Services must seek parental/carer consent for children to have their photographs taken and to clearly state what these purposes may be used for, e.g. a parent may be happy for the child's photograph to be taken and for the picture to be put on the service's notice boards/displays but not for the photograph to be put on social media or websites. Furthermore, even if a service has consent for a child's photograph to be used within the service, if an outside organisation such as ourselves or the Care Inspectorate wish to take photographs for illustrative purposes, additional consent should be sought.

Consent must also be given from parents/carers for information to be shared about a child with another agency, e.g. the school- in this instance it should be informed consent meaning that the parent/carer must be fully aware of what is intended to be shared. If the parent does not give consent then this information cannot be shared and in such circumstances services should develop to build a better relationship of trust with the parents. Please note that under the Getting It Right For Every Child approach, guidance from the government about information sharing between professionals will be forthcoming, however, it must sit within current Data Protection legislation.

Services should also seek parental/carer consent for a number of activities within the club such as: is the child allowed to have their face or nails painted etc, usually this would be included in the registration pack.

Of course, children's consent should also be sought- just because a parent/carer has consented to a child participating in something the child may not want to participate, and that too should be respected. (Although it should also be noted that a child may not want to participate because they do not fully understand what is being asked of them, so it is the service's responsibility to give the child as much information as possible so that they can make an informed decision.)