our responsibility to work with young people in a way that helps them learn how safe adults behave around them. Letting them know that it is not normal for adults who work with children to initiate touch with them helps them to develop expectations that will keep them safe in settings beyond church, and helps to equip them to know something is wrong if an adult does start to initiate touch in activities in church.
Good Behaviour:
Ensuring children are safe in church activities includes thinking about the behaviour of children towards each other. Most safeguarding standards for organisations working with young people include anti-bullying as a specific area of focus.
As with adults who work or volunteer with children, codes of behaviour are a good way to make expectations clear. Best practice is to work with children and young people to come up with an agreement of ‘How we treat each other’ amongst themselves. You may wish to ask young people how they feel they should speak to each other, how they should relate when in disagreement, what they should say about each other on social media, and so on. An exercise such as this is more likely to produce something meaningful to the young people in your church than a set of standards handed down by leaders.
Keeping Records:
Contact details for parents of children attending groups in church should be kept by the group leader. The leader should record each child’s name, address, date of birth, contact number for their parent or carer and parental consent for activities. They should be readily availability for leaders and helpers in the event that, for instance, a referral needs to be made to the safeguarding authorities. They should be regularly updated so that personal data is only kept for as long as needed.
Records of children attending each event/activity should be kept by activity leaders. These records do not need to be stored indefinitely, but it is good practice to retain them for up to twelve months.
CONSENT FOR ACTIVITIES
The brief guidance below gives you the basic details for when and in what circumstances parental and child consent is required for a child's involvement in activities. Once you have familiarised yourself with this guidance, you can download the relevant forms here:
Parent or carer consent is needed for any activity for their children at which they are not present. Often this will be implicit, for example through attendance at Sunday School or a youth club. Implicit consent will suffice for regular group activities. Written parental consent forms must be obtained for activities off the premises. These must include contact details of the parent or carer, details of any special needs of the child, and permission as necessary for taking photographs, videos and other images. (Please note that in additional to parental consent for photographs etc, children over the age of must give their own consent before taking or using images of them). Model parental consent forms for activities and trips, transport and photographs are available by following these links and are also included in the Appendices.
Consent by children and young people. It is good practice to obtain agreement from children and young people to any activity in which they are involved, though again this is often implicit in their attendance. If a young person is of sufficient age and understanding in relation to the specific issue they are being asked about, they can give their own agreement independently of their parents. So, for example, while parental consent is always required for a group residential holiday, an older teenager would usually be able to consent to the photos from the holiday being displayed in church. You should record who has given consent for any specific activity
GROUP SIZE - LEADERS & HELPERS
The reality of parish life is that getting enough people to help can be challenging. The guidance provided here is recommended ‘best practice’. On individual occasions (i.e. a Sunday morning in the summer holidays) it may not always be possible to meet all of the requirements outlined below. This should be the exception rather than the rule. In particular, the restriction regarding lone-working should be followed without exception. If only one adult is available to lead the activity, it should be postponed until an appropriate amount of adult leaders are available. If the ratios provided below are consistently impossible to meet, PCCs will need to consider the sustainability of the children’s work being offered and whether a different model could be used.
OFSTED prescribes minimum staff–child ratios for those groups which are required to register with it:
| Child’s Age Range | Number of adults | Number of children |
| 0 - 2 | 1 | 3 |
| 2 - 3 | 1 | 4 |
| 4 - 8 | 1 | 6 |
| 9 - 12 | 1 | 8 |
| 13 - 18 | 1 | 10 |
Parents, carers, and occasional helpers can be included in these ratios if they have been formally recruited and trained. If they have not, they can offer additional support under the immediate supervision of a leader who has been safely recruited.
With parent-and-toddler groups such as Messy Church, best practice is to have a minimum of two adult leaders who are not there with their own children running the group. It is recognised that this is not always possible, but this should be the ideal that is aimed for.
These ratios are for guidance. It may be necessary to have more helpers available for specific reasons, for example if children have special needs, or if a risk assessment has shown additional hazards that need to be managed.
Young helpers
Helping in activities for children can be an excellent opportunity for people under 18 to participate in church life. If your church provides opportunities for young people to serve in this way, make sure you follow the advice at the start of this section regarding a five-year age gap between these young people and the children they are helping with. It is best to designate any young person helping in this way as a ‘helper’ rather than a leader, and to ensure they are supervised by an adult who has been safely recruited, and who can take overall responsibility for the leadership of the group. (Remembering that the young person is themselves legally a child, and that the adult leader has safeguarding responsibilities for them too). You should avoid counting these young people as part of the adult/child ratios outlined above; they are additional helpers, not part of the core team. It is particularly important to follow the lone working rule, and not to consider an older child who is helping out to be the equivalent of an adult for the purposes of observing this rule. (For instance, a 17 year-old who is a helper shouldn’t be in a planning meeting on their own with the adult leader). Two adults should be present with children at all times.
