Hello and welcome back to another Safeguarding Soundbites, with me Colin Stitt, Head of Safer Schools at INEQE Safeguarding Group. This is your weekly round-up of all this week’s safeguarding news, plus a summary of our safeguarding expert’s latest advice and guidance on keeping the children and young people in your care safer online.

With the sad news that another young person has died after taking part in the online ‘black out’ challenge made popular on TikTok, we’ve released guidance for parents, guardians, and teachers on what online challenges are and how to talk to the children and young people in your care about them and much more. Find that at ineqe.com in our online safety section.

Every year on the 10th of September, people and organisations around the world mark Suicide Prevention Day to bring awareness, understanding and support to the topic. Research shows that one in four young people will experience thoughts of suicide and that is one of the leading causes of death in children and young people in the U.K. Knowing how to talk to a young person about suicide can be tough. To get a better understanding and find out how you can talk to young people about this subject, visit our online safety section at ineqe.com.

The charity CyberSafeKids has found that there are rising levels of unrestricted access to smart phones, going online and social media for children under the age of 12. 95% of 8- to 12-year-olds own their own smart device and 87% had their own social media accounts, despite many apps imposing higher age restrictions.

On the one-year anniversary of the introduction of the Age-Appropriate Design Code, the Information Commissioner has said that children are now safer online than a year ago, due to the implementation of the code. He noted that the code has led to a change in behaviour from tech giants, including policies around the ad targeting of younger users and video autoplay settings. You can learn more about the code by searching ineqe.com for ‘age-appropriate design code’.

In England, The new legal duties for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people under the age of 18 have come into effect as of the 1st of September. The statutory guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022, covers areas such as online safety, disclosures, and sexual violence and harassment. Get more information about the changes and updates in our online safety section.

The Financial Ombudsman Service has warned of cryptocurrency scams after receiving a growing number of complaints around fake investments. The scams tend to involve someone being persuaded to buy cryptocurrency through legitimate means, then being asked to send it on to the scammers.

And finally, it seems dreams do come true as Twitter users might finally be getting an edit button for Tweets! Although still in the live testing phase, the change would allow users to edit their Tweets up to 30 minutes after posting, with edited Tweets being marked with icons, timestamps and labels so other users know it has been edited.

That’s all for now, i’ll be back next week with more safeguarding news and advice, until then, you can keep up to date via our socials – just search for INEQE Safeguarding Group – and on our website at ineqe.com. Stay safe, thanks for listening and if you enjoyed today’s episode, we’d love for you to share Safeguarding Soundbites with your friends, family and colleagues.