Incident Description
A pupil in a secondary school (year 8) set up a WhatsApp group with 5 other pupils. He then invited someone to join who the other pupils did not know. For two weeks, conversations had been taking place and the new person added to the group did not respond.
One child, with an EHCP, replied and sent a full-frontal photograph of himself. It transpired that the unknown person was a 30 year old male.
One of the other children in the group shared the request with their parent.
Guidance for Safeguarding Response
- School contacted police and parents
- School spoke to the group to reinforce key messages in relation to sending and receiving illegal images
- School staff also reinforced the importance of the children identifying risks online and critically evaluating their online relationships and sources of information
- School facilitated specific input with relevant children around speaking up to raise concerns with adults both at home and at school. For example, raising a concern regarding someone joining their group who none of them knew
- The children were also reminded to use the ‘report’ feature in games and online platforms
- Information was recorded for all children involved (Category: Online safety outside of school)
- Any previous concerns or incidents were considered. One child had been at the centre of 2 other similar incidents, so a safety plan was initiated for this child, in conjunction with parents
Additional actions which could be considered:
- Pol-ed sessions for the group and wider peer group from secondary resources such as ‘What is child criminal exploitation?’, ‘What is imaged based sexual abuse?’
Agencies Involved in this Incident
Referral to police to investigate the 30 year old male.
School staff had already intensively supported one child in critically evaluating their online safety which had not impacted positively so facilitated an external safeguarding consultant (from Clennell Education Solutions) to carry out a series of 1:1 intensive support sessions.