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Child permissions record what each family has agreed to for their child. You decide what to ask: photos, suncream, local outings, face painting — whatever your setting needs consent for.
Open in app: Settings → Child Permissions. Answers are recorded per child on their profile.

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Permissions are advisory

This is the most important thing to understand about how permissions work in Pigeonhole.
Permissions never block anything. Recording that a family said no to photos does not stop staff publishing an observation with photos in it. Pigeonhole records the answer, shows it where it matters, and leaves the judgement to your staff.
That’s deliberate. The system can’t tell whether a child actually appears in a photo — a group shot tagged to six children might only show two of them. A hard block would either stop legitimate sharing or train staff to work around it. Instead, staff get a reminder at exactly the moment they’re attaching media, and decide for themselves. If your safeguarding policy needs a harder line than a reminder, that has to come from your policy and your approval workflow — approvers can always return an observation with a comment.

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Setting up your permissions

There are no built-in permissions. A new setting starts with an empty list, and everything on it is yours to name, reword and delete.
The Child permissions settings page showing a Photos permission flagged for media reminders and a Suncream permission, with an Add permission button
Click Add permission and fill in:
  • Name — for example Photos, Suncream, Local outings. Required, and unique within your setting.
  • Description (optional) — the detail that makes the answer unambiguous, e.g. “May appear in photos and videos shared in the app”.
  • Photo & video reminder — off by default. Switch it on for permissions that are about media, and staff get a reminder about this permission whenever they attach photos or videos.
Only permissions with Photo & video reminder switched on ever appear in the reminder banner. A Suncream permission is worth recording and filtering on, but it has nothing to do with sharing a photo, so leave its reminder off.
Deleting a permission also deletes every child’s answer for it. If you’re only rewording a question, edit it instead — existing answers are kept.

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Recording answers for each child

Open a child’s profile and use the Permissions card. Each row shows the permission, its description, a granted / not-granted switch, and who last changed it and when. Every change is recorded in the audit log. Only admins can change answers. Other staff see them read-only.
A child with no answer recorded counts as not granted. A permission you’ve never asked about should never quietly behave as a yes.

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What staff see when sharing media

When a member of staff attaches photos or videos to an observation or announcement and tags children, an amber reminder appears listing any tagged child whose media-flagged permissions aren’t granted:
Before sharing photos, note these families’ permission answers: Ben Apple — Photos off
An observation detail page showing the amber permission reminder in the sidebar next to the observation's photos
It has no buttons and can’t be dismissed — it’s there to inform, not to interrupt. Children whose permissions are all granted aren’t listed, and if nobody is flagged nothing appears at all. The same reminder shows on the compose screen, on the observation once it’s saved, and on announcements.
In the staff app the reminder needs a connection, so it won’t appear when capturing offline. Staff working offline should check permissions before they go out.

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Filtering the children list

All permissions are filterable on the children list — filter to “Suncream: not granted” before a hot day, or “Photos: not granted” to check your records before a nursery event.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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We used to have built-in “Photos in app” and “Share in group media” permissions. Where did they go?

They were removed. They blocked publishing, which turned out to be the wrong model for the reasons above, and every setting phrases its media consent differently. Create a permission with the wording your own consent forms use and switch its Photo & video reminder on.

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Do parents see or set these themselves?

No. Permissions are recorded by your staff from what families have agreed to on your consent forms. Parents don’t see the list in their portal.

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Can I stop an observation being published for a child with no photo permission?

Not automatically. Approvers reviewing an observation see the same reminder, and can return it with a comment asking for the child to be untagged or the media removed.

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Does the reminder know whether the child is actually in the photo?

No — that’s exactly the judgement it leaves to staff. It tells you which tagged families haven’t agreed; you decide whether it matters for this particular photo.