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Join the Fight Against Child Sexual Exploitation

National Charity NWG Network asks all to unite against child sexual exploitation for their National Child Sexual Exploitation Awareness Raising Day – 18th March 2020.

Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) is a form of sexual abuse that involves the manipulation and/or coercion of young people under the age of 18 into sexual activity.

The National Child Sexual Exploitation Awareness Raising Day aims to highlight the issues surrounding child sexual exploitation; encouraging everyone to think, spot and speak out against abuse and adopt a zero tolerance to adults developing inappropriate relationships with children.

Previous National Child Sexual Exploitation Awareness Raising Days have seen hundreds of events take place across the UK, ranging from poster and leaflet displays to whole authorities embarking on targeted campaigns across public services and shopping centres.

Working with over 230 organisations across the UK to help prevent and raise awareness of child sexual exploitation, NWG Network continue to disseminate information on the issue of child sexual exploitation.

‘The National Child Exploitation Awareness Day is a great way to highlight the issues surrounding Child Exploitation; encouraging everyone to think, spot and speak out against abuse and adopt a zero tolerance to adults developing inappropriate relationships with children or children exploiting and abusing their peers.'

How to get involved

The NWG advise, 'you can focus your awareness raising event to the day itself – 18th March – or spread it out with a series of events over the week or month. Just remember to let us know your plans and we will publicise them on our websites Awareness Day interactive map and through our social media platforms Holding events such as school talks to pupils, teaching staff and non-teaching staff, non-uniform days, stalls, displays, posters and leaflets through your place of work are an important and effective way of raising awareness and sharing important messages around child exploitation.'

The NWG are also asking people to write a personal pledge on your hands to show support for the Helping Hands campaign. Post your photo on social media with the hashtag #HelpingHands and #CEADay20 to help to raise awareness of CSE and wider exploitation.

CSE Awareness Training For Staff

Our sister site, TrainingSchoolz, offers members a CSE awareness training course for school staff. This online course helps staff understand why CSE is an important part of our safeguarding duty, some of the signs of CSE and how technology is being used for the purpose.

Find out more and register for free membership which gives you access to the training platform and the training and policy library.

Encourage pupils to work together for a better internet

The next ‘Safer Internet Day’ will be the seventeenth edition of the event and will take place worldwide on Tuesday 11th February 2020.

The theme for 'SID2020' will be ‘Together for a better internet’. The day aims to inspire young people to use technology responsibly, respectfully, critically and creatively. The campaign will also explore whether young people feel free to be themselves online - #Freetobe

SID2020 Competition

To celebrate the fantastic work being done through Safer Internet Day activities around the world, we wanted to let you know about the annual competition for schools being run by our sister site, Safeguarding Essentials. To get involved, all your pupils have to do is complete the picture as shown below and then tweet their entries from the school Twitter account.

The template can be downloaded as part of the free Safer Internet Day assembly available to all Safeguarding Essentials members (if you are not already a member, you can join the free membership here), or you can create your own. This can be in simple text, an image or a video. As long as it can be Tweeted and includes @SafeguardingSGE in the message.

To submit your school entries:

1) Simply Tweet your entries including the @SafeguardingSGE from your school Twitter account,
or
2) Submit your entries by email to competition@safeguardingessentials.com and we will Tweet it on your behalf

Entry is open now and schools can enter as many tips as they wish. All entries must be received before midnight on February 7th 2020 to be included in the competition. Please see the competition terms here.

This year, Anti-Bullying Week takes place from 11th to the 15th November

Anti-Bullying Week is coordinated by the Anti-Bullying Alliance which is based at the National Children's Bureau. The campaign was started in the early 2000s as a way of focussing the attention of schools on tackling bullying between children and young people.

Change Starts With Us

This year, Anti-Bullying Week has the theme ‘Change Starts With Us’, underlining how everyday acts like listening to young people, having a conversation, thinking about the impact of our words or stopping before hitting ‘like’ on a hurtful social media post, can help to reduce bullying.

Aims

The campaign objective is to emphasise that we all have a part to play: Change Starts With Us.

The aims of the week are to support schools and other settings to help children and young people, schools staff, parents and other professionals who work with children to understand:

bullying is still a serious issue

we are all responsible

a small change can make a bit difference

change starts now!

How to get involved

There are many ways you can get involved this year, with different events taking place throughout the week:

‘Change Starts With Us’ is the main overarching theme for this year’s Anti-Bullying Week and was developed with young people, so why not help promote the message on your social media channels.

With the focus on positive change and knowing that we are all part of the solution, the ABA is asking that everyone pledge to change something, no matter how small, and tell them about it. The simplest way of doing this is by sharing or pledging messages from you and your pupils. Your pledges should start with: ‘change starts with ……’ #ChangeStartsWithUs #AntiBullyingWeek. This could be a text-based post, a photo, a video, a GIF or something else!

You can also sign up as a supporter of Anti-Bullying Week where you will receive a certificate and be listed on the website.

Register for free bullying awareness training from our sister site, TrainingSchoolz.

This training is designed to support schools in their understanding of policies and procedures around the different ways in which children and young people can be bullied. It covers good practice on how schools should address the issues of bullying.

The training is available free of charge for staff to complete from now until 15th November - to coincide with Anti-Bullying Week.

Sign-up now to complete the training