Child Protection

We encourage you to write letters sharing your life with your sponsor child. To uphold our important child safeguarding processes, please remember:

• For everyone’s security it’s essential that you only sign them with your ‘preferred name’ e.g. Pat. 

•  Don’t attempt to make contact with your sponsored child online. Please only use our channels to communicate. 

•  Be careful not to respond to any ‘friend request’ if a child or their family tries to contact you online, or in any other way (e.g. email, phone calls, text, WhatsApp, Skype etc). Let us know if this happens and we will confirm our communications guidelines with the child and their family. 

• These measures are to protect everyone in our care, as well as our sponsors. We will continue to educate and train frontline church staff, Compassion and Tearfund staff, and children, on ways to prevent online harm. 
   

Other ways we safeguard our Compassion children and their sponsors: 

• We are not able to deliver any letters to or from the sponsored child that contain personal contact information, for example address, phone or email. 

• All letters, photos or materials must align with the shared Christian values of our church partners to be forwarded to the children. 

• Please also familiarise yourself with our Child Protection Policy. 

YOUR ‘PREFERRED NAME’ IS EITHER A FIRST OR LAST NAME, NOT BOTH.

YOU MAY ALSO USE A NICKNAME.

• Your sponsored child will only receive your ‘preferred name. This will impact the way letters are addressed to you from the child. 

• You will only receive your sponsored child’s ‘preferred name’ rather than their full name. This will be reflected in all communication that you receive from Tearfund, and from your sponsored child. 

• Public-facing information about children (website, stories, child updates, etc.) will only contain the child’s preferred name. 

Using preferred names protects everyone’s privacy in the face of sophisticated social media and search engines that pose real risks to children, and Tearfund is dedicated to protecting children, in person and online. 

Your privacy matters too, so limiting the data we share about you helps meet changing expectations around data privacy worldwide