Safeguarding and the Online Safety Act
The ‘staying safe’ outcome includes aims that children, young people and vulnerable adults are:
- Safe from maltreatment.
- Safe from accidental injury or death.
- Safe from bullying and discrimination.
- Safe from crime and anti-social behaviour in and out of education or training.
- Secure, stable and cared for.
These aims equally apply to the digital world that children, young people and vulnerable adults will encounter whenever they use IT in its various forms. For example, there is a need to protect Learners from harm such as:
- The use of the internet for grooming children, young people and vulnerable adults with the ultimate aim of sexual exploitation.
- The use of IT as a platform for bullies, who may torment their victims via websites, online forums, text or email messages.
- Exposure to inappropriate content when online, which can lead to their involvement in County Lines and/or anti-social behaviour.
It is the responsibility and duty of all employees to ensure every child, young person and vulnerable adult in their care is safe and the adopted principles apply to the ‘Virtual’ digital world as would apply to if they were attending the premises in person.
The KCSIE guidance have classified issues in regard to online safety into four categories:
- Content: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate, or harmful content, for example: pornography, racism, misogyny, self-harm, suicide, antisemitism, radicalisation, extremism, misinformation, disinformation (including fake news) and conspiracy theories.
- Contact: being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users; for example: peer to peer pressure, commercial advertising and adults posing as children or young adults with the intention to groom or exploit them for sexual, criminal, financial or other purposes.
- Conduct: online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm; for example, making, sending and receiving explicit images (e.g. consensual and non-consensual sharing of nudes and semi-nudes and/or pornography, sharing other explicit images and online bullying.
- Commerce: risks such as online gambling, inappropriate advertising, phishing and or financial scams. If you feel your pupils, students or staff are at risk, please report it to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.
All Safeguarding concerns must be reported to the DSL or the DDSL in their absence. In the event that neither the DSL nor the DDSL is available, any concerns should be reported to a senior member of management.
The Online Safety Act 2023
The Online Safety Act 2023 is a new set of laws that protect children and adults online. It places a range of duties and responsibilities on social media companies and search services making them more responsible for their users’ safety when on their platforms. The Act will give internet providers new duties to implement systems and processes to reduce risks when their services are used for illegal activity, and to take down illegal content when it does appear.
Ofcom are now the independent regulator of online safety, and it has a broad range of powers to assess and enforce providers compliance within the framework. The Act has codes of practice and related criminal offences which will support in tackling the following but is not limited to:
- Age-appropriate experiences for children online.
- Providing adults with more control over the content they see.
- The Act will tackle suicide and self-harm content.
- It will tackle harmful algorithms.
- The Act will protect women and girls.
Filtering and monitoring
The Council and Addcom regularly logs the use of its ICT equipment and systems. The Council may need to monitor, intercept and record the use of such systems, to ensure its use is not placing Council systems and/ or services including your PC, at risk or is otherwise inappropriately being used.
To ensure it complies with its own legal obligations the Council and Addcom may monitor and record.
- Times, periods of patterns of internet use, websites accessed, connection lengths.
- Frequency, times and patterns of use of email use, email addresses to which you have sent emails and the size of attachments.
- Telephone calls primarily for the protection of employees.
At WTS there is user-based internet filtering, allowing an appropriate level of browsing permission for different age groups, following the guidance from the DfE’s KCSIE.
The following are examples of blocked categories: Discrimination, Explicit Violence, Extremists groups, Gambling, Dating, Weapons, and Pornography.
Websites and services are reviewed individually from permitted categories such as social media, entertainment, streaming media and instant messaging.
Use of WTS ICT equipment and systems to bypass such restrictions is strictly prohibited and could lead to disciplinary. In the event of accidental breach please seek immediate guidance and support from your Line Manager or the Data and Administration Manager.