NSPCC e-safety guides for parents and professionals
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Online guides help parents understand how young people use the online world.
- Teaching resources highlight risks of children sharing images and personal information online
- The sites have more than one million unique users in three years, and help most parents start a conversation about e-safety
ACTION
Since 2015, the NSPCC has been working with mobile phone network O2 to provide e-safety advice and guidance for children, parents and teaching professionals. Its suite of products includes a website and newsletter to help parents keep up to speed with the latest websites and apps children use, and a range of teaching resources to help children keep themselves safe online and their personal information secure.
The Net Aware site has information for parents on the apps and games children are using, including Fortnite, Minecraft, Instagram and Snapchat. It gives an unvarnished assessment of the type of content included in the games and apps, a "risk rating" for each, and tips for parents on how to maintain safety online.
Laura Randall, associate head of child safety online at NSPCC, says Net Aware was designed so parents had "one place" to go for information and advice.
"We wanted a one-stop-shop for knowledge," she says. "It lists 38 apps and games with easy to understand information about the risks posed to children by each and an assessment about the age appropriateness. It also includes the views of parents and children, and tips from experts."
Last autumn, the NSPCC and O2 launched a free online game that pits parents' knowledge of the internet against their children's. Parents vs Kids has 10 questions read by TV presenters Richard Osman and Lauren Layfield about different aspects of the online world. It aims to "help start a conversation" between children and parents, explains Randall. The page has had 1.5m hits in its first three months.
The NSPCC says its e-safety work is underpinned by the principle that the internet is a great place for children to be; its aim is to make that a safe experience for them. To help do this it has developed Share Aware, a portal for both parents and teachers interested in talking to children about the benefits of communicating online but also the potential safety risks and how to avoid them.
It has a four-step approach to e-safety: talk about staying safe, explore the online world together, agree the rules about what is and is not okay, and manage online settings. Share Aware has links to tools to help parents do this - from a downloadable "agreement" template for parents and children to set out household rules for online use, to advice for parents on how to set up parental restrictions on their home network and smart devices.
Another key aspect of Share Aware is the resources for schools and teachers. The downloadable pack has two lessons plans for use with Key Stage 2 pupils, class presentations, and supporting information for pupils to take home. They are designed to be used to support PSHE (personal, social health and economic) lessons about online safety and how to access support when problems arise.
One lesson plan looks at the dangers of taking personal photographs and sharing them online, while another outlines the risks of chatting to strangers online. Both lesson plans get pupils to discuss the decisions made by characters in the educational films, what the outcomes could be and what they should have done to avoid putting themselves at risk.
The teaching pack has been popular, which Randall says reflects the need for good-quality resources on the issue. "I used to be a frontline practitioner and know I needed something like this," she explains. "I come across a lot of teachers who are worried about what to do when faced with a child playing a particular online game. If you take the ‘online' element out of it they know what to do.
"It's about teachers having an understanding and knowledge of the risks - once they understand, they know what to do.
"We want to help teachers to gain the confidence they need to deal with this as they are often the first responders when problems arise. Making sure they respond correctly is so important because the wrong response could have a negative impact."
IMPACT
The NSPCC says Net Aware has had more than one million unique users since 2015, and has plans to make the site more responsive to users' needs.
"It's been massively successful, but we want to make it more reactive to what's out there," adds Randall.
A survey of parents that had used Net Aware found 73 per cent had gone on to have a conversation with their children about e-safety, while two-thirds felt more knowledgeable.
Share Aware is still being evaluated.