Keeping people safe

If anyone is in immediate danger, don’t wait for us:

Emergency

Call 112 (police, fire and ambulance).

A child at risk

Call 1098, the national child helpline.

Women's helpline

Call 181.

Then tell us, so we can act on SocioStory too.

• Volunteers must be 18 or over. We check each volunteer’s age on the day of every drive, from the date of birth on their volunteer profile.
• SocioStory never tracks anyone’s location on the web, and never tracks or monitors children at all.
• Under-18s can’t have a public profile, and nobody can search or browse volunteers.

No volunteer is ever alone with a child or a vulnerable adult. At least two adults must be present, in the open, whenever volunteers work with children or vulnerable people.

• A drive that involves children must name a safeguarding lead, and brief volunteers on this rule before it starts.
• Roles that bring the same adults back to work with children regularly need police verification, as the POCSO Rules 2020 (Rule 3) require.
• Volunteers don’t take children’s phone numbers or contact them on social media. SocioStory has no private messaging with volunteers.

• Every drive has a safety plan: a briefing, first aid and an emergency contact. SocioStory reviews each organisation’s first three drives before they’re published, and samples later ones.
• A named coordinator is there from start to finish, and receives volunteers when they arrive.
• Blood donation camps are run only with licensed blood centres; donors must be 18 to 65, and paid donation is illegal.
• SocioStory can pause a drive at once, hiding it and freezing sign-ups, while we look into a concern.

• Don’t photograph children or the people a drive is for without their consent, and a parent’s or guardian’s for a child.
• We never publish anything that identifies a child victim or a child in care (POCSO Act s.23, Juvenile Justice Act s.74). Our editors blur children’s faces by hand.
• Every photo uploaded to SocioStory is re-encoded, which removes location data.
• Authors confirm that people agreed to appear before a story goes to our editors, who check again. Read our editorial policy.

If something worries you, about a drive, a story, a profile, a message or a person, tell our designated safeguarding lead. You don’t need proof, and you won’t get into trouble for reporting honestly.

Safeguarding lead

To be named before launch

Email

sociostoryfoundation@gmail.com

Online

The grievance form: choose what it’s about, and say it’s a safeguarding concern

1. The safeguarding lead hears about it within 2 hours.
2. We make people safe first: we take content down, pause the drive or suspend accounts as needed.
3. If a child may have been abused, we report it to the police or the Special Juvenile Police Unit, as the POCSO Act (s.19) requires. We don’t investigate it ourselves.
4. Our board is told within 24 hours, and we review what happened after 7 days.
5. We tell only the people who need to know, and keep safeguarding records for 7 years, or longer if the law asks us to.

College Social Leaders must complete safeguarding training, and pass its quiz, before they lead volunteers. Organisations that run drives with children must have a child protection policy of their own. We review this policy every year, and after any serious incident.