HeadStart Kernow Digital Resilience Tools for Parents
The Headstart Kernow Online Resilience Toolkit provides a practical way to assess young people’s online behaviour and help make decisions about whether that behaviour is a cause for concern.
We are delighted to present 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.
Our goal is to help you understand the challenges of the online world, frame your child's behaviour in an age-appropriate manner, and empower you to initiate meaningful conversations with confidence.
A PDF Resource and Podcast for each age group can be found below.
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.
People to contact for support
There are lots of people and organisations out there to help you navigate the potential issues you might face with your child and the digital world. Depending on where you are, there may also be local organisations which can offer support. A good place to find out about this is your local council’s website.
We recommend talking to your child’s nursery / school / college as a first port of call as they are likely to be aware of issues related to the digital world and can advise on what support is available. Ideally, we’d recommend talking to your child and asking them who is best for you to talk to. You can always ask to speak to the school’s designated safeguarding lead or pastoral lead.
If you are based in Cornwall and you have immediate safeguarding concerns about a child or young person’s safety, you can access support from the Multi-Agency Referral Unit (MARU).
If you want to know what support might be available for a child or family you can contact the Early Help Hub.
The Family Information Service have a list of all support services. You can access it here.
You can also see information and advice for parents or professionals to help improve the social, emotional, mental health and wellbeing of children and young people in Cornwall on the Headstart website.
Nationally, there are several organisations who offer support around young people and the digital world:
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The NSPCC offers support and advice on a range of issues including online grooming.
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The Marie Collins Foundation offers support for people who have been victims of Technology Assisted Sexual Abuse.
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Shore Space offer support for people who are concerned about feeling or wanting to harm others.
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The Internet Watch Foundation monitor and remove child sex abuse material online.
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South West Grid for Learning offer support and advice on a range of issues linked to online safety.
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YGAM offer support for young people who are experiencing addiction to gaming or gambling.
We’ve also created a range of resources aimed at professionals who work with children and young people, which you can see by clicking on the button below. The content is very similar, but there are additional resources, like lesson plans and more podcasts. We’ve also used slightly different language to describe behaviours, for example we say, ‘potentially harmful’ instead of ‘find out more’. This reflects the language professionals use when discussing safeguarding, which can be a bit worrying if you’re not used to it and is why we changed the language in the parent’s tools.