Keeping young people safe: Top tips and useful resources

John McAtominey leads our work supporting Code Clubs in the UK, and is part of the safeguarding team at the Raspberry Pi Foundation. He also runs a Code Club in his local community, Selby CoderDojo. Here he shares his top tips and highlights some useful resources to help you keep your creators and mentors safe.

All Code Clubs running around the world in schools, libraries, and community spaces are unique. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to safety, but here are some key things to consider. It is important to think about other ways to make your club as safe as possible too!

Understanding and managing risks

Take a moment to think about any risks that might affect people in your club — and, most importantly, what you can do to reduce or remove these risks. Risks could include damaged electrical cables, or not having a way to block inappropriate content online. Create a risk assessment for your club — we have an example risk assessment you can use to help you get started. Work on your risk assessment as a group of mentors, review it regularly, and make sure it is always available. You can find out more about our health and safety guidelines here.

Safeguarding sponsors

Depending on where your club meets, you might have been asked to nominate a safeguarding sponsor. A safeguarding sponsor is someone with experience of safeguarding outside of the club and who has undertaken safeguarding training recently. Safeguarding sponsors should visit the club regularly, giving you support and advice on how to keep everyone safe. If it has been a while since their last visit, invite them to your next session and discuss what is going well and what might need improving. You can find out more about safeguarding sponsors here.

Background checks

A background check is an important way to check that someone is suitable to work with young people. All Code Club leaders and mentors should have an up-to-date background check specific to their region or country. If any club leaders or mentors involved in your club do not have a background check, it is important you act now to get them in place. You can find out more about background checks here, including specific guidance for club leaders and mentors in the UK and Republic of Ireland. If you are not sure about background checks in your country, please contact us and we will be happy to help.

As a club leader, you can also ask a new mentor to provide you with two references. A referee should be someone who is not related to the mentor and has known them for a reasonably long time. Work colleagues, line managers, and other people they have volunteered with are great choices. You should contact the referees to check they believe the mentor is honest, reliable, responsible, and suitable to work with young people.

Training

Having well-trained mentors who know how to support young people, how to spot signs a young person might be at risk, and what to do if they have a concern is critically important! At Code Club, we have a great safeguarding e-learning module that covers the key things you need to know. We also have a helpful mentoring e-learning module where you can learn more about different club activities, mentoring styles, the support and resources we have available, and more. These free e-learning modules are brilliant for all mentors involved in Code Clubs!

Code of behaviour

It is important that mentors know how they are expected to behave at Code Club — and it is helpful to talk about both the behaviours that will help make sure your Code Club is a safe, positive space, and the behaviours to avoid! Check out our handy mentor code of behaviour and share it with your team so everyone knows what is expected.

Registration forms

Having a registration form for your Code Club sessions makes it easier to manage numbers of creators and find out if creators require any support to access the sessions. It is also a good way to collect extra details like food allergies if your club activities will involve food, and to safely check people in and out of each session.

Sometimes things don’t go as planned and you may need to contact a parent or carer quickly. That’s why it is important to also collect emergency contact information in your registration form, even if a parent or carer stays for the session.

The Code Club platform allows you to create events that participants can register to attend. You can capture important information about participants, check participants in and out of sessions, and more, and it is completely free to use!. Log in to your dashboard to set up your next event.

Posters

If a creator does not feel safe or happy, or they are worried about someone else, they might not know who to talk to. You can help by displaying our ‘Safe and happy’ posters, which you can customise for your club. You can download a PDF, edit a copy in Google Slides, or use the Canva template to make your own, then print and display them in your club venue.
If your Code Club is in the Republic of Ireland, you will need to display a child safeguarding statement that includes a risk assessment and key contact details. We have created a template guide (available as a Microsoft Word file (.docx) or a PDF) that you can download, which also includes links to additional guidance from Tusla.

What is in creators’ projects?

If something is not right in a creator’s life, they might not tell you, but you might see something in their projects that concerns you. They might express how they feel, or replicate behaviours they have seen at home, through their projects. As great mentors, you will already be talking to them about what they are working on, but if you see something that doesn’t look right, it is important to know what to do.

Creators use lots of platforms to build their projects. Some let them share projects so others can build on their work or add comments. This can be really positive, but there’s a risk someone could add inappropriate content to their project. The NSPCC have great resources you can use to help creators stay safe online, but you could consider switching off social features or using teacher or educator accounts where available

Knowing how to deal with a concern

If you have seen or heard something that doesn’t look right, it is important not to panic. The team at the Raspberry Pi Foundation is here to support you. We have created a guide on how to deal with safeguarding concerns — read it, share it with your mentors, and keep a copy at your Code Club.

For more resources to help make sure your Code Club offers a safe, positive environment for young people, take a look at our ‘Keeping everyone safe’ page and our safeguarding policy. If you have other ideas on how we can help keep young people safe, please contact us!