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Advice eSafety Online Safety Parents Resources UK Safer Internet Centre

My child is gaming with strangers – what should I do?

The UK Safer Internet Centre Education Team deliver education and information sessions directly with children and young people aged 3-18 years old, as well as parents, carers, teachers and professionals.

In this series they will answer some of the questions they get most frequently asked by parents and carers about helping their children navigate the internet.

Childnet Education Officer Georgia offers advice about gaming and chat within games… Find out more here!

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Advice CEOP eSafety Parents

Summer Help

#SaferSummerTogether
 
Coming this summer on social media… #SaferSummerTogether!

6 weeks of tips and activities from CEOP Education and partners helping parents and carers to keep their children safer online this summer and beyond.
 
Follow CEOP Education on Facebook (CEOP Education) and X/Twitter (@CEOPEducation) for more on how to get involved. 
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eSafety Events School Safety

Safer Internet Day 2022

Safer Internet Day 2022 is on 8th February 2022 (2nd day of the 2nd week of the 2nd month!)

You can find out more about what goes on and where to find resources at https://saferinternet.org.uk/safer-internet-day/safer-internet-day-2022

123ICT are offering pupil, family and staff workshops as normal.

You can book a virtual assembly slot with the team from Saferinternet.org using the link above!

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Advice eSafety Google for Education Online Safety Parents Resources

Google – The Legends Family Adventure…

Parent Zone and Google have joined forces to bring a new short animated series of three cartoons to the Be Internet Legends website to help families think about keeping themselves safe online.

Sit down as a family to watch the Legends family tackle everyday online situations and become stronger as a result. There are family friendly activities to download and print related to each of the three cartoon episodes. Learn about online scams, sharing information, secure passwords and phishing to name just a few things covered in this brief cartoon series.

Take a look now at https://beinternetlegends.withgoogle.com/en_uk/parents/adventure

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Advice eSafety Online Safety Parents Reporting Resources School Safety Tips Tools

Keeping children safe in education 2020

The Department for Education (England) have released their new update to Keeping children safe in education. This revision for 2020 has some changes but few related to Online Safety.

Annex C relates specifically to Online Safety and has the following content:

The use of technology has become a significant component of many safeguarding issues. Child sexual exploitation; radicalisation; sexual predation: technology often provides the platform that facilitates harm. An effective approach to online safety empowers a school or college to protect and educate the whole school or college community in their use of technology and establishes mechanisms to identify, intervene in, and escalate any incident where appropriate.
The breadth of issues classified within online safety is considerable, but can be categorised into three areas of risk:

content: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful material; for example pornography, fake news, racist or radical and extremist views;
contact: being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users; for example commercial advertising as well as adults posing as children or young adults; and
conduct: personal online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm; for example making, sending and receiving explicit images, or online bullying.


There are also a series of links to resources to support Education around Online Safety these include:

Be Internet Legends developed by Parent Zone and Google is a free internet safety curriculum with PSHE accredited lesson plans and teaching resources for Key Stage 2 pupils
Disrespectnobody is Home Office advice and includes resources on healthy relationships, including sexting and pornography
Education for a connected world framework from the UK Council for Internet Safety supports the development of the curriculum and is of particular relevance to RSHE education and Computing. It is designed, however, to be usable across the curriculum and beyond (covering early years through to age 18) and to be central
to a whole school or college approach to safeguarding and online safety.
PSHE association provides guidance to schools on developing their PSHE curriculum
Teaching online safety in school is departmental guidance outlining how schools can ensure their pupils understand how to stay safe and behave online as part of existing curriculum requirements
Thinkuknow is the National Crime Agency/CEOPs education programme with age specific resources
UK Safer Internet Centre developed guidance and resources that can help with the teaching of the online safety component of the Computing Curriculum.


Annex C goes repeats the advice from the 2019 version of the guidance talking about appropriate filtering and schools reviewing their online safety provision using the 360 Safe tool.

Education at home
Where children are being asked to learn online at home the department has provided advice to support schools and colleges do so safely: safeguarding-in-schools-collegesand-other-providers and safeguarding-and-remote-education

Staff training
Governors and proprietors should ensure that, as part of the requirement for staff to undergo regularly updated safeguarding training (paragraph 84) and the requirement to ensure children are taught about safeguarding, including online safety (paragraph 87), that online safety training for staff is integrated, aligned and considered as part of the overarching safeguarding approach.

