Basketball England Social Media Policy
This policy offers guidance for Basketball England clubs and affiliated bodies about the use of social media when communicating with children and young people.
Updated: September 2022
Definitions of terms used in this document can be found HERE
The following guidelines contain practical safety measures and provide a useful starting point for the development of your club’s online safeguarding strategy and for the personal use of social media. It is important that all staff and participants familiarise themselves with this policy. The guidance is not listed in a set order or sequence as there is cross over information which applies equally to club and personal use. Further guidance is available in the Basketball England’s Appropriate Communication Policy.
Basketball England has identified the need to communicate effectively with children and young people and if you are considering the use of social networking, the following guidelines should be adhered to:
Understand the safety aspects including what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour on social media
Become familiar with user services before setting up your account on social media. This should specifically include privacy and safety tools, the terms of service (the terms of service usually contain what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour), and how users can contact the service if they should have a concern or complaint.
Reporting other breaches of terms of service
Concerns about inappropriate content or behaviour which potentially breaches the terms of service should be reported to the service provider. The terms of service set out the legal conditions concerning use of the service including the minimum age requirement. An acceptable use policy is usually included and this makes clear what behaviour is and is not acceptable on the service i.e. harassment, defamation, obscene or abusive language, the uploading of material which is libellous, defamatory, obscene, illegal, nudity, violent etc.
Decide how your page/profile will be managed within your club
Decide who will have responsibility for: the setting up, management, and moderation (overseeing, reviewing and responding to posted content) of the webpage/profile. This includes the content you upload to appear, what you accept to be linked to your webpage/profile, and the communication or interaction with users. This person is most likely to have online contact with younger users, interacting with the webpage/profile; therefore there should be some level of accountability and support from the organisation.
Vetting and training
This person should be appropriately vetted and receive recognised safeguarding or child protection training. Training should also address online safeguarding issues, including what warning signs to look out for.
Involve your designated safeguarding person
If you are engaging a social media or moderate your webpage/profile it is important that the club welfare officer within your club be made aware of any online safeguarding concerns and ensures concerns are handled in line with the Basketball England Safeguarding Policy and procedures.
Registration or ‘signing up’ your club
Choose an appropriate email address to register/set up a profile/account. Ensure that only organisational rather than personal email addresses are made available on or through a profile.
Security
Keep the log-in details to the account (including the password to the account and webpage/profile) secure within your club.
Privacy and safety settings
Set the appropriate privacy level;
Consider each of the privacy and safety settings available across all aspects of the services i.e. photos, blog entries, image galleries and set the appropriate level of privacy. Failing to set appropriate privacy levels could result in messages which are defamatory, libellous or obscene appearing on your profile before you have a chance to remove it. This may result in significant personal distress, risk to the reputation of the individual, the sport and/or the club and require the intervention and/or investigation by Basketball England, the service providers and possibly the police.
Accept ‘friends’ setting and minimum user age
You may wish to check a user profile before accepting them. Do not accept friend request from children under the minimum age for the service (usually 13 years). Report underage users to the service provider and to the young person’s parents (perhaps via the Club Welfare Officer). Basketball England suggests that no adult in a position of trust should ‘friend’ anyone under the age of 18 nor should they accept ‘friend’ requests from anyone under age 18 unless it is on a managed team or club page where appropriate safeguarding measures are in place and with the approval and knowledge of the club CWO. Clubs should obtain signed parental permission for anyone under the age of 18 to be added to or contacted via managed social media.
‘Accept comment’ setting
This allows a user to approve or pre-moderate a comment from another user, usually a ‘friend’ before it appears on their webpage/profile. Ensure that all messages are checked before they appear on a club webpage/ profile to ensure that any inappropriate messages are blocked and if necessary reported to the service provider. This may not be possible with all social networking services. You may wish to contact the prospective service provider to establish if steps could be taken to adjust the privacy and safety settings for your needs.
Ensure that staff and volunteers, including coaches and athletes are aware of the need to protect their privacy online
Make sure that your staff and coaches (paid and volunteers), sports athletes, students and trainees, and are aware of the need to protect their own privacy online! They should understand the risks in posting and sharing content which may damage their reputation before they link their personal webpage/profile to the clubs profile. It is inappropriate for adult coaches to communicate on a one to one basis with players under the age of 18 years through social media or instant messaging. Coaches and staff should not be “friends” with the children they coach and they should not comment on their status as this can open the adult to allegations. Young people and children within the club should be told not to ‘friend’ request members of staff as their request will not be accepted as part of club policy.
Coaches and staff should not follow social media feeds or pages for anyone under the age of 18 without written parental consent
As your role includes a position of trust from a safeguarding standpoint, you should remain acutely aware that even by following a child on social media leaves an impression of authority especially if your role relates to selection, performance, national teams or regional work.
Address safety when adding content to your page/profile contact details
Add information about how to contact your club including a website address, if available. Also include offline contact details for your club and information on how to contact Basketball England. This allows users to contact your club directly and verify your organisation offline.
Promote safe and responsible use
Consider promoting safe and responsible use of social networking to your audience online. This could include uploading safety videos, messages or links onto the club webpage/profile. If you do not yet have a safe and responsible use policy or safety tips for your sport, there is a considerable amount of safety material available.
