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What DigiSafe will do for you. How to use it.

Your new digital safeguarding guide

DigiSafe will help you build safeguarding measures into the design and delivery of your digital services. And it’ll help you do it in a way that cares for your users’ wellbeing and mental health.

We’ve written it because since April 2020 thousands of charities have been migrating their face-to-face services online. This explosion of new digital services demands new digital safeguarding guidance.

Guidance on how to design services with safety, privacy and consent in mind.

And guidance on how to recognise safeguarding and privacy issues when delivering any service online.

DigiSafe addresses:

• Risk assessing any service you intend to offer online

• Designing new or existing online services with safety in mind

• Recognising safeguarding issues when delivering services through digital platforms

Your digital safeguarding landscape

A design-first approach

DigiSafe takes a design-first approach. It works best if you are following an intentional process to identify safe, accessible and impactful ways to deliver the services your users need, online.

There are many reasons to deliver online. While this guide focuses on the risks, we encourage you to also learn about the benefits. That way you can make informed and balanced decisions on how to deliver your service both safely and impactfully.

Your digital safeguarding journey

DigiSafe will help you at any stage of your journey, from having no digital safeguarding policy, to designing and delivering specific services. At each stage it’ll make it easier for you to learn the ropes and take action.

It’ll also help you teach your staff how to recognise and understand safeguarding issues when delivering online.

And it’ll help you do all of this while continuously assessing risk. Your risk assessment will become a live dashboard that you revisit at each journey stage.

How to use DigiSafe

You don’t need to read all of DigiSafe to get started. But we do suggest following all the advice that applies to your services and keeping your risk assessment updated throughout the process.

• Got a digital safeguarding policy? You can probably skim or skip Chapter 2.

• Already risk assessed your online services? You might not need to implement all the advice in Chapter 3.

• Designing a new service or changing an existing one? Read all of Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.

• Need to be aware of how to recognise abuse when delivering through digital platforms? Then Chapter 6 is for you.