Annex C concludes with a list of online resources for teachers and pupils:

Information and support
There is a wealth of information available to support schools, colleges and parents/carers to keep children safe online. The following list is not exhaustive but should provide a useful starting point:

Advice for governing bodies/proprietors and senior leaders
Childnet provide guidance for schools on cyberbullying

Educateagainsthate provides practical advice and support on protecting children from extremism and radicalisation
London Grid for Learning provides advice on all aspects of a school or college’s online safety arrangements
NSPCC provides advice on all aspects of a school or college’s online safety
arrangements

Safer recruitment consortium “guidance for safe working practice”, which may help ensure staff behaviour policies are robust and effective
Searching screening and confiscation is departmental advice for schools on searching children and confiscating items such as mobile phones
South West Grid for Learning provides advice on all aspects of a school or college’s online safety arrangements
Use of social media for online radicalisation – A briefing note for schools on how social media is used to encourage travel to Syria and Iraq
UK Council for Internet Safety have provided advice on sexting-in-schools-andcolleges and using-external-visitors-to-support-online-safety-education


Remote education, virtual lessons and live streaming
Case studies on remote education practice are available for schools to learn from each other
Departmental guidance on safeguarding and remote education including planning remote education strategies and teaching remotely
London Grid for Learning guidance, including platform specific advice
National cyber security centre guidance on choosing, configuring and deploying video conferencing
National cyber security centre guidance on how to set up and use video
conferencing

UK Safer Internet Centre guidance on safe remote learning


Support for children
Childline for free and confidential advice
UK Safer Internet Centre to report and remove harmful online content
CEOP for advice on making a report about online abuse


Parental support
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
Commonsensemedia provide independent reviews, age ratings, & other
information about all types of media for children and their parents
Government advice about protecting children from specific online harms such as child sexual abuse, sexting, and cyberbullying
Government advice about security and privacy settings, blocking unsuitable
content, and parental controls
Internet Matters provide 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
Let’s Talk About It provides advice for parents and carers to keep children safe from online radicalisation
London Grid for Learning provides support for parents and carers to keep their children safe online, including tips to keep primary aged children safe online
Lucy Faithfull Foundation StopItNow resource can be used by parents and carers who are concerned about someone’s behaviour, including children who may be displaying concerning sexual behaviour (not just about online)
National Crime Agency/CEOP Thinkuknow provides support for parents and carers to keep their children safe online
Net-aware provides support for parents and carers from the NSPCC and O2, including a guide to social networks, apps and games
Parentzone provides help for parents and carers on how to keep their children safe online
Parent info from Parentzone and the National Crime Agency provides support and guidance for parents from leading experts and organisations
UK Safer Internet Centre provide tips, advice, guides and other resources to help keep children safe online

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Advice eSafety Online Safety Parents Resources

Parental Home Activity Packs from CEOP

https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/Support-tools/home-activity-worksheets/

CEOP have published some home activity packs to help parents talk about and engage with their children around Online Safety.

#OnlineSafetyAtHome has been created by the NCA-CEOP Thinkuknow Education Team to support parents and carers during COVID-19 and the closure of schools.

“Each fortnight, we release new home activity packs with simple 15 minute activities parents and carers can do with their child to support their online safety at home.”

You can find our more and download the PDF packs at https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/Support-tools/home-activity-worksheets/

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eSafety News

Save the Date: Safer Internet Day 2019, Tuesday 5th February

SID2019
Each year Safer Internet Day gets bigger and bigger, with 45% of young people hearing about the day in 2018. As the UK Safer Internet Centre, which organises the day, we are very excited about Safer Internet Day (SID)2019 which will take place on Tuesday 5th February 2019, with the global theme of ‘Together for a better internet’.

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Advice eSafety Online Safety Parents

The Social Media Conversation…

So you’ve caved in to pressure from your child and either ‘handed-down’ an old Smart phone or purchased one specially.  From my own personal experience this seems to be around the 11th birthday certainly with children around here.

The next question (if it hasn’t already arisen) is “Can I get… (insert current social media phenomenon here)?

All the organisations say the WORST thing you can do is just say no.  We know this closes doors and often leads to children going behind their parents backs to get onto social media meaning we also cut off the main avenue for support for those same children if anything goes wrong.

I read a recent article which included some great prompts for parents to use when having this difficult conversation.

Take a look at this article on “Common Sense Media”.

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eSafety Online Safety

Be Internet Awesome

There are new resources from Google to help children understand how to behave online.  The resource is called ‘Be Internet Awesome‘ and is available at https://beinternetawesome.withgoogle.com/.  The resource includes fun online games around the themes of sharing (or not) online, spotting fake information and news, knowing when to and not to share secrets such as personal information and login details, how to behave in a kind way online and most importantly when to be brave and talk to someone else about an issue.

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eSafety Online Safety

Safer Internet Day 2018

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Safer Internet Day Banner

Get prepared for Safer Internet Day!