If you are a parent or carer supporting children and young people with care experience, you’ll find a range of expert guides to safeguard children online. The guides provide advice on the main activities that children do online.
For children in care or being fostered, this may be increasingly important as they seek to stay connected to close friends or reconnect with family members.
To empower those looking after children in care we've created helpful guides featuring practical advice to help children deal with the range of online issues that they may face.
Why this is important
Just like other children, children and young people in care seek to have the same experiences as their peers whether it's gaming with friends, staying connected with friendship groups, or browsing the internet to grow their knowledge of the world.
However, due to the trauma experienced, lack of strong friendship bonds, and generally lower self-esteem, children and young people in care may be more dependent on the relationships they develop online.
Often a phone and online friendships are all a young person will have when coming to a foster carer for the first time.
Some may seek to continue relationships with inappropriate members of their birth family or other adults which could have a negative effect on their emotional wellbeing.
So, it's important to create an environment for children and young people to feel they can report difficulties and concerns in their digital lives and develop much-needed resilience.
What's inside the guides?
You'll find insights and resources to support young people while they are connecting and sharing, browsing the internet, and online gaming.
You’ll find helpful tips to:
Encourage young people to adopt healthy online habits
Stay informed about the risks they may face online
And how to make use of safety tools to help them thrive in their digital world
All children deserve the opportunity to thrive online and while all children have a risk of experiencing issues online, there are some risks that children and young people in care are more likely to experience based on our research.
To equip them with the tools they need to get the best out of their time online and prevent risks turning into harm, in the guides you’ll find practical tips on how to approach conversations about these potential risks to stop them turning into harm. We’ve also provided links to other expert resources that can help and tools that are available to create a safer digital space for children to explore and interact.
Visit the research and insight section to learn more about the level of online risks that exist for certain children and how this can help you intervene in a meaningful way.
Learn moreFind advice on how to safeguard care-experienced children and young people as they interact and share their digital lives with others online.
Get practical tips on how to to help children and young people with care experience browse safely online and avoid seeing inappropriate content.
See insight and advice on how to encourage children and young people with care experience to make safer and smarter choices while gaming online.
This CPD-accredited course was created with care-experienced young people and foster carers to help them build the confidence and skills to keep kids in their care safe online.
We’ve created a one-stop shop resource centre featuring our parent guides, recommended resources for parents and teachers and more. Make use of the filter to find what you need.
To help support parents, carers, and young people with additional learning needs, we have created this hub to offer tailored advice on how to connect safely online across a range of social platforms.
Making the internet safer and more inclusive
Together with SWGfL we've created this hub to provide online safety advice and guidance to support parents & professionals working with children and young people experiencing vulnerabilities.
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