Last updated: 2 August 2026
Portfolio to A Star is committed to safeguarding children and young people and to providing a professional, respectful and appropriately bounded online service.
This policy explains the safeguarding arrangements for the website and its one-off, written portfolio-feedback service. It applies to every child or young person under the age of 18 who uses or benefits from the service.
1. About Portfolio to A Star
Portfolio to A Star is operated by Ian Bradbury trading as Portfolio to A Star.
The paid service consists of one written portfolio-feedback report or completed feedback proforma delivered by email. It does not include face-to-face meetings, telephone calls, video calls, live tuition, ongoing mentoring or private social-media communication.
Safeguarding enquiries may be sent to:
2. Purpose of this policy
The purpose of this policy is to:
- Promote the welfare and safety of children and young people
- Set clear professional boundaries for online communication
- Explain the involvement expected from parents and guardians
- Reduce the collection of unnecessary personal information
- Explain how safeguarding concerns or disclosures will be handled
- Provide clear routes for reporting a concern about the service or its operator
3. Safeguarding principles
Portfolio to A Star follows these principles:
- The welfare and best interests of the child are a primary consideration
- Every child has the right to be protected from abuse, exploitation, neglect and avoidable harm
- Children should be treated with dignity and respect
- Safeguarding concerns should be taken seriously and acted upon appropriately
- Information should be shared only when necessary, proportionate and lawful
- No promise of absolute confidentiality will be made where someone may be at risk of harm
- Discrimination, harassment, bullying and inappropriate conduct will not be tolerated
4. Parent or guardian involvement
The person placing and paying for an order must be at least 18 years old.
A portfolio-feedback order for a student under 18 must be placed or authorised by a parent, guardian or other responsible adult. The adult customer should understand the nature and limits of the service before submitting a student’s work.
The adult customer’s email address should be used as the primary contact address. If a young person is included in an email exchange, their parent or guardian should also be copied into the communication.
If a student is under 13, a parent or guardian must communicate with Portfolio to A Star and submit information on the student’s behalf where consent is required.
5. Communication boundaries
Communication connected with the service will normally take place through the official email address:
Portfolio to A Star will not:
- Arrange private face-to-face meetings with a student
- Provide private telephone, text-message or video-call contact
- Use disappearing-message services to communicate with students
- Send private messages to students through personal social-media accounts
- Ask a student to keep communication secret from a parent or guardian
- Request personal photographs or information unrelated to the portfolio-feedback service
- Form personal, romantic, sexual or financially exploitative relationships with students
Communication will remain professional, relevant to the educational service and limited to what is reasonably necessary.
6. Submitting portfolio material safely
Students and adults should remove unnecessary identifying information from files before submission.
Do not include:
- A student’s home address or telephone number
- A school address, badge or logo unless genuinely necessary
- Personal social-media usernames
- Private medical, family or safeguarding information
- Personal information about another child
- Intimate images or images depicting an identifiable child unclothed
If a legitimate art project contains sensitive subject matter or images that may raise safeguarding concerns, the adult customer should contact Portfolio to A Star before uploading the material.
Customers should retain their own copies of all submitted work. Portfolio to A Star is not a permanent portfolio-storage service.
7. Appropriate behaviour
All communication must be respectful and appropriate. Abusive, threatening, discriminatory, sexually inappropriate or deliberately harmful communication will not be accepted.
The service may be paused while a concern is assessed. Where necessary and lawful, an order may be refused or ended in accordance with the Terms and Conditions.
8. Recognising a safeguarding concern
A safeguarding concern may arise from a message, portfolio image, annotation or other information suggesting that a child:
- Is experiencing or may experience physical, emotional or sexual abuse
- Is experiencing neglect, exploitation, bullying or coercion
- May be at risk of self-harm, suicide or serious injury
- May be at risk from another child or adult
- May pose a serious risk of harm to another person
- Has made a direct disclosure of abuse or danger
Artistic work may explore difficult or fictional themes. Content will be considered carefully and in context rather than automatically treated as a disclosure.
9. Responding to a disclosure or concern
If a young person discloses abuse or a serious risk of harm, Portfolio to A Star will:
- Take the information seriously
- Respond calmly and without blame
- Avoid conducting an investigation or asking leading questions
- Not promise to keep the information secret
- Make an accurate, dated record of what was received and any action taken
- Share only the information reasonably necessary to protect the child or another person
- Contact an appropriate safeguarding agency, emergency service or responsible adult when necessary
A parent or guardian will normally be involved unless doing so may increase the risk to the child, prejudice an investigation or be contrary to advice from a safeguarding authority.
10. Emergency and safeguarding contacts
If a child is in immediate danger in the United Kingdom, call 999.
Concerns about the welfare or safety of a child in Salford may be reported to:
- Salford Bridge Partnership: 0161 603 4500, Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 4.30pm
- Salford Emergency Duty Team: 0161 794 8888 outside normal working hours
- Salford City Council: Worried about a child
Additional sources of help include:
- NSPCC Helpline for adults concerned about a child: 0808 800 5000
- Childline for children and young people: 0800 1111
- NSPCC guidance on reporting abuse
People outside the United Kingdom should contact the emergency services or child-protection authority in the child’s location.
11. Concerns or allegations about the operator
A concern about the conduct of Ian Bradbury or Portfolio to A Star should not be reported only to the person who is the subject of the concern.
Where a concern suggests that a person working with children may have harmed a child, committed a possible offence involving a child or behaved in a way indicating a safeguarding risk, it may be reported directly to:
- Salford Safeguarding Children and Quality Assurance Unit/LADO service: 0161 603 4350
- Salford Bridge Partnership: 0161 603 4500
- Police: 999 in an emergency, or 101 when there is no immediate danger
A parent, guardian or young person may also seek advice from the NSPCC Helpline on 0808 800 5000.
12. Recording and information sharing
Safeguarding records will be factual, dated, securely stored and limited to information reasonably necessary for the concern.
Safeguarding information may be shared without consent when there is a lawful and proportionate need to protect a child or another person, comply with a legal obligation or assist an appropriate authority.
Information will not be shared more widely than necessary. Privacy rights and safeguarding responsibilities will be balanced with the welfare and best interests of the child.
13. Storage and deletion of submitted work
Submitted portfolio files should normally be deleted within 90 days after the feedback service has been completed, unless they must be retained for a complaint, legal obligation or safeguarding concern.
Where material forms part of a safeguarding record, it will be retained only for as long as reasonably necessary and handled securely.
Further information is provided in the Privacy Policy and Young People’s Privacy Policy.
14. Safer working and future personnel
Portfolio to A Star is currently operated as an independent service. Safeguarding knowledge and procedures will be reviewed and kept reasonably up to date.
If employees, contractors or volunteers are engaged in the future and their role involves contact with children or access to children’s personal information, appropriate safer-recruitment, reference, training, supervision and legally eligible criminal-record checking procedures will be considered before access is permitted.
15. Related policies
This policy should be read alongside:
16. Review of this policy
This policy will be reviewed at least annually and sooner if the service changes, a safeguarding concern identifies a needed improvement, or relevant guidance changes.
The latest revision date will always appear at the top of this page.
Our safeguarding policy insists that anyone under the age of 18 gets parental permission to use the site for purposes of getting a Portfolio / Sketchbook review.