On Line Safety
The following resources are helpful for parents/carers to help keep children safe online.
Online Safety - What can parents/carers do to help children keep safe online?
Supporting young people online parents' leaflet.
Websites to support safeguarding of children online.
On Line Safety
Internetmatters.org
Internetmatters.org have produced an extensive guide for parents about parental controls that covers nearly all devices in the home. It explains the features and benefits of the device and what specific content can be restricted.
The resource which contains 94 pages of up to date guides on parental controls can be downloaded here:
https://www.internetmatters.org/
Applications and Websites that Parents Should Know About
‘Applications and Websites that Parents Should Know About’ provides up to date information about the most popular apps and websites that young people are using and the dangers associated with them. Please see document below.
Applications and Websites Parents Should Know About
Online Safety Stories
The popular online safety story, Digiduck’s Big Decision, is now available as a free app for tablets. Working with Internet Matters Childnet International have transformed the story into a fun, interactive tablet app that teachers and parents can enjoy with their students and children. Like the book, the app follows Digiduck and his pals in a story of friendship and responsibility online:
http://www.kidsmart.org.uk/teachers/ks1/sourcesDuck/projet/DigiDuck-eBook.pdf
For younger children: Smartie the Penguin - a story for 3 to 7 year olds. Follow the adventures of Smartie and Daddy Penguin as Smartie learns how to be safe on the internet.
http://www.kidsmart.org.uk/teachers/ks1/sources/projet/The-Adventures-of-Smartie-the-Penguin.pdf
Parent & Social Networking Guidance
Parent & Carer Social Networking Guidance: This leaflet offers guidance to parents and carers on the appropriate use of social media in relation to complaints about schools.
Parent and Social Networking Leaflet
Child Sexual Exploitation
What is Child Sexual Exploitation? To read an introduction for parents and carers.
Alternatively, for more information on sexual exploitation please see below.
What is Child Sexual Exploitation?
Sexual Exploitation for Parents
County Lines
County lines is the organised criminal distribution of drugs from the big cities into smaller towns and rural areas using children and vulnerable people. Although cannabis is occasionally linked to the county lines organisations, it is harder drugs that provide the focus: heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines.
The main county line gangs operate from London and Liverpool, but other groups work out of Reading, Birmingham, and Manchester. Faces from the cities are not known by police in the quieter areas and can operate more easily. At least for a time.
The influence of county lines is nationwide. Metropolitan Police have found gang members from Islington in 14 different police areas. Boys, typically 15 and 16, but sometimes younger, travel by coach, train, and taxi into rural or coastal area, with only a ‘burner’, or disposable phone, often stolen, and a stash of drugs. For the gang’s security each runner only knows one other phone number along the delivery chain.
The drug runner needs a place to stay and to do this the gang will take over the home of a vulnerable person, often after following them home. This is known as “cuckooing”. Once in the property, drugs and weapons can be stored there along with a possible venue for dealing drugs and the sexual exploitation of girls and young women.
