Online Safety
Keeping our children safe online
With the speed of technology and the development of apps and trends online, parents, carers and professionals working with young people can find themselves confused and at a loss to know how to keep up.
Whilst lots of useful information exists to support them in trying to keep children safe, we know that young people enjoy their independence online and the ‘private’ world the internet offers them. Most of the time this is fun and helps them stay in touch. Occasionally, however, this may not be the case. Young people can fall victim to the skilled techniques employed by those who are intent on doing them harm.
NWG Network and Marie Collins Foundation (MCF) are working together to support professionals and parents in what to do when things go wrong.
We identified that easily accessible information outlining the main considerations when it is discovered a child has been harmed online would be a valuable resource. Working together, we have drawn on our considerable experience and expertise in this field to create new resources for parents and carers, and professionals. Importantly, the experience of survivors of online abuse has been shared to inform the information provided.
Please see the leaflet below with guidance to support parents/carers with online safety at home.
Online safety advice for parents and carers
It is important to have regular conversations about staying safe online and to encourage children to speak to you if they come across something worrying online.
These resources provide guidance for parents and carers to keep children safe online. They will, amongst other things, support you to talk to your child about a range of online safety issues, set up home filtering in a child-friendly way and set up age-appropriate parental controls on digital devices:
- talking to their children about not accessing age-inappropriate material on devices
- knowing who their children are talking to online
- setting up age-appropriate parental controls on digital devices
Internet filters should be used to block malicious websites. These are usually free, but often need to be turned on.
The following information will help parents and carers to keep their children safe online:
- support for parents and carers to keep children safe from online harm, which provides extensive resources to help keep children safe online and details of specific online risks, including sexual abuse, criminal exploitation and radicalisation
- support to stay safe online, includes advice on security and privacy settings, content blocking and parental controls
Additional resources to support parents and carers to keep their children safe online:
- Thinkuknow provides advice from the National Crime Agency (NCA) on staying safe online
- Parent info is a collaboration between Parentzone and the NCA providing support and guidance for parents from leading experts and organisations
- Childnet offers a toolkit to support parents and carers of children of any age to start discussions about their online life, to set boundaries around online behaviour and technology use, and to find out where to get more help and support
- Internet matters provides age-specific online safety checklists, guides on how to set parental controls on a range of devices, and a host of practical tips to help children get the most out of their digital world
- London Grid for Learning has support for parents and carers to keep their children safe online, including tips to keep primary aged children safe online
- Net-aware has support for parents and carers from the NSPCC, including a guide to social networks, apps and games
- Let’s Talk About It has advice for parents and carers to keep children safe from online radicalisation
- UK Safer Internet Centre has tips, advice, guides and other resources to help keep children safe online, including parental controls offered by home internet providers and safety tools on social networks and other online services
- NSPCC has advice on setting up parental controls, tips on how to talk to children about online safety, including the risk of sharing and receiving nude images and how to support children if they have seen something online that has upset them
Online Safety - supporting Parents during home learning:
Please be extra vigilant when children are using devices and online content at home, please see our advice on E Safety under Parent Zone.
Please use the link below which provides a presentation for parents about online safety.
What you will learn:
- About 'Risks'
- Advice
- Reporting
Please find below the URL you need to visit.
Internet Safety is now a bigger part of the primary curriculum impacting a number of areas such as RE, PSHE and Computing. With this in mind, it is important that as teachers we teach the importance of staying safe online through the use of various resources within school. We also want to support you as parents/carers enabling you to confidently engage with your child/children to continue conversations at home based on the learning that takes place in school.
The new 'Keeping Children Safe in Education' (2018) includes reference to 'sexting' and 'peer on peer abuse' which are part of our e-safety, behaviour and anti-bullying policies currently being updated in line with the new guidance.
A wide range of resources can be found online to support you in discussing online safety issues in addition to the guidance document attached to this page.
Useful websites:
www.internetmatters.org
www.nspcc.org.uk
Should you have any concerns with regards to 'Online Safety' then please do not hesitate to contact us or speak to Miss Fildes (Computing and Online Safety Leader)
| Name | |
|---|---|
| 2018-19 Computing and E-Safety policy Autumn 2018.pdf | Download |
| cse-social-media-library (1).xlsx | Download |
| roblox-parents-guide.pdf | Download |
| social_media_guidance_ukccis_final_18122015pdf.pdf | Download |
| 2017-11-17-keeping-children-safe-online.docx | Download |
| 2017-11-13-e-safety-poster-competition.docx | Download |
