Blog – Latest stories tagged 'safeguarding'

tootoot, partnered with Barclays, has received funding to provide every school in the UK with the tootoot safeguarding platform and application for FREE!

Initially being rolled at in the North West, Regional schools commissioner, Paul Smith, is driving the roll out of a new safeguarding and prevention platform and app, tootoot, across all primary schools, secondary schools colleges and Universities in the UK, in an effort to combat all forms of bullying and safeguarding issues.

The initiative, which is also supported by actor Will Mellor, will provide students with an online platform to securely and anonymously report any incidents directly to their place of learning.

Paul Smith commented: “Having measures in place to prevent all forms of bullying, and a clear process for reporting incidents, is incredibly important for the safety of vulnerable students. Tootoot is an effective tool to help in these situations and, by giving 4,500 places of learning and over 1 million students access to this platform, we will have a much better idea of the scale of problems and we will hopefully see a significant reduction in the number of cases.”

Tootoot is available 24/7, 365 days a year and is six times more effective than face-to-face reporting. It is used to support the education system by raising awareness of safeguarding issues and improving the overall learning environment for young people across the whole of the UK. The platform and app, developed with the support of Barclay's, will also help to promote equality, support diversity and increase confidence in school pupils and college students across the regions.

Tootoot developer Michael Brennan, said: “Modern bullying comes in many different shapes and sizes. But whatever its form, it is a subject that is often very difficult to talk about if you become a victim. That’s why I developed tootoot, and by rolling it out to all schools it will give a huge number of young people the confidence to report what is happening to them.”

To date tootoot has already helped over 55,000 students have a voice to speak up in over 100 schools, in less than 6 month, across the globe.

Tootoot has also become an educational lead for places of learning, local authorities and MAT’s with The Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 and their Prevent Strategies. The CTSA 2015 states local authorities have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”.

tootoot for students

The first safeguarding platform and app, developed in partnership with Barclays used in primary schools, secondary schools, colleges, and universities, which allows students to safely report any worries and incidents of bullying, cyber bullying, racism, extremism, radicalisation, sexism, mental health and homophobic issues directly to their place of learning.

tootoot for staff

Recording safeguarding incidents is of the utmost importance for educational institutions, which is why we’ve made it better. We developed tootoot with the help of safeguarding officers across the country, drawing upon hundreds of years of collective experience and expertise to ensure that the recording, handling and tracking of incidents is easier than ever before. That’s right, no more paperwork!

tootoot for senior leadership

With the click of a button, tootoot’s real-time dashboard collects, analyses and creates detailed, easy to read reports instantly, anytime. No more wasting time hunting through filing cabinets hours before an Ofsted inspection, regulatory body visit, or governors and SLT meeting.

tootoot for parents

All parents worry about their children whether they’re at primary school or university. Many of the safeguarding officers and team members that developed tootoot are parents themselves and the safety of young learners and students are our highest priority. The parent feature within tootoot, allows parents to report their own concerns anonymously, directly to their child’s place of learning.

If you would like to sign up your school free today then click here or visit www.tootoot.co.uk to sign up or find out more.

Here at E-safety Support we are delighted to support the Safer Internet Day (SID), organised in the UK by the UK Safer Internet Centre.

The theme for Safer Internet Day 2014 is ‘Let’s create a better internet together’. This theme covers the responsibility that all users have in making the internet a better place. Whether children and young people, parents and carers, educators or social care workers, or indeed industry, decision makers or politicians, everyone has a role to play.

In championing a better internet, the theme recognises the balance between encouraging users to embrace and empowering them to make the most of the positive opportunities offered online, while responding to, dealing with and moving past the negative online.

The internet is such a part of everyday life that it is easy to forget how relatively new the environment is. Consequently it is also easy to be complacent about internet safety; surely our ‘digital native’ youth know what they are doing? But in reality there is an internet knowledge gap and indeed internet safety knowledge gap between the generations. So it is vital that our educators as well as their students are aware of the dangers the enable them to safely benefit from the positives.

It is also important to remember that we as users are contributing to the online environment too, so we also ensure that when we do interact online (as we would in the offline world), that we do so as responsible citizens. Education about cyber antics which can begin innocently but lead onto more serious bullying situations is key.
There are ways in which all users can contribute:

Children and young people can help to create a better internet by being kind and respectful to others online and seeking positive and safe opportunities to create, engage and share online.

