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Online Safety and Cyber Crime

Information and resources to help support children and young people.

Introduction

Online and digital safety are important areas of safeguarding for professionals working with children and young people.  This includes social media, online gaming and use of the internet and email.  As children increasingly occupy a digital space for learning and socialising it is important that they know how to keep themselves safe and for parents, carers and professionals to keep up to date with all aspects of online safety.  

Keeping Children Safe in Education classifies the breadth of online safety issues under 4 'C's. These are as follows:

  • content: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful content, for example: pornography, fake news, racism, misogyny, self-harm, suicide, anti-Semitism, radicalisation and extremism.

  • contact: being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users; for example: peer to peer pressure, commercial advertising and adults posing as children or young adults with the intention to groom or exploit them for sexual, criminal, financial or other purposes’.

  • conduct: personal online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm; for example, making, sending and receiving explicit images e.g consensual and non-consensual sharing of nudes and semi-nudes and/or pornography, sharing other explicit images and online bullying; and

  • commerce - risks such as online gambling, inappropriate advertising, phishing and or financial scams. 

Advice and help from the UK Safer Internet Centre

Report Harmful Content –  to report harmful content click here.

Responding to reports between hours of 10:00am - 4:00pm Monday to Friday.


POSH (Professionals Online Safety Helpline) - for help and support, contact helpline@saferinternet.org.uk / 0344 381 4772.

This helpline operates from Monday to Friday 10:00am – 4:00pm.

Bristol Safer Schools App

A free app to support you to keep up to date with news and resources to help you and the young people you work with stay safe in an online world. Find out more about how this tool can help you below.

Bristol Safer Schools App

Cyber Crime

Getting support locally

Resources

Level definitions provided by the Contextual Safeguarding Network.

Level 1: resources for safeguarding contexts around individual children, young people, and their families.

Level 2: resources for safeguarding interventions in the contexts directly (for example the education setting).

  • Think you know - free resources for teachers when teaching about the risk of online child abuse and exploitation.
  • ProjectEVOLVE - free Teaching resources for professionals working with children aged between 3 - 18 years old. From the SWGFL based on the UKCIS framework 'Education for a Connected World'. 
  • 360 Degree Safe - a free tool to help schools review their Online Safety policy and practice. From the South West Grid for Learning. 

Further Resources

  • Online Safety Self-Review Tool for Schools - 360 degree safe is intended to help schools review their online safety policy and practice. The review takes you through each aspect of online safety, helping you to collaborate, report, and progress.
  • Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges - the SWGfL has created page designed to help you understand its most important parts, read it here.
  • Childnet - guidance on a range of online safety topics for educators and schools.
  • Internet Matters - a whole range of advice, personalised toolkits, information and resources for both education settings, and parents.
  • NSPCC - online safety guides for young people, professionals and parents.
  • Childline - resources aimed at children and young people to help them stay safe in the digital world/