Agenda item

NA BCU Community Mapping Initiative & Safe to Net Project

Verbal Update

Minutes:

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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. 
  7. 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.