Last updated: April 2026

Review date: April 2027

Rationale

Paint Pots Nurseries recognise the power of social media to communicate and promote our activities to current and prospective parents. We use appropriate applications to engage with a wide audience to recognise, share and celebrate our children’s achievements and to promote positive images of our settings, their teams and children. We value dialogue, networking, the sharing of good practice and the opportunity to build relationships, to inform, to educate, to influence and to collaborate.

We recognise the overarching principle of safeguarding all our children in all our online activities, our duty of care to all Paint Pots settings, their teams, their community, our legal responsibilities and our reputation.

The purpose of the policy is to:

• Safeguard all children, their families and our staff
• Protect the company from legal risks
• Ensure that the reputation of the company and its staff team is protected
• Ensure that any users are able clearly to distinguish where information provided via social media is legitimately representative of Paint Pots.

Definitions and Scope

Paint Pots Preschool and Nursery’s use of social media is limited to the following applications:

• Facebook
• Instagram

All members of staff should bear in mind that information they share through social networking applications, even if they are on their own private spaces, are still subject to data protection and Freedom of Information legislation, the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 and other legislation. They must also operate in line with the company’s Equalities, Safeguarding and Internet Acceptable Usage Policies.

This policy addresses company-sanctioned social media for professional and promotional purposes only. Personal use of social media by staff is covered separately by our Internet Acceptable Usage policy located in the Staff Handbook.

Use of Social Media in Practice

Posts or comments -

• Can only be made via the social media account manager
  • The social media account manager checks the content of each post to ensure compliance with safeguarding protocols (eg no individual names or other forms of identification).
  • Must only include photographs of children for whom written consent has been given by parents / Such permission is separately documented on each child’s application form and transcribed into our nursery management software database. It is the Manager’s responsibility to check children have permission before sending photos to the social media account manager.
  • Will never name or otherwise identify individual children or members of staff.
  • Will not refer to specific, individual matters related to an individual setting or members of its community.
  • Will always consider the reputation of the company and respect for everyone included in photographs / videos.
  • Will be for the purpose of informing, educating, illustrating practice, celebrating children’s activities and achievements and promoting the company’s activities and events.
  • All photos forwarded to paintpotssouthampton@gmail.com must be checked before doing so to ensure that permission has been given for every child or adult included.
  • Care must be taken that any links to external sites from the account are appropriate and safe.
  • Any inappropriate comments or abuse on the Facebook page will be immediately removed by the social media account manager.