Growing Up Digital and our Internet Safety Policy – Five Rivers Participation
Five Rivers wants to find a better way for children and young people to engage with the digital world.
A frame from our new internet policy cartoon.
After achieving our membership accreditation of the Investing in Children movement, they recommended us to the Children’s Commissioner for our work in both protecting and enabling children.
The Commissioner, Anne Longfield asked us to invite a group of fostered children to take part in an informal insight group with her digital taskforce.
They explored the realities of digital life for teenagers and talked about permissions, access and understanding terms and conditions.
The researchers went away with lots of notes and a copy of our Safer Care Plan which includes a section on agreements to internet access.
We are now working hard with our young people on the preparation of child-friendly internet safety policy for carers and young people. Our “Keep it Plain” young proofreaders are crunching the complexities into words and pictures that are clear and easy to understand. It’s not going to be easy – child protection is a big priority for us as a children’s care service – but we must balance this with a child’s need to connect with the world around them.