Parents and carers can help to create a better internet by maintaining an open and honest dialogue with their children about their online lives, supporting them with their online activity (as appropriate to their age), particularly any concerns and issues, and seeking out positive opportunities to share with their children online. They can help to respond to the negative by modelling positive online behaviours themselves, and by also reporting any inappropriate or illegal content they find.

Educators and social care workers can help to empower children and young people to embrace the positive by equipping them with the digital literacy skills they require for today’s world, and giving them opportunities to use – and create – positive content online. They can help to respond to the negative by supporting youngsters if they encounter problems online, and by giving them the confidence and skills to seek help from others.

Safer Internet Day Resources
E-safety Support has many resources which can help teach, learn and practice online safety for the whole school community, including our Safer Internet Day 2014 Assemblies for primary schools and secondary schools, which are available to download by joining as a E-safety Support Free Member (Premium and Premium Plus members can also download the assemblies from their E-safety Support Dashboard).

E-safety, as an aspect of the school curriculum, is a dynamic entity and an essential component in safeguarding.

Consequently, e-safety policies and practices can be viewed as having two strands. First of all, known risks in relation to privacy, contact with strangers and accessing inappropriate material (such as violence, pornography and hate sites, for example) remain a constant. In one respect, the key messages that need to be communicated to children are static and unchanging. For instance, not divulging personal details and contact information via social media and networking websites and the steps children can take when confronted with online material and communications that make them feel uncomfortable.

However, the rate of technological developments and digital applications demands e-safety policies and practices need to evolve and progress as and when new issues and concerns surface. It is this balance between static, or core e-safety education (which can be covered as a series of planned assemblies, an appropriate scheme of work and day-to-day highlighting of issues), and an appropriate reactive and proactive response, the non-static nature of e-safety, that poses the significant challenge for schools.

Let us take a relatively recent example. Sending photographs via text message, email and sharing online through social networking websites has been with us for a while now. It is reasonable to suggest that the potential for images to be copied, altered, forwarded and put into the public domain (whether for positive purposes or driven by more malicious intentions) is known and understood. With the advent of Snapchat, digital communications can be sent with the assurance they will effectively ‘self-destruct’ after several seconds and be deleted from devices and servers. Schools are then in the position of needing to rapidly respond to a form of digital communication and sharing of media that has the potential to undermine previous work with children on e-safety: if the evidence of cyber-bullying or inappropriate communications doesn’t exist, then all that is left is the impact on victims and the courage of others not to act as bystanders.

So, where does the static and dynamic model of e-safety leave those who develop policies and practices in school? Clearly, there is a need for the lead on e-safety to have sufficient time to be able to respond to more established issues in this area as well as emerging issues or anticipated safeguarding problems by having a current knowledge and understanding of technological and digital developments.

An e-safety policy should acknowledge that the lead has dedicated time to ensuring practices are proactive and not simply reactive. There is a need to protect time for the lead to regularly review and update Acceptable Use Policies for both staff and children as well as consider how parents and carers can be made aware of potential dangers and risks as technological and digital developments continue to progress at a rapid pace. Dissemination of information related to new risks and responsible use issues also requires the lead to invest time in continued professional development to ensure all colleagues have the knowledge and understanding to address e-safety.

Of course, stating that e-safety policies and procedures are in place (from a dedicated lead with adequate time for the role through to parental engagement) is different from accounting for the impact of steps taken. Evidence of impact, both qualitative and quantitative, is necessary to evaluate the success of e-safety education within the school to inform future priorities and demonstrate to OFSTED that this area of safeguarding has a high profile and the policies, practices and procedures in place are embedded. Once again, this brings us back to the need for an e-safety lead with adequate time dedicated to this area of work in schools.

So, how can this be taken forward in practice? A good starting point is to audit the current position using the questions below. Where an aspect is not in place or needs review and attention, then this should form the basis of action planning and projecting the time necessary to address these areas for development.

Is there a dedicated e-safety lead in place?

Does the school have an e-safety policy? Is it updated on a regular basis and in response to emerging issues?

Is there acceptable use document for children? What about a user agreement for staff?

Has there been staff training related to e-safety? Does this include all staff groups? For example, teachers, leadership and management as well as support staff.

Is there a proactive approach to getting e-safety messages across to children? For example, a planned series of assemblies, a scheme of work and so on.

Are parents and carers involved in the school’s e-safety work?

By establishing a baseline in relation to these areas, formulating a plan of action, schools can therefore progress towards stronger e-safety provision and develop clarity in the impact on the school, staff, pupils and parents and carers.

If you would like to share your thoughts on the issues raised in this article, please let us know by using the comments section below