Links to safety and help organisations
Provide links to safety and support organisations on the profile including a link to the Basketball England Child Protection Lead. [email protected]
Avoid taking personal details of children and young people
Do not ask users to divulge personal details including home and email addresses, schools, mobile numbers that may help locate a child. It is best to provide the details of the event and signpost to where users can obtain further information e.g. further information can be obtained from your local club.
Content – think before you post
Consider any messages, photos, videos or information – do they comply with existing policies within your organisation? (e.g. use of photographs of children). Is the content e.g. photographs and text appropriate to the audience? Always seek young person/parental permission to use the photos of those featured before adding to the page/profile.
Messages which are defamatory, libellous or obscene are prohibited at all times. Failure to do so may result in significant personal distress, risk to the reputation of the individual, the sport and/or the club, and may require the intervention and/or investigation by Basketball England, the service providers and possibly the police. Basketball England will not tolerate any posting of messages which bring the reputation of basketball in to disrepute and will handle all such instances in line with disciplinary and compliance policies. To report concerns you should contact the Basketball England Compliance Manager.
Profiling players and tagging
It is common practice in sport to promote features such as ‘player of the week’ or the ‘MVP of the tournament’. Consideration must be taken when clubs look to promote their players under the age of 18 through social media or on their websites.
Young people should always be aware and involved in any decision making when it comes to profiling them, no club, league, or organisation should profile players without their & their parents’ permission or the player's and their parents' knowledge.
Consent must be obtained before any decisions are made on profiling. When looking to obtain consent, the individual and their parents should be made aware of:
- Where the profiling will be posted and promoted
- What are the reasons for the profiling
- If their images will be used
- Will they be tagged through social media - ideally not (see below)
- A sample of the questions that will be asked
They must be able to have a say on what is used and where. If they wish for certain items in the profile to be withheld or decide against the profiling, even at the last minute, it must be adhered too.
No inappropriate questions or answers should be published at any times. A player profiling should be able profiling the players achievements and successes within the sport only. A club, league or organisation must be over elaborate with its publishing of personal information in the player profile, a good opportunity should be to discuss this with the player and their parents to find out what they want to see. You must never publish any information without the proper prior consent – never assume it will be ‘ok’.
Tagging players
Young people should be able to use the internet without worrying about being shown inappropriate material or being abused or bullied. Tagging in posts is usual practice throughout the whole of social media when it comes to personal use and can be a good way of sharing information and promoting basketball.
It is poor practice to tag a child’s personal pages/accounts. Basketball England would not recommend the club tag the personal accounts of juniors in their social media posts as this is potentially creating risk to the child and creating an opportunity for contact on social media by the person controlling the account, presumably an adult, and the child.
Fake or impostor page/profiles
Beware of fake or impostor profiles of well known or celebrity sports people. It has been known for fake or impostor profiles to be set up on social networking services. Sometimes this is intended to be fun, however fake profiles can be set up with malicious intent to ridicule and harass an individual. It can also be used to groom children by those seeking to gain a child’s trust and attempt to set up a meeting offline.
Contacting the social networking provider
There is usually a ‘contact us’ at the bottom of every page with an email address to explore how they can promote your sports profile.
Sources of safety advice and Information
The provision of safety advice to users of social networking services is recognised as critical. Government, law enforcement, children’s charities and the industry on both an individual and collective basis have developed a range of safety materials to encourage safe and responsible use of the internet. Most of the resources have been developed to be shared and disseminated widely – and in some cases downloadable from the websites.
Basketball England does not hold any legal jurisdiction over personal (civil) damage to reputation (actual or perceived) made as the result of comments made or posted by another individual on social media.
Basketball England reserves the right to monitor the social media feeds and pages of individuals in a position of trust working for or on behalf of Basketball England to ensure appropriate safeguarding and child protection.
All staff affiliated with Basketball England agree to this and the Social Media policy by entering membership, licensing or appointment with Basketball England.
Any breech of the Social Media Policy will be dealt with in line with safeguarding protocols and timeframes.
Useful links
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) including the organisation's safety and education materials
CEOP is a police organisation focused on the protection of children and young people from sexual abuse and exploitation; it has a broad remit and range of functions to help tackle the sexual abuse and exploitation of children – primarily where use of technology is a factor, or media such as the online environment are utilised. It is also a founder member of the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT), an international collaboration of law enforcement agencies committed to tackling this abuse of children and young people.
Childnet International, a charity that is helping to make the internet a great and safe place for children, have developed a set of award-winning resources called Know IT All.
ChildLine is a service provided by the NSPCC offering a free and confidential helpline for children in danger and distress. Children and young people in the UK may call 0800 1111 to talk about any problem, 24 hours a day.
Child Protection in Sport Unit (CPSU)
The Unit was founded in 2001 to work with UK Sports Councils, National Governing Bodies (NGBs), County Sports Partnerships (CSPs) and other organisations to help them minimise the risk of child abuse during sporting activities.
Data Protection and the Information Commission Office
‘Keeping your personal information personal’ – a guide to the Data Protection Act 1998 for Youth, including use of social networking. It also has guidance on the protecting children’s personal information for organisations.
UK Council for Child Internet Safety
The UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) is a group of more than 200 organisations drawn from across government, industry, law, academia and charity sectors that work in partnership to help keep children safe online.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is the UK internet hotline for reporting illegal online content – specifically child sexual abuse images hosted worldwide and criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content which is hosted in the UK.