What issues do care-experienced children face online?
Children in care or who care for family are at greater risk for certain issues online. This is often due to feeling isolated, lacking stability or missing consistent positive influences.
Explore the different issues they might face by choosing one of the following sections or scrolling down.
- Cyberbullying
- Online sexual abuse
- Grooming and emotional abuse
- Unregulated contact with birth families
- Oversharing
Cyberbullying
Social networks allow children in care to form and maintain friendships even when they move away. However, social platforms can also expose them to cyberbullying, especially when relationships deteriorate or bullying extends beyond school.
Cyberbullying often involves someone a child knows well, who exploits their emotional triggers to provoke reactions for entertainment. It can also involve a conditional relationship where the perpetrator pretends to be close to the child to secretly manipulate or demand things from them. Addressing these issues requires understanding the child’s emotional needs rather than just enforcing rules.
- To help them recognise that a relationship is wrong, explain why it can put them at risk. Discuss what a healthy friendship looks like, so they have a reference point.
- Think about why your child or young person might be continuing a relationship with someone that is toxic (as it may be fulfilling a need to be considered part of a group).
- If the person or people doing the bullying are from a child’s school, you may want to contact the school about it.
- Report bullying to the police if it targets your child’s ethnicity, gender, disability or sexuality, or if the threats incite your child to harm themselves. You can do this by calling 999 if there’s an immediate risk. Or, for non-emergencies, call the non-emergency number at 101.
Online sexual abuse
Any child or young person, from any background, can be at risk of sexual abuse online. However, care-experienced children are often at greater risk.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) found the most common concerns raised of a sexual nature were online and child-on-child abuse. They highlighted the challenges of managing children’s online safety and peer relationships.
Children with care experience might also face greater risk of sextortion or revenge porn. Revenge porn is an attempt to control and manipulate vulnerable people. With both sextortion and revenge porn, perpetrators might use real images or create deepfakes.
- Reassure your child or young person that it’s not their fault – they are probably feeling just as scared and worried as you.
- Having calm and open conversations – explore what is happening in an honest and supportive way.
- Avoid questions that might be felt to be intrusive or pressurising – instead, focus on understanding how they are feeling now and what they might like from you.
- Has the abuse definitely stopped? – Often abuse continues even after a child or young person has told someone about it.
- Immediately block and report the perpetrator on the platform. Report child abuse to CEOP as well.
- Retain any evidence on the device
- Don’t confront the alleged abuser
- Remind them where to report inappropriate or unwanted content that they see online – you can try to get this removed with tools like Report Remove.
- Work with rest of team around the child or young person to develop the self-esteem and self-worth, relationship skills, social skills and resilience to protect themselves and prevent potential harm.
Grooming and emotional abuse
Whilst online grooming is an extremely serious concern, it is not frequently experienced. However, victims of grooming claim that it causes them serious harm.
For some children with care experience, making friends online and chatting to strangers can offer a form of escapism or to compensate for their offline reality.
Predators might use social platforms, messaging apps and other online platforms to build a trusting relationship with a child that then develops into abuse. This abuse can happen online, or the abusers might coerce the child to meet them in person with the intention of abusing them.
- If there is a particular ‘friend’ that you are concerned about, find out more about who this person is and the true nature of the relationship.
- Where possible, encourage your child to use devices in shared spaces so that anyone contacting them knows they are not alone.
- Discuss what they should and shouldn’t share online (even if they trust that person) and encourage them to keep their personal information private.
- Talk about consent so they feel confident to say no if they are feeling pressured to do something, they are not comfortable with.
- Don’t make them feel bad about seeking affection online but take the time to explain the safest way to explore their feelings.
- Ensure they know where they can go for help if they get in trouble or are concerned.
- Review their privacy and security settings on apps/platforms.
- Teach them how to block and report anything that makes them feel uncomfortable.
Oversharing
Children and young people with care experience often ‘overshare’ information (inadvertently or not) online that can identify them.
This might happen through the content of posts or images (school uniforms, homes, their favourite places). It can also happen through the regular posting of comments or images (such as daily when leaving school), or through usernames and gamer tags.
Based on these identifiers, adults who may present as a safeguarding risk may seek to get in contact.
This can include groomers who may also use this information to befriend the young person and support the grooming process. It might also include birth family members who the young person is not meant to contact.
- Be a digital role model – be careful about what you share with others, including what you share about your child.
- Discuss what is and isn’t okay to share – talk about what information is safe to post and what isn’t.
- Talk about consequences – they need to know what’s at stake when they overshare.
- If your child has a public profile, agree on ground rules around sharing and communication. Encourage private profiles wherever possible.
- Regularly review their friends list together to make sure they know who they’re sharing content with.
Tips to support children with care experience
Help care-experienced young people navigate the online space and potential risks safely with the ABCs of online safety.
Additional resources to find support
Get personalised advice and ongoing support
The first step to ensure your child’s online safety is getting the right guidance. We’ve made it easy with our ‘My Family’s Digital Toolkit.’