Online resources from The Child Protection Support Service Team

7th Jun 2022

The Child Protection Support Service Team have provided a number of online resources addressing relationships and internet/online useage. Please feel free to browse through the links provided below.

Promoting children and young people’s rights to healthy, consensual and safe relationships with peers, partner, their family and across their community: Barnardos has updated and refreshed both the Primary and Secondary Real Love Rocks Healthy Relationships and Exploitation Educational Resources - with a Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) edition available later in 2022.

Supporting young people with SEND (11 years plus) to thrive online: Childnet, a partner in the UK Safer Internet Centre, has launched the Thrive Online adaptable resources. These resources are designed to empower young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities to build happy and healthy online relationships.

The Dark Web Explained. This resource has been developed by the National Crime Agency in collaboration with the Children’s Society and the Marie Collins Foundation in response to recommendations from professionals and from research which found that many professionals, parents and carers do not understand the Dark Web and feel unequipped to talk to a young person about it should the need arise. The Dark Web Explained consists of a short informational film with separate fact sheets for professionals, parents and carers. The resource can help to:

Understand what the Dark Web is
Know why and how some young people might access the Dark Web
Feel confident having conversations and supporting young people who are accessing the Dark Web

SWGfL Digital Wellbeing HUB: Following on from Safer Internet Day 2022 and SWGfL’s coverage of Online Safety and Gaming, this new dedicated page features a wide variety of informative resources, guidance and articles to help professionals, parents and teachers understand the subject of Digital Wellbeing and how they can support young people who are navigating through online worlds.

SWGfL With Friends Like These: is a drama based around a group of 11-14 year old girls who are all friends and all at the same school. Like most young people of their age, technology is very important in their lives, particularly mobile phones, social networking, instant messaging and the like. They rely on these technologies in many aspects of their social life and is their preferred method of communication. Whilst their understanding of the technology that they use is good, their understanding of the consequences and the implications of what they do with the technology is naive. The 10 minute filmed drama attempts to explore not only the technologies themselves but how the various parties feel about the incident and the impact that it has on them.

Sextortion Awareness: Sextortion is a cyber-enabled crime during which victims are lured into sharing intimate images or performing sexual acts in front of a webcam. Unbeknownst to victims, their actions are recorded by criminals who then use the video footage in an attempt to blackmail individuals. We have been made aware by the PSNI of the rising numbers of cases of Sextortion involving child victims – since the pandemic lockdown. Clearly this is a very concerning issue that places young people in a vulnerable position both online, and in the community. We are also mindful of the tragic loss of life by suicide of a male post primary pupil in NI some years ago as a result of sextortion.

This link includes 2 videos from the PSNI https://www.psni.police.uk/advice_information/sextortion/ They are short and are certainly suitable for staff training days, for awareness. The videos are more adult friendly than child friendly - but might also be suitable for older post primary pupils, at the school’s discretion. The CPSS encourages your safeguarding team to discuss any potential Sextortion concerns with us, and of course, with the PSNI and Gateway teams.

All the best from

The Child Protection Support Service Team