For some situations (e.g. crèche) it may be appropriate to have children under the age of 16 helping on an occasional basis. However, it is recommended that 14 is the minimum age, and that young helpers are utilised only occasionally. Any such opportunities should be seen as a chance for the young to grow in responsibility rather than to ‘help the church out’ when volunteer numbers are low.
PHOTOGRAPHS & CHILDREN
Photography of children and young people involved in church activities can be very positive and bring useful publicity, but there are some important issues to note. The issues are the same for still photographs, digital images or films. For convenience they are all referred to as images.
Images count as sensitive personal data under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). As with all such data, they should only be used with the consent of the person in the image.
The list below provides a simple point of reference for gaining consent regarding the use of images of children
- Children under the age of 13: consent should be gained from their parents;
- Children aged between 13 and 16: consent should be gained from parents and the children themselves;
- Children aged 17: consent should be gained from the children themselves.
Please note that the above list shows ‘all you need to do’, rather than ‘all you might want to do’. It would be good practice to ask a child younger than 13 before you use their photograph, and to inform the parents of a 17 year that their child has agreed to the use of their image.
Let parents (and children over 13: see above) know how, where and in what context an image may be used – for example, on a public website, through social media or in a printed resource.
Consent is not needed if children appear in a wide-angle group photograph in a public space (for instance, a photograph of the church fete). A church is not a public place in this sense but there may still be occasions when it would not be reasonable, practical or proportionate to secure consent for every individual child who appears in the photograph. In these circumstances, organisers should make clear to all participants and parents that these kinds of images will be taken, and for what purposes.
For instance , if the event is a church service, nativity play or similar, then a verbal notice can be given out at the beginning for the leader of the service or event, asking that any parent who objects to images being made of their child should either remove their child from view of the camera or approach the leader afterwards to ensure that any image they object to is not used. Consent can also be implied; if an activity leader invites people to be part of a group photograph, then those who gather for the photograph have given their consent by virtue of having done so.
Complete a parental consent form for use of images of children, possibly as part of the process for registering and consenting the child’s participation in the activity or event. See model registration template.
Leaders of activities have a responsibility to put in place arrangements to ensure that any ‘official’ photographers can identify (or be informed about) which children should not be subject to close-up photography.
Best Practice with Photography:
- Think carefully before taking any images showing children and young people on your website, social media or other publications. Consider what the images will be used for and whether consent will be required (see below);
- oDo not supply full names of children along with the images, unless:
- oIt is considered necessary e.g. celebrating a performance or achievement;
- othe child and parent(s) or carer(s) have consented;
- Only use images of children in suitable dress or kit, being particularly mindful of some activities (e.g. swimming) which involve partial states of dress. Additionally, avoid pictures of children in school uniform where the name of the school is visible;
- Keep images of children securely:
- Hard copies of images should be kept in a locked drawer;
- Electronic images should be in a protected folder with restricted access;
- Images should not be stored on unencrypted portable equipment such as laptops, memory sticks or mobile phones. If such storage is unavoidable, the images should be kept in a password protected folder or on a device protected with a code or some other secure method of access such as fingerprint identification.
- Avoid, if possible, using any personal equipment to take photos and recordings of children on behalf of the church – use only cameras or devices belonging to your organisation. This may not always be achievable but it is best practice. If personal equipment has to be used for church purposes, delete the photographs of individual children once they have been used for the purpose for which they were taken;
For guidance on the Data Protection Act and other privacy regulations, visit the Information commissioner's office (ICO) website.
Photography/filming by parents and others at activities/events.
There will be circumstances in which parents and other attendees at activities want to take photographs, for instance concerts, plays, and choirs. For youth events in particular, many young people will have a camera on their mobile phone and will regularly post images of themselves and their friends on social media. It will be important in the planning stages of events to:
- Decide on the activity approach to photographs/filming for ‘attendees’; This does not apply when, for instance, parents are taking photographs of children’s events for their own use.
- Clarify and promote the photography rules for the event to all church to all participants;
- Warn parents, attendees and young people that there can be negative consequences to sharing images linked to information about their own or other people’s children on social media – and care should be taken about ‘tagging’;
- Children who are in care should not be photographed as this could put them at risk;
- Make sure that there are procedures to respond to and manage any concerns arising, including a named person to report any concerns to.
- For young people, you may wish to consider a discussion amongst your group regarding how they wish the images they take of each other to be used, and what restrictions they feel should be observed. This will be more meaningful and effective with young people than a set of rules imposed by adult leaders.