Minutes:
Kellie Williams, Community Safety Officer, presented a report providing an update on the work of the E-Safety Sub-group. The report included a summary of the recent research into the misuse of technologies and the way that children and young people used technology to communicate, a summary of the progress made against agreed targets, a summary of the challenges faced by the Sub-group and a future look.
The E-Safety Sub-group was a formal sub-group of the Community Safety Partnership and there were clear overlaps with the work of the Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) Groups and the Prevent Sub-group. Consequently clear communication channels had been established to ensure that messages were consistent and reflective of the overlaps. The Sub-group currently operated as an operational group rather than a strategic one and the Community Safety Partnership was in the process of reviewing the Group’s remit to ensure that proper reporting mechanisms were in place and that the Sub-group had clear lines of accountability in place.
This helpful national research perspective was outlined and it was noted that the whilst the behaviour of children and young people in Bracknell Forest was reflective of the national picture, work was underway to develop a data set that would provide the group with an accurate assessment of the local situation and enable the development of a more robust approach to performance monitoring in this area. Other key areas of work for the coming year included:
· Ensuring that access to inappropriate material (including pornographic, violent and terrorist material) was blocked on all council ICT systems including schools and working with other organisations that provided internet access to young people to do the same
· Working with Vodafone to develop an e-safety mobile phone app for young people
It was reported that prosecutions for e-safety offences fell into two broad categories the first group involved those cases where older people were grooming children and these were discussed by the CSE Groups. The second group of offences involved sixteen year olds who were having relationships with younger teenagers. These latter cases were considered to be a safeguarding matter rather than a criminal matter and education was vital in these instances.
The continually evolving nature of technology meant that it was vital that practitioners regularly updated and refreshed their knowledge in this area and the development of e-safety training was being explored for example through the introduction of specific focused training for foster carers.
Education was seen as key to ensuring the safety of children and young people and that it was vital that agencies became more creative about how they interacted and engaged with young people when discussing the subject. The education of parents was also seen as vital to the success of any work.
The Sub-group’s work had been funded by money allocated to the Community safety partnership by the Police and Crime Commissioner’s Grant. However cuts to this funding meant that this was no longer available to the Sub-group and that future work would have to be delivered within existing funding and resources. It was agreed that the impacts of this change would need to be explored in more detail and would be raised by the LSCB Chair. (Action: Alex Walters)
It was agreed that the Sub-group’s action plan and membership list would be circulated to ensure that key members/partners were represented and that the Action Plan was sufficiently challenging. (Action: Kellie Williams)
The LSCB thanked Kellie Williams for her informative update.