Safeguarding and data protection considerations when adding relatives to Tapestry

[EmilyTapestrySupport]

When you set up relatives on your Tapestry account, there are many different aspects of safeguarding and data protection you will probably want to think about. This will help you make decisions on how to implement any necessary measures on your account. In this article I’m going to cover the ones we think are most important. 

Let’s get started by going over a few data protection points.

 

Just because the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is now in effect, doesn’t mean you can’t enter any personal information about children or relatives to Tapestry, you just need to ensure you have a lawful basis to upload children’s and relative’s personal data to Tapestry. You can check what the different types of lawful basis are and how you can ensure your lawful basis is documented on the ICO website.

If the lawful basis you use to upload data to Tapestry is consent and you are looking for some example consent forms you can use in your setting and provide to parents, you can take a look at the resources section on the forum here. Once on this page, you just need to click on the ‘View all Resources’ button at the bottom of the page. Then from the right-hand side menu, you can find relevant resources in the ‘Resources created by FSF team’ and ‘Tapestry’ sections. Please note, to download any of the resources from here, you will need to be logged in to your FSF account. If you need any assistance with this, you can contact us by emailing customer.service@eyfs.info.

If you want to find out about how and where data entered to Tapestry is stored and how we keep it safe for your own privacy policy which you can provide to parents, you can find this in our Tapestry contract. Managers on Tapestry can download a copy of this by going to the Control Panel (1) and then selecting the ‘Contracts’ section from the left-hand side menu (2). 

 

 

If you aren’t a manager on Tapestry, you can find a copy on this page.

Once you are sure you have a lawful basis for adding children’s and relatives’ data to Tapestry, you can think about what safeguarding implications there are when setting up relatives on your account. I’ve broken this down into the implications for individual observations and then for group observations. I’m also going to answer some of our FAQs about safeguarding with parents on Tapestry. 

 

Individual observations

On Tapestry parents can only see observations made by staff that their child has been included in and only after it has been published in their child’s journal. If an observation hasn’t been published, it will show as ‘not in journal’ on the main observations page. 

 

 

When you add relatives to your account, they must be attached to their children manually, this is a safeguarding feature to try and ensure no relatives end up seeing children that they shouldn’t. This tutorial explains how you can attach relatives to children.  

Multiple relative accounts can be linked to each child. This is so mum and dad (and granny, grandad, and aunty can all have their own access) . Usually relatives of the same child can see what each other post, but you can set permissions to stop that if you'd like. 

To check on your account whether relatives can view observations made by other relatives of the same child, or whether they can comment on observations, you just need to go to the User Permissions section in the Control Panel, see this tutorial for more details. 

One thing to note with published observations (these are the ones that relatives can see) is that if a staff member edits it and either doesn’t have permission to publish observations or chooses not to, this will take the observation back to being ‘not in journal’. Therefore, if a relative has commented or liked the observation before it was edited, it can look like they have done this for an unapproved observation. If it looks like a relative has liked or commented on an unapproved observation, please don’t worry. As I said before, relatives can only see observations that are in the child’s journal.

You can check this is what has happened by going into the observation on the browser version of Tapestry and clicking on the ‘View History’ button. 

 

 

This will then give you a list of everything that has happened with this observation. You can see below what this would look like if an observation has been published(1), commented on by a relative (2) and then edited by a staff member to take it back to not being in the child’s journal (3). 

 

 

With individual observations it’s also important to remember that if other children are in the background of a photo, they will be seen by any relatives of the child’s observation it is. Any of the settings that can apply to group observations which might stop this don’t apply to individual observations. In these cases, you would need to use the "edit" tool to crop the photo in question to remove other children. You can also use additional software or apps to obscure or pixelate the other children's faces before re-uploading the photo.

I’ll cover the mentioned group settings below. 

 

Group observations

It is possible on Tapestry to add observations for groups of children; with this type of observation there are a few things you will need to think about regarding safeguarding. This is because when the observation is published, it will be visible to all relatives who have a child included in it. 

These are:

1. Media added to the observation
2. Relatives being able to comment on the observation
3. The notes you have written within the observation

Media

There is a setting on Tapestry, enabled by default, which hides media in group observations for relatives. If you have a lawful basis for allowing parents to see media within a group observation, which might be that parent’s have given their consent for other relatives to see photos of their child, then you can disable this setting. Do bear in mind that this is a blanket setting, so it will apply to all media in group observations. Whilst you can set permissions individually, when you do this it applies to the relatives, rather than the children. This means if you set it so only some relatives can’t see media in group observations, their linked children will still show up in photos and videos, they just won’t be able to see them. Permitted relatives would still be able to see these children in media. 

