The Partnership received a verbal update on the NA
BCU Community Mapping Initiative and the Safe-to-Net scheme from
Dal Babu, former Metropolitan Police
officer and Sarah Castro - Chief Executive, Safe to Net. The
following arose from the update:
- The
Partnership was advised that Dal Babu
had been working with Victor Olisa and
the Borough Commander to engage with key community members to
better understand what the community wanted from police engagement
and how to enhance that offer. Police colleagues had also been
working with Safe to Net, the Council and sixth form students to
develop an online safety intervention for children and young
people. This involved the development of an app, which was
available for free and was designed by sixth form
pupils.
- The sixth
form pupils had been undertaking presentations in local schools as
part of a pilot project to build awareness of the application and
the need for online safety. Dal was speaking to MOPAC about how the
offer to schools could be enhanced going forward.
- Sarah Castro
advised that Safe to Net had designed a real-time keyboard which
could be placed on a child’s mobile device and so was not
impacted by encryption and could be used across all platforms. The
system allowed the young person to use the internet freely, however
a red flag was raised if there was a concern about what a child was
doing online and allowed parents and carers to monitor their online
activity. Sarah Castro commented that the application should be
used by all the large social media companies but their take-up to
date was characterised as disappointing . Therefore, Safe to Net
had made the technology available for free to all children and
parents. There were also online safety courses for available as
part of the pilot scheme and a number of local schools were
involved. The Partnership was advised that, to date, take up from
parents as part of the pilot had been disappointing. The intention
was that this app should be used by young children when they got
their first smart-phone.
- The Leader
sought clarification about why the take-up from parents had been
disappointing and what the issues had been. In response, the
partnership was advised that a part of the problem was around Covid
preventing the scheduled face-to-face sessions from taking place
with parents, when they picked up and dropped off their children to
school. There was also a degree of parents not understanding the
technology and perhaps not feeling tech-savvy enough to understand
how it worked. A further issue highlighted was round digital
poverty and the need for Wi-Fi and digital access in order to use
this. Dal Babu advised that he
anticipated better engagement from parents once the new school year
started in September.
- The
Partnership enquired whether, in terms of engagement, the
television channel CBeebies had been contacted. In response, it was
noted that the technology had been featured on Click, specifically
in relation to screening intimate images of children. A recorded
webinar had also been prepared for parents. Partners welcomed the
capacity to screen for indecent images, both in terms of
safeguarding and preventing the criminalisation of
children.
- In relation
to the availability of communications and engagement activity in
other languages, the Partnership were advised that the app was in
English so most of engagement activities had also been in English.
The app did however screen swear words in a variety of minority
languages.
- Partners
welcomed the application and the Safe to Net project in general.
Partners advocated that further development of links into council
services should be explored. The Protect our Women scheme was
highlighted as an existing project that sought to teach children
about healthy relationships and it was suggested that there were
clear links between the two. Sarah Castro acknowledged the need to
embed the programme as widely as possible. In relation to
disclosures, the partnership was advised that the app itself did
not disclose anything, instead parents were notified in real time
about any concerning activity. The driving ethos behind this was a
desire to enhance the relationship between child and
parent.
RESOLVED
Noted.