Safeguarding in the Digital Age: Empower young people to talk about online grooming, conference told

Traci Good, founder and chief of the i-vengers online safety project, told attendees of the need to “keep talking” to children to make them aware of the dangers of grooming. 

According to the NSPCC, “grooming is when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them”.

• Contextual Safeguarding: Policy context

• Digital safeguarding conference explores how to protect children online amid pandemic

Good said: “We talk about it all the time. We talk about stranger danger. We talk about all of this sort of stuff. Surely if a child’s being groomed, they know that they’re being groomed? For me, the simple answer is no. Absolutely not.”

“It’s about people being nice. It’s about people being kind. It’s about people giving you attention,” she said.

“Online grooming can happen incredibly quickly. It can happen within minutes of a young person talking to someone they don’t know.”

According to Good, grooming can lead to child sexual exploitation of children and young people, radicalisation and trafficking.

“For the majority of young people,” Good said, “we take strangers and people we don’t know absolutely at face value. It could be really easy to be dragged into that grooming process and have no idea that that’s what’s happened to you.”

Speaking about those most at risk of online grooming, Good said: “All young people can be at risk of being groomed online, but we have to single out in particular our vulnerable young people. For young people who have some kind of vulnerability, disability, or special educational need, we know that they are far more likely to be at risk online.”

In their ‘Vulnerable Children in a Digital World’ report, Adrienne Katz and Dr Aiman El Asam, found that children with specific vulnerabilities were at higher risk online. 

Forty-eight per cent of those in care said they had been cyberbullied compared with 25 per cent of children with no vulnerabilities.

As an assistant head teacher at a special school for the deaf, Good found that children often turned to the online world to communicate with others.

“Because of their vulnerabilities,” she said, “because British Sign Language doesn’t translate properly to the English language, they were incredibly vulnerable when they were online. Those vulnerabilities were picked out and we saw quite a number of young people who were targeted.”

She said: “Children with special educational needs are far more likely to encounter contact risk. They are far more likely to believe they’re in a loving romantic relationship, they’re far more likely to be pressurised into sharing indecent images.” 

The Internet Watch Foundation reported a 77 per cent rise in children sharing “self-generated” abusive material online last year. 

Children aged 11 to 13 years old are now the highest risk group for online grooming, Good added.

“We need to identify who our vulnerable young people are and educate them appropriately,” she said.

However, Good also raised concerns over the children of affluent families, saying: “Parents haven’t taken the time to look at what potential risks that their children may face, whereas for our less affluent families we may find they’re more streetwise and more aware of some of the risks that are going on.”

“We presume that because they come from a nice house and a nice area, they will be absolutely fine. This isn’t always the case,” she added.

Good said: “As a professional looking after children and young people, we really need to be curious and we really need to think online when children are displaying behaviours. Is there something going on online? Is there something we can help support this young person with?”

Speaking about how the sector can develop to help protect children from online harms, she said: “It’s got to be about training. It’s got to be about making sure our professionals are skilled about the whole grooming process.”

“We need to look and educate and make sure we understand the new landscape in a positive way,” she said. “It’s not going to go back to how it was, but we need to do this in a positive way.

“The online environment is massively positive. It’s an amazing space, and for most of our children and young people, it is a safe space. For some young people it won’t be. That’s why we need to understand it properly, and engage, educate and empower.”

Safeguarding in the digital age is taking place until Thursday 15 January between 1pm and 3pm each day.

Tickets to the online conference are still available. You can view the remaining sessions live, while all the sessions (including those you may have missed) will be available to view on-demand in your own time for up to three months.

View the programme here and book your tickets here.