Conceptualising consent across industries with Safeguarding Practitioner Hannah Bardsley

And leading nicely on from our just chat there, that does lead into consent and consent forms and, and just kind of privacy online as well and safeguarding online in terms of an organization is I had a policy advisor in a previous charity who was looking for a storyteller essentially to come on and talk about their lived experience, which is a very common way charities make money and fundraise.

And also in, when safeguarding is appr- applied properly, empower people as well to tell their lived experience.

So she was looking for quite a, I mean, policy love a traumatic...

Policy and media love a traumatic story because it gets the views, as they would say, and they would also, um, it's hard to stay off NGOs now.

We've been just gabbling about it.

They-- the media team would used to say if something was a good story it w- usually meant that it was extremely sad, and they meant good as in it would do really well in, in the media, uh, which is a whole episode in itself in terms of language and safeguarding language, which we can add to our ever-growing list, Hannah.

But anyway, this policy officer, she was looking for a, a storyteller, and she found someone kind of online, but talking about that lived experience like a social post, but she couldn't find who, who they were.

She...

And this is at a, uh, she admitted this at, an all-staff away day, so the whole organization was there, and we were asked to say something that we were really, really proud of this year personally, and this is something that she was really, really proud of, which just adds an extra layer, layer of worry to the whole situation.

She had managed to track down this, this woman on social media through a Facebook link, through a Twitter link, sorry, X link, to a LinkedIn email, to a LinkedIn number, and essentially hacked this woman's privacy and WhatsApped her and went, "Hi, it's da, da, da from da, da, da.

I saw your little video here.

We'd love to..." You know, whatever.

And this was something that she was really proud of doing because she said it showed her commitment to her job.

And half the room I think were like, "Yeah, you know, fair enough.

You know, the woman didn't have to reply or whatever." And, and half the room, luckily, were like, "That sounds a little bit psychotic," and, "Is this woman okay? D- is this, does this woman have the right to be emailing vulnerable people?" You know, this isn't a story about buying a loaf of bread.

This is a story about h- her son dying.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it wasn't that, but as an example.

This isn't something that we text on WhatsApp.

This isn't something that we...

This isn't how we introduce ourselves to people, you know.

It's transactional at the end of the day, and that's what consent often boils down to, is a transaction of, "I need this from you." And because you've signed a form, because you've replied to a WhatsApp, because you've just said yes vocally, however you get the consent, which we can go into, there are good and bad ways of getting consent, and there are different types of consent as well.

I now can have this thing from you, and I now have a right to this thing.

Mm-hmm.

And that's extremely problematic from a safeguarding point of view because in the situations we're talking about today, the person that you're asking something from is vulnerable.