Protect youth privacy on social media

About this recommendation

Foster parents may mean well when posting on social media, but seemingly innocent stories and photos can easily violate the privacy of foster youth in their home. This can be an especially tricky area to navigate for kinship caregivers.

How to do this

• Review your privacy policy with current kinship caregivers to make it clear what they can and cannot post on social media. This can be tricky when grandma would normally post family photos, but if grandma is currently a kinship caregiver, she cannot post those photos without permission from the child's parent(s).
• Instead of posting photos of youth online, such as in galleries of youth available for adoption, use images of concepts and items that are representative of that child, such as horses or art supplies. Adoption websites are not catalogs.
• Make it explicitly clear to families that covering a child's face with an emoji or other shape is not sufficient; they cannot post images online at all.
• Use private technology tools to enable (and encourage!) sharing of photos and other information between foster families and the child's famil of origin. Keep this material off social media.
• If workers see inappropriate photos posted on social media, encourage them to reach out gently but firmly to remind families of privacy rules. It has become a trend to post images of children in care with funny emojis covering their faces, which may give families a false impression that this behavior is allowed.

Anticipated costs and benefits

Who's doing this

2 of 54 states and territories have implemented this recommendation.

• Raise the Future uses collages in place of children's photos in its online adoption gallery.
• Ohio uses the Our Family Wizard tool to encourage secure photo and information sharing between families. Normally a tool for divorced parents, this company offers free licenses to child welfare agencies.