Online Safety Information
At Lathom Park we take looking after our children very seriously. Through lessons provided at school, assemblies and PSHE lessons, we strive to provide our children with the awareness and knowledge they need in order to avoid dangers and to respond appropriately. We also have internet safety days and we use the Dojo app to communicate about online safety with parents.
Below you will find links to different pages that will direct you to information to help your child stay safe online. There are also some links to child friendly games and websites.
You can find further advice about Social Media Apps and help to add parental controls below. As always, if you have any questions or if you need any help please contact the school office.
Our Top Tips
Talk to your child about what they are using online.
Play/have a go yourself.
Use YouTube kids for added restrictions.
Download parental control software to track their activity.
Encourage your child to tell you if they see or hear anything they shouldn’t.
Stick to age restrictions for social media apps.
Remind them to treat people online how they would like to be treated.
Never share passwords and usernames.
Parents
Online Safety Advice Websites
This is a great website to use when discussing online risks you’re your children http://www.safetynetkids.org.uk/personal-safety/
The NSPCC has a lot of up to date information about being safe online.
Other great online safety websites
https://www.thinkuknow.co.uk/4_7/
Gaming advice from the providers
https://corp.roblox.com/parents/
Safe Gaming Websites
Games for all ages https://scratch.mit.edu/
Coding for nursery children onwards https://hourofcode.com/uk/learn
Screen Time Advice
Child Exploitation and Online Protection
If you or anyone you know is worried about Child Exploitation, Online Protection (CEOP) or anything related to internet safety, please click the link below which will take you to the CEOP reporting website:
https://www.ceop.police.uk/Safety-Centre/
Social Media Accounts. Please remember, children need to be at least 13 if not older to have one of these accounts:
Instagram - an online mobile photo sharing, video sharing and social networking service which enables its users to take pictures and videos and share them on a variety of social networking platforms. This also allows for group chats, of which poor language is being used.
Facebook - a social networking site. The timelines on this are not monitored and harmful and inappropriate content is likely to appear on children’s accounts.
WhatsApp – an instant messaging app for smartphones. The user agreement requires users to be age 16 or older.
Snapchat – an app that sends a picture to a person for up to 10 seconds. Users can screenshot these images and save them. The user agreement requires users to be age 18 or older.
YouTube- The user agreement requires people creating channels to be age 13 or older. There is a kid friendly version of YouTube called YouTube Kids, it has a lot of the same content, but it does a filter out a lot of unwanted material.
If your child is on one of these sites, please monitor their usage. When monitoring your son/daughter’s Internet use, please remind yourself of the concerns of social media:
Young people may accept friend requests from people they don’t know in real life, which could increase the risk of inappropriate contact or behaviour. The general rule is, if they aren’t friends in real life, they shouldn’t be ‘friends’ online.
Language, games, groups and content posted or shared on social media is NOT moderated, and therefore can be offensive, illegal or unsuitable for young people. This includes Xbox Live and PlayStation network as well as the highly popular YouTube.
Photographs shared by users are NOT moderated and therefore young people could be exposed to inappropriate images or even post their own.
Social media sites cannot and do not verify its members, therefore, it is known that sexual predators use such sites to groom children.
Should you decide to allow your child to have an online profile we strongly advise you:
To Check their profile is set to private and that only their friends can see information they post.Monitor your child’s use and talk to them about safe and appropriate online behaviour such as not sharing personal information.
Set up your own profiles so you understand how the site works and ask them to have you as their friend on their profile, so you know what they are posting online.