Online safety and social media
Keeping children safe online, recognising grooming and sextortion, and maintaining professional boundaries on social media.
- Who receives it
- All staff
- Frequency
- Annual
- Delivery
- E-learning
- Evidence recorded
- Training register, certificate
Learning outcomes
- Identify the main online risks: contact, content, conduct and commerce
- Recognise online grooming and financially motivated sextortion
- Respond correctly to online harm without destroying evidence
- Apply the agency's social media and personal device rules
Module 1 of 3
The four Cs of online risk
Content risk is what a child sees: pornography, suicide and self-harm material, extremist content. Contact risk is who reaches them: adults posing as peers, exploitative groups. Conduct risk is what the child does: sharing images, bullying others. Commerce risk covers gambling, in-game spending, scams and money muling.
Restricting devices rarely works on its own and can push a child to hide activity. Open, curious conversation combined with proportionate filtering and monitoring keeps children safer than confiscation.
Remember
- Never demand a child hands over their phone as a punishment for a safeguarding disclosure
- Do not view, forward or copy indecent images of a child — report immediately
- Preserve evidence: screenshots of usernames and URLs, not of the imagery itself
Module 2 of 3
Grooming and sextortion
Grooming online is fast. A perpetrator may build trust in hours through flattery, gifts, game currency or shared grievances, then move the conversation to an encrypted or disappearing-message app. Warning signs include a new 'friend' the child cannot describe in real life, secrecy about a device, unexplained gifts or credit, and distress after being online.
Financially motivated sextortion targets teenagers, often boys. After an image is shared, the perpetrator demands money and threatens to send it to the child's contacts. The child must be told clearly that they are the victim, that they should stop paying, block, and keep the evidence, and that the material can be removed via Report Remove or the IWF.
Module 3 of 3
Your own professional boundaries
Never accept or send friend or follow requests to children you support, their families or care leavers. Do not use personal devices to photograph children. Do not discuss work, shifts, incidents or locations on your personal accounts, even in a closed group.
Lock down your own privacy settings. Children search for staff online, and a photograph of your home, your car or your children can compromise your safety and theirs.
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