Online Safety - First responders Guide 2024-2025
Online Safety - first responders guide
Date of issue: September 2024
Date of review: September 2025
Ratified by Academy Governing Council on:
The Co-op Academy Oakwood is committed to safeguarding every student. We acknowledge that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility and ensure all of our staff are trained to be vigilant and aware of the signs and indicators of abuse and understand and follow safe working practices.
The viewpoints and voice of students is of paramount importance to our Academy and we will always listen to their wishes, thoughts and feelings, as well as identifying and supporting their needs. We will work alongside students to develop trusting, consistent and professional relationships and show we care by advocating the early help processes where possible. We will identify any difficulties or concerns early in order to act preventatively. We will always provide support and advice for families and parents/carers, whilst acting in the best interests of the student at all times and doing what matters most. Safeguarding also includes ensuring we work in an open and honest way, enabling our students to feel safe by providing a secure learning environment, are equally protected regardless of any barriers they may face and are able to grow and develop in the same way as their peers.
Co-op Academy Oakwood safeguards students by:
- Maintaining a secure site and ensuring that all visitors to the Academy are recorded, monitored and clear about how to raise a safeguarding concern should one arise.
- Ensuring that safer recruitment practices are followed to prevent those who pose a risk to children gaining access to our students.
- Filtering and monitoring all internet traffic into the Academy to ensure that students cannot be exposed to harmful material and communication.
- Ensuring that all staff employed by the Academy have received Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) clearance which is recorded in the Single Central Record
- Providing regular training and briefings for all staff in child protection and ensuring that all staff and visitors know who our designated safeguarding officers and designated senior lead are.
- Ensuring that admission and attendance procedures are robust to protect students, ensure that they are safe and prevent students from going missing from education.
- Empowering young people to identify risks both within the Academy and in their community; ensuring that they have the skills and confidence to help and protect themselves and others.
- Making sure that all students understand the importance of reporting concerns about themselves and peers and giving them the confidence to discuss sensitive issues.
- Providing pastoral and inclusion support to ensure that all students have access to guidance and advice, and when needed referrals for additional agency support to meet their needs.
- Sharing information when appropriate with other agencies and services to ensure that students, children and their families have support to meet their needs and prevent students from harm or further harm
- Taking immediate action and contacting the appropriate agencies when we believe that a student is in danger or is at risk of harm.
Co-op Academy Oakwood is committed to safeguarding and promoting the wellbeing of all of our pupils. We expect our staff, governors, wider professionals, volunteers and all other stakeholders to share this commitment. All of our policies are underpinned and linked to our safeguarding policy through this commitment.
Anyone working with children may be the first person on the scene of an online safety incident, and just like with first aid, you should know what to do. This guide offers options for you to consider when encountering an online safety incident and useful contacts for advice and support.
The breadth of issues classified within online safety is considerable, but can be categorised into four areas of risk:
• content: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful content, for example: pornography, fake news, racism, misogyny, self-harm, suicide, anti-Semitism, radicalisation and extremism.
• 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: personal 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 (https://apwg.org/).
When responding to an online safety incident there are three main steps:
Step 1 - Preserve the evidence
Step 2 - Pass it on - seek help and advice
Step 3 - Prevent it reoccurring
Step 1 - Preserve the evidence
The first stage of response is to preserve any evidence of the online safety incident in case this is needed later. You will also need to ensure that other children and young people do not come into contact with the incident. Consider whether the following actions are appropriate:
If the device is on:
- Turn off the computer screen or close the lid of the Chromebook
- Keep people away from the device and the power source
- Confiscate equipment e.g. mobile phone, laptop, Chromebook, camera, but seek specialist advice before doing anything further
- Take photo of screen or screen capture (unless the photograph would be of an indecent image of a child under 18, when taking a photograph would itself count as a criminal offence)
- Save open files, emails or messages to external media
- Avoid saving things locally (to local disk or internal memory)
- Do not shut down the computer (which can remove evidence such as history information, temporary files etc).
- Seek technical advice from the Trust IT team
If the device is off:
- Make an external examination and take photos (unless the photograph would be of an indecent image of a child under 18, when taking a photograph would itself count as a criminal offence)
- Do not start the computer/device
- Lock it away
- Seek technical advice from the Trust IT team
If the content is on a shared network then the device should be taken out of service until an investigation can be completed by a technically competent person.
