Our social media policy

Overview

Social media is used across Gloucestershire Scouts (the county) to promote scouting, to share information with parents/guardians and young people, and to provide volunteers with a place to share ideas and communicate with each other.

This policy sets out how social media should be used within the county for the purposes listed above, whilst also setting the boundaries within which staff and volunteers should operate.

Many terms are used to describe aspects of social media – guidance is available in Additional Information. The following terms are used in this policy:

Groups – a membership-based profile, used by members to communicate with a known group of people (e.g. a group for leaders, a group for leaders and parents/young people in a unit)

Pages – a public-facing presence, typically used to advertise scouting towards the public, and to broadcast information (e.g. announcing an event)

Policy

This policy applies to all social media groups and pages for Gloucestershire Scouts, and to all staff, volunteers and members of the county.

  • Do follow the rules set out in “Young People First” (the Yellow Card) – these also apply to social media
  • Do ensure that all media profiles should have a minimum of 2 administrators, at least one of whom must hold a full county role
  • Do ensure that you have informed parents/guardians that photos may be taken and used on social media. At the request of a parent/guardian, ensure that any photos are removed without delay
  • Do ensure that any materials posted on social media are appropriate and relevant to scouting
  • Do set appropriate privacy settings for all groups – unless there is a clear reason otherwise, groups should be set to ‘private’ (or similar) privacy levels where only approved members can see the contents of the group
  • Do follow rules and guidance set out by The Scout Association (see Additional Information for links)
  • Do maintain membership of groups, making sure that people are removed if they are suspended or leave Gloucestershire Scouts. This also applies to administrators of pages and groups.
  • Do not use personal social media accounts to communicate directly, on a one-to-one basis with young people or parents/guardians
  • Do not provide personal details of young people or volunteers via social media channels
  • Do not create social media profiles for events or groups for which you are not responsible
  • Do not use non-persistent forms of social media to communicate with young people

Additional Information

  • Factsheet FS103011 – Social Networking Sites and Scouting (The Scout Association)
  • Social Media – Guidance for social media use from The Scout Association
  • Social Media Privacy Guides – Step-by-step guides published by internetmatters.org for setting privacy settings on personal social media sites