Risks and Ethics

Risk and Ethics Assessment

https://www.gov.uk/child-employment/paying

The following checklist should be used for all projects and discussed with your tutors. It assesses the ethical implications of your project proposals, and must be presented at the Pitching session in Week 4, and agreed with your assigned tutor by the end of the Autumn term. It must then be included with your final Major Project Proposal under Section 17. If this assessment identifies risks, then it may be necessary to complete a further and more detailed assessment. This more detailed assessment will need to be completed before starting the Major Project and so you will need to begin this process as soon as possible.

CHECKLIST / There are five areas of ethical concern when undertaking research / projects, and you must provide a response to all of the following:

Consent: It is important to get the informed consent of everyone taking part in a research project. This includes explaining to them the reason for the research project, the exact nature of their contribution and what will happen to the information they supply. This consent is usually in written form, and in most cases of filmed / photographic recording uses a standard release form.

Privacy/Confidentiality: It is vitally important to respect respondent's’ privacy and confidentiality. Respondents / participants have to give explicit consent if they are to be identified and if they request it, their anonymity must be protected. Sensitive information must be stored securely.

Vulnerability: It is essential to obtain ethical clearance if you are doing research / projects with people under the age of 18, or who may be considered vulnerable in some other way.  

Dissemination: Care should be taken when creating practical works or writing up and publishing / disseminating results. There is the potential for harm to respondents in the way their information is presented and disseminated.

Risk: the most important of these. The guiding principle is that no harm should result from the work undertaken, either to the respondents or to the researcher. This applies from the planning stage through to dissemination of the results. Below are some examples of potential risk. Module leaders/supervisors are asked to consider student proposals and if they identify a potential risk, or are unsure, they must contact the School Research Ethics Committee for guidance. You complete the table below to enable your supervisor to make such a decision:

Potential risks to be considered
	Examples of harm	possible	unlikely
Psychological	Lowered self-esteem; emotional distress; embarrassment	Likely
Comments: We are asking a child age 8 to act in a way that could be distressing for a young person, we will be sure to be transparent with the child's parent/guardian before we sign any contracts to ensure they are completely happy with the script and what we are asking for from their child and we will also be asking them to supervise their child on set so they have a familiar person around. We will also ensure we explain the script and the theme of grief to our child actors using age appropriate language so they understand to the best of their ability what the film is about and we will make it clear that it is a made up story. We will lease with the child’s parent to find out what activities the child likes so they are distracted in between takes. We will also contact a child psychologist if felt it is necessary.
Physical	Illness/accident consequent on participation	Likely
Comments: We will be filming outside in some scenes so we will ensure there is substantial shelter and refreshments for actors and crew to prevent illnesses. We understand that children can become less able to recognise risks when in an unfamiliar environment so we will ensure that we tape down all cables, keep kit organised in a separate area to ensure neither the kit or actors get damaged, we will arrive early on set to set up equipment to reduce risk of injury. We will also give a safety induction on arrival at each location to the children and parents as well as send them a copy of the risk assessment for each location. We will also ensure frequent breaks are given and all crew are made aware or proposed risks.
Social	Unwanted exclusion from society; ostracised by neighbours/friends/family/significant reference or peer group	Unlikely
Comments: We will minimise the amount of time the child is taken away from school to ensure their relationships do not suffer. We will also audition both of our child actors together to ensure their personalities do not conflict and make each other uncomfortable. We will also be cautious about what we post on social media to prevent any cyber-bullying.
Economic	Economic deprivation as consequence of answering questions	Unlikely
Comments: We will ensure we cover their expenses to ensure they are not at an economic loss. This will be negotiated before the contract is compiled.
Legal	Legal penalties ensuing from answering questions	Likely
Comments: We will ensure that we attain the appropriate licensing in order to work with children. We will also ensure the correct risk assessments are completed and all laws are abided by.

The theme of our film is grief and loss which can be difficult for children to comprehend. We will be working with a professional child actors so that they will have had experience getting themselves into different characters. We are also prepared to contact a child psychologist if we need and  the main points of contact for the actors are already DBS checked. We also will ensure we attain the appropriate licensing from the local authority so the child can be taken out of school for the shoot and we will ensure they are paid at a fair rate.

We worked on another Kickstarter at the beginning of this year and we managed to reach our goal of £15,000, although that was our first Kickstarter, we were working alongside a great team who had previously had successful campaigns. This was a great learning experience as we discovered things that we needed to take into consideration such as having a strong network of at least 100 people each that we could ask to either pledge or share the page. Making these lists of people helped to create a buzz around the launch of our project so we are feeling positive.

Most of the team have worked within unsuccessful groups before so our top priority for this film was to have a strong team bond before we started and a lot of trust with each other as we found out the hard way before that working with people you can’t gel with or trust can be detrimental to a project. As our other crew roles fill up we are working in a team building way to ensure everyone feels comfortable around each other as there is nothing worse that getting on set and not know who anyone is or what they do.

Thank you for joining us on our quest, we are happy to answer any questions or concerns you may have, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Eventa Productions

Consent: We will ensure that we have parental consent from the parents of any minor we work with and we will also ensure appropriate release forms are issued.

Privacy/Confidentiality: We will audition actors in person by asking them to act out a selected scene from the script. We will also only publish the names of our actors and crew with permission, we will withhold any other information unless they grant permission for it to be published. We will store any personal information of our cast & crew on a paper copy in a folder in a locked cabinet within the university premises and will dispose of it on completion of our project.

Vulnerability: We intend to have cast members that are under the age of 18, therefore we will need ethics clearance. We will ensure the safeguarding of any minor is an utmost priority.