To disable this option, you just need to go to the Control Panel (1) -> User Permissions (2) -> click on the ‘Relatives’ tab (3) and when you see the option ‘View group obs media’, click on the ‘Edit’ button (4). 

 

 

This will then present you with a pop-up where you can set this to permitted. 

 

 

 

Comments

If you have allowed relatives to comment on observations for their child, you will then need to decide if you want them to be able to comment on group observations. If you do allow this, when parents comment on a group observation, it’s important to know that other relatives with children included in the observation will be able to view these comments, as well as the relative's full name. This means relatives might be able to work out which children are included in the observation based on who has commented on it. 

To set whether relatives have permission to comment on group observations on your account, you just need to go to the ‘User Permissions’ section in the Control Panel. 

If you do decide to allow relatives to do this, whilst Tapestry will warn relatives if an observation is a group one before they comment on it (see below picture), we would also recommend that you tell the parents to ensure they are aware of this.

 

 

Notes

You can decide whether relatives see comments and media within group observations, but they will always see the notes. You will need to bear that in mind when you are writing up your observation. For example, are you including any personal details that you might need to change? 

If there is anything you want to include in notes which you don't want relatives to see, you can use the 'additional information' field. This is an additional text field, see below pic, that you can enable and use for staff-only notes by going to control panel -> settings  -> observations.

 

 

To set it so relatives can’t see this, you need to go to Control Panel (1) -> User Permissions (2) -> go to the ‘Relatives’ tab (3) and find the option ‘View "Additional Information"’ and click on the ‘Edit’ (4) button to set this as not permitted.

 

 

I’m now going to go over some of the FAQs we get about safeguarding with parents and photos on Tapestry.

 

Can we set it so children can be automatically blurred?

In some situations, such as a parent not giving their consent for other relatives to see photos of their child, settings want to be able to select children that will be automatically blurred in photos that could be seen by other relatives. Whilst this is something we would like to offer, and it is on our list to look into adding, unfortunately it’s not something currently available on Tapestry. 

In this situation you could think about using the setting I mentioned earlier, that hides media in group observation from relatives. You can find this within the User Permissions on the Control Panel. 

If the child is on the edge of the photo and could be easily cropped out, we do offer a cropping tool on the browser version of Tapestry. You can find this feature after you have uploaded a photo or when editing an observation by clicking on the 'Edit' button next to the photo you have uploaded. 

 

 

You then just need to select the 'Crop' button.

 

 

Otherwise, and as mentioned earlier, another photo editing app or website should offer you the opportunity to do this and you could then upload the photo to Tapestry after it has been edited. 

 

Can relatives download media?

Yes. Anything a relative can see, they can get a copy of. Unfortunately it is not possible to stop this. They can right click on media to save copies of it, screenshot their screen to make a copy of it (although some android devices do not allow that), or, as they could with paper journals, take a picture with another device. 

If you want to make it a bit easier for relatives to download photos and videos from observations, there is a setting you can enable which will offer them a link so they can quickly do this within an observation. This tutorial talks you through how to turn this on and where relatives will find the option to do this within an observation.

If you don’t want relatives to share photos from Tapestry, on social media for example, we recommend that you make that clear to relatives and ask them to agree not to. One option is to say that if parents are found to be posting/sharing anything from Tapestry you will deactivate their login and ask that they come in to your setting to view their child’s journal. 

 

So, that’s everything we think you should consider before you set up relatives on your account. Feel free to comment below if you have any thoughts or questions!

[kelly_mccloskey]

Hi 

We have several parents who are separated and want to keep there details such as email address confidential from the other parent.

I am aware that relatives who are  attached  to the same child/children can see each others full names and comments. 

However  is there anyway of the relatives seeing the other relatives email address e.t.c ?? 

Hope this makes sense 

Kelly 

[EmilyTapestrySupport]

Hi Kelly,

It's not possible for relatives on Tapestry to see the email addresses of other relatives attached to the same child. 

One setting on Tapestry you might want to look into is the user permission 'View other relative's observations', which if set to not permitted, would stop these parents being able to see the observations created by the other. 

You can set user permissions on Tapestry individually, so if you didn't want this to apply to all relatives on your account, you could set it as not permitted just for these parents. 

This tutorial will talk you through where to find this setting and how to change it.

I hope this helps!

Best wishes,

Emily