Someone acting in a technical capacity, with written instruction and supervision in a case that may become a criminal investigation has a defence in law when necessarily handling these materials to preserve evidence.
If the device is at the child’s home an alert is sent from Smoothwall to Claire Spivey (DDSL). The following action will be taken:
- Families will be contacted
- Families will be asked to return the device to the academy
The DSL will consider whether the following actions are appropriate:
- Take photo of screen or screen capture (unless the photograph would be of an indecent image of a child under 18, when taking a photograph would itself count as a criminal offence)
- Save open files, emails or messages to external media
- Avoid saving things locally (to local disk or internal memory)
- Do not shut down the computer (which can remove evidence such as history information, temporary files etc).
- Seek technical advice from the Trust IT team
- Staff must make a record of the incident (on CPOMS) including names of those involved or present.
Step 2 - Pass it on - seek help and advice
The incident could be (but are not limited to):
- Something witnessed on a computer, mobile phone, camera or device
- A statement made by the victim
- Information from a bystander or witness about events or pointing to evidence that something untoward has happened
- Hearsay (rumour) about a potential situation
- An alert from eSafe
After the immediate securing of the incident you will need to pass the details on to others. This will depend on the incident, the severity, and the setting you are based in.
• Staff must contact a Designated Safeguarding lead (Hayley Duffy) or DDSL (Rimah Aasim, Claire Spivey, Karen Jones, Jane Dodds)
The Designated Safeguarding Lead will consider whether the following actions are appropriate:
• Contact the police
• Contact LADO (concerns about staff/ volunteers)
• Contact technical support
• Contact CEOP
• Contact families.
All of the actions taken by the DSL will be recorded on CPOMS as an action under the initial record of the incident.
External support would need to be sought if there are:
- Concerns about the safety or well being of a child
If there is a concern for the safety or well being of a child, because there are suspicions, signs or symptoms of child abuse or harm, the normal Safeguarding Procedures must be followed.
- Concern with regard to the behaviour of someone who works with children
This may be because that person has
- Behaved in a way which has harmed a child, or may have harmed a child Possibly committed a criminal offence against or related to a child (e.g. by being abusive or grooming a child for later abuse)
- Behaved towards a child or children in a way which indicates that he/she is unsuitable to work with children
- Has viewed or taken pictures of children or young people which make you feel uncomfortable
The Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) must be informed. (N.B. this should be used for anyone who works with children, not just local authority employees).
- Concerns about criminal behaviour
The following triggers should result in the police being contacted:
- Actual harm caused by violence, abuse or harassment or evidence that has occurred or is being incited or planned, including menacing behaviour, incitement, grooming or accessing indecent images
- Theft or damage to property, including property kept online, and denial of service or access
- Serious fraud and identity theft, including serious breaches of copyright, distribution or possession of obscene, or hateful materials
- Self harm or severe distress caused by repeated acts which in themselves may not appear significant e.g. cyberbullying
There is specific Home Office guidance on the action police should take if a crime has been reported as having occurred in school.
- Concerns about civil offences
- These are generally managed by the school disciplinary procedures or settled in the courts without police intervention and would require the support of HR. Triggers might include:
- Data protection or privacy breaches (e.g. resulting from loss of a laptop or device)
- Professional or personal misconduct or negligence
- Libel, slander, defamation and misrepresentation
- Viewing inappropriate content
- Breaching acceptable use policies
Step 3 - Prevent it reoccurring
After the incident has been dealt with you now need to consider what actions could be taken to prevent future similar incidents occurring again. Consider whether the following actions are appropriate:
• Review policy and procedures
• Review technical infrastructure (firewalls, filters etc)
• Training for staff/volunteers
- Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre http://www.ceop.police.uk/
- Cybermentors http://cybermentors.org.uk/
- Childline http://www.childline.org.uk/
- For parents/carers/ families https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/parents/
- NSPCC NSPCC
- National Online Safety https://nationalonlinesafety.com/
• Awareness raising sessions for children/ young people
• Awareness raising sessions for parents/ carers / families
• Support for victims/bystanders.
Where the incident involves a member of staff, appropriate support should be obtained. This might be the designated staff welfare member or the victim’s union.
Where the victim is a pupil, contact family and carer and agree a suitable way forward to facilitate an effective closure for the victim to the incident.
This policy works alongside the following policies:
Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy