Daily Safeguarding Update

Researchers identify 80 specific online harms

Researchers at the University of Glasgow have identified 80 ‘distinct’ online harms facing policy-makers as they grapple with new ways to regulate tech platforms.
The analysis was conducted by academics exploring the range of issues to consider from eight tech industry government and parliamentary reports and inquiries over the past 18 months.
Their work has fed into a new high-level research report conducted as part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre.
The reports, published between September 2018 – February 2020, dealt with issues such as online harms, cybercrime, and the regulation of social media platforms.
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A sex offender has been caught attempting to incite a teenage boy to engage in sexual activity online.
The offender aged 46 had contacted the 14-year-old online and engaged in sexual chat from his home in West Sussex.
The conversation occured in 2013 and revealed how the offender incited the boy to perform sexual acts.
The offender, formerly a toy shop worker, was caught out when a separate investigation found that his victim had downloaded child sex abuse imagery.
The victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had devices searched, and it revealed a Skype conversation with the offender in 2013.
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Schools in England should continue to educate pupils for the remainder of the school year, rather than giving them an extended holiday as “study leave” for exams that were cancelled, the Head of the Ofsted has said.
Amanda Spielman, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools, said it was “concerning” that secondary schools were allowing pupils on GCSE and A-level courses to end the summer term six weeks or more early, meaning that some 15 and 16-year-olds would have 100 days of holiday before the new year started in September.
Spielman said Ofsted“will want to know” how schools are using the remainder of the term to help their pupils in the exam year groups (year 11 and year 13)catch up on learning lost during the pandemic lockdowns.
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Health Secretary Matt Hancock has caved into legal action over providing vitamins and milk to some of the UK’s poorest children.
Lawyers for a family denied weekly vouchers worth £4.25 had challenged the policy as discriminatory.
They said the ban unfairly affected ethnic minority children whose parents were not fully settled in the UK.
The challenge concerned the “Healthy Start” scheme supplying milk, vitamins and vegetables in England and Wales.
It explicitly aims to improve the diets of babies and toddlers in the poorest families in England in Wales – and so reduce the likelihood of lifelong chronic bad health.
However, under immigration rules, parents who do not have a final settled status in the UK – even if they are legally living or working in the country – are banned from receiving any of the UK’s mainstream benefits.
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