Children’s services for the digital age: A qualitative study into current procedures and online risks among service users

Abstract

BackgroundLocal government public sector children’s services working with vulnerable children in England are faced with challenging cases involving potentially harmful digital/online risks. All services have a duty to safeguard. Educators and key professionals in children’s services such as in social care, mental health, youth justice, voluntary sector advice centres or policing may be involved. Yet little is known about how these services identify, assess, refer and respond to such cases. AimThis study aims to explore how local services working with children and young people, including social care, health and the police, address cases with digital components among children and adolescents and how equipped they are to do so. MethodsUsing semi-structured interviews, this study interviewed 14 participants within 10 services such as mental health, social care, youth justice, teenage pregnancy prevention, voluntary sector online youth counselling, school nursing and children’s education inspection and safeguarding services. Interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed. ResultsA narrowly focused awareness of online risk was noticed among all participants, reflecting an emphasis on a singular target (e.g. Child Sexual Exploitation - CSE). This led frontline staff to omit exploration of wider online risks or antecedents of grooming. The outcome therefore was a lack of data on harms other than CSE or sharing of explicit images, and limited knowledge of a wider range of fast changing risks to children, which could inform prevention. Assessment tools seemed generic and focus heavily on CSE or social media; some omitted online risk unless safeguarding issues were raised. Furthermore, multi-agency collaboration was hampered by simplistic or no referral mechanisms for evidence involving online risks. Finally, it was also apparent that there is a lack of structured and mandatory training programmes around online risk and children and young people’s digital lives. ConclusionOnline risks need careful consideration within children’s services’ cases and to be more systematically embedded within practice. The findings are crucial in guiding services towards modernising their methods, advancing their training and assessment tools to enhance multi-agency collaboration in cases involving vulnerable children.