Online Safety and Digital Wellbeing Forum

Confidence varies around online safety in residential care, and there are few support options for those wanting to develop their practice.

dialogue and SWGfL are launching a new and exciting support platform to support the online safety of children and young people in children’s homes and supported accommodation settings.

Being a teenager is difficult enough, but our young people are often more at risk online due to their past experiences, separation from attachment figures, limited education and gaps in their current support. This project aims to build the confidence of residential providers to ensure young people have the right support in place to use the internet safely and responsibly.

There are three support level options available:

Join our WhatsApp group and get valuable updates, news and resources sent direct to your device.

word logoOnline safety leads for supported accommodation and children’s homes guidelines and application

There’s no charge to join this group – simply download the guidelines above and scan the QR code in the guidelines to request access.

Join our virtual online safety sessions featuring a different topic each month, including:

  1. 5 things you should do in your setting to keep young people safe online
  2. Gaming
  3. Filtering and monitoring
  4. Artificial intelligence
  5. Protection of images
  6. Sextortion
  7. Professional reputation

Each session is delivered in partnership to tailor SWGfL’s huge library of resources to the residential sector.

We are running these on a ‘pay what you can’ format with a suggested contribution of £10+ VAT to help us fund this continued work.

To book a space on an upcoming event and make your contribution for the session, please click here

We’ve been working with the South West Grid for Learning to develop a regular forum for an online safety lead in every residential home in England. Running alongside our other residential support communities (for leads for child exploitation and young people’s participation) the meetings will be co-hosted by dialogue and SWGfL.  We will be meeting three or four times a year to support your online safety lead with information, free self-assessment tools, expertise around Children’s Homes regulations and the internet and the opportunity to share ideas, concerns and practice with other leads in children’s homes across the country.

Online safety leads have access to:

  • access to all of our monthly bite size training sessions for free
  • a regular 2-3 hour online forum every 3 months
  • supported checklists to ensure your setting’s practice is up to speed
  • CPD, project/group work on shared goals and an opportunity to share ideas, problems and successes with other leads
  • speakers on relevant topics
  • facilitation by highly experienced leaders from SWGfL and dialogue
  • ad hoc initial advice and support to members in between sessions
  • ideas for policy development, staff training and support
  • relevant research and publications as they become available so your staff are always up to date

This is a great opportunity to ensure there is a real focus on the growing risks of the digital world for some of the most vulnerable children in the country and to create the capacity and learning opportunities for your team to develop.

Membership is open to anyone working to support those children in care.

Dates for 2024 are 1-4pm on the following dates:

  • 26th March 2024
  • 29th May 2024
  • 16th September 2024
  • 26th November 2024

To join the Online Safety and Digital Wellbeing Forum, please complete the form below:

Other communities of interest groups….

We also run other forums for specialist support in the residential community for participation leads, children with disabilities, residential leadership group, exploitation leads and safer recruitment leads.

costs

The groups are run on an annual membership fee of £99+vat for each community of interest. We are keen to make the model accessible and supportive to residential homes, so additional memberships will access a £20 discount, meaning subsequent members from your home to the same group or to a different group will cost £79+vat each.

membership for homes

As we’ve grown these communities, we are now able to offer homes one representative at each of the six communities of interest memberships for just £399+vat for annual membership.

If you are a multi home organisation and would like to sign up several homes for this offer – please contact us to discuss the possibilities of further discounts directly on 01803 493030.

Further training opportunities….

dialogue host a full catalogue of training courses as well as offering various memberships and networking opportunities.

More details here