HeadStart Digital Resilience Tool
Digital Resilience tool labels behaviours organised by categories, what the labels mean and what to do when you've identified a behaviour
A suite of accessible resources and podcasts to support you in building online resilience for your children. We understand that you are at the forefront of this challenge and may often feel you are missing the information and/or confidence to understand and discuss this issue with your children.
Use our Was That Ok? tool and see all the information we’ve created to help the adults who support you to understand how to respond to your online activities
The Digital Resilience Tool provides a practical way for professionals to assess young people’s online behaviour and help them make decisions about whether that behaviour represents risk of harm.
Training on how to use the tool to assess young people's online behaviour; what to do when you have identified a behaviour and online activities and the law.
Guidance around digital issues for those supporting SEND young people
A tool to help young people understand whether something they experienced or witnessed was ok, or whether they should seek support.
An overview of what we mean by the terms used in the Digital Resilience Tool.
A podcast for anyone who supports young people - we talk about the issues young people face online
The Online Resilience Tool
The Online Resilience Tool provides a practical way for professionals to assess young people’s online behaviour and help them make decisions about whether that behaviour represents risk of harm.
The Tool was developed as part of the Digital work-stream of the HeadStart Kernow programme in partnership with University of Bournemouth and the Professionals Online Safety Helpline. In total around 1000 children and young people in Cornwall were involved in the development process through workshops and discussion groups over a three year period.
The Digital Resilience Tool is available to download for free.
Digital Resilience Tool Training
If you want to know more about how to use the tool you can do our free training, just follow this link. If you don't already have an account, create a free account. Once you have access to the Hub, go to the HOME tab, Select Wellbeing Training to Support Schools - scroll down and select 'Digital Resilience Tool Training Updated’.
This training covers how to use the tool to assess young people's online behaviour; what to do when you have identified a behaviour and online activities and the law. The course is self-guided e-learning and takes approximately 2 hours.
Not Harmful, Potentially Harmful and Harmful
We’ve put together some explainers about the terms ‘Not Harmful’, ‘Potentially Harmful’ and ‘Harmful’ which are used throughout the Digital Resilience Tool. You can download them at the links below.
Support for parents
We’ve got tailor made support for parents, with information sheets and podcasts helping you understand your child’s online behaviour organised by age.
Poster for professionals
Download and print this poster for your staff room to help your team remember the key messages when it comes to young people and the digital world. (link to poster)
Article on how we made the tool
Read this article to find out about how we developed the tool with young people across Cornwall. (link to article)
Was That Ok Tool
Was That OK is a new tool for young people to help them answer the question “Was That OK?” about anything sexual.
Young people told us that they often weren’t sure if something they had experienced was ok, normal and legal, and they didn’t know where to find out.
At the Headstart Kernow Digital Resilience project, we’ve developed a tool to help. The Was That Ok tool includes lots of information and advice for young people, including where to go for support, what happens if they tell someone (including the police), information about confidentiality and safeguarding, and support services they can access online. We’ve also included some ideas about how they might address a problem themselves. For example, working out what they want to say, taking a friend and screen recording messages.
You can learn more by watching this video about the tool that also contains advice about responding to young people if they come to talk to you after using the tool.
To access the resource, please click the image below.
SEND Digital Resilience Guidance
If you support young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) you might be concerned about their engagement with the digital world. You might also worry that the messages they get in school and at home can be confusing, with different language used to make the same points. For some young people, this different language can mean the rules don't seem to make sense, or they can struggle to apply them to the real situations they find themselves in.
To help with this, we've developed the key messages from the Digital Resilience Tool into guidance specifically for people supporting young people with SEND. This guidance was developed with the team who made the Digital Resilience Tool, with input from Special Educational Needs Coordinators and other stakeholders who work with young people with SEND.
The guidance is organised by themes. Each theme contains helpful information on how to use the key messages and advice in practice. The language used is straightforward, and we've repeated the same messages where appropriate to help ensure consistency.
We'd recommend sharing this guidance with all the people in a young person’s support network so that everyone is using the same language and can refer to it any time a new situation arises. It can help you explain why certain rules or boundaries are in place, or why you are concerned about specific issues.
Please click on the image below to access the guidance.
If you have any questions / comments on any of the above please feel free to contact:
Louisa Street - louisa.street@packshare.org
Professor Andy Phippen - aphippen1@bournemouth.ac.uk
