Guidelines for United Church Website

• Children and young people under the age of 18 will not be identified by surname or other personal details. These details include e-mail or postal addresses, telephone or fax numbers. Christian names will be avoided if possible.
• When using photographs of children and young people, we shall use group pictures as far as possible. When a photograph of an individual child or young person is used, surnames or other personal details will not be used. Christian names will be avoided if possible.
• 'Use' includes not only captions and accompanying text, but also the source code, comments, alternative text and filenames.
• We shall obtain written consent from parents or carers before publishing photographs on a website. Unless parents explicitly request us to accept a general consent, we shall obtain written consent for each publication.
• If any parent or carer asks us to do so, we shall remove photographs of young people or any text relating to young people as soon as possible, and without asking for reasons.
• We shall endeavour to take care in advertising special events for children and young people. We shall try to encourage enquirers to obtain full details for an event by speaking to a responsible contact person, such as a youth worker or minister, by not giving full details on the site.
• We shall try to ensure that all material published on the site itself is appropriate for a site that children and young people may wish to access. However, issues which arise in the life of the Church often involve airing of topics that parents may consider unsuitable for children, and therefore we do include links to sites where such matters are discussed. Parents and carers are therefore advised to supervise access to this site.