John Steel leads the Learning Technologies Team within Darlington Borough Council’s Children’s Services. He recalls the shock over Ashleigh Hall’s death – and his team’s determination to ensure her legacy is the greater safety of future generations of young internet users.

THE death of Ashleigh Hall came as a great shock to us all. Having all been trained by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), we were well aware of the relatively high incidence of youngsters being groomed over social networking sites.

Little did we expect a tragic event like this to happen in our own backyard.

The statistic that at least one in 12 “virtual” meetings will end up in an actual meeting is frightening, especially when at least half of those meetings will take place alone. The number of instances where virtual meetings turn into real meetings, often results in young people being harmed or killed.

Working with many teachers and young people over the last few years informed us that the majority of children and young people, especially in the secondary phase, were becoming increasingly aware of the key rules of e-safeguarding.

The tragic death of Ashleigh caused us to re-examine the impact and consistency of how young people were receiving the message about keeping safe on the internet.

While the National Curriculum and other guidance makes cursory reference to internet safety, specific guidance isn’t, as yet, statutory although many agencies such as CEOP, Childnet and Childline do provide excellent resources to which teams like mine, up and down the country, signpost schools.

As part of our re-examination, we quickly discovered most young people knew the “rules” – like not giving out personal details, not meeting up with internet contacts, understanding that people they “meet” on the internet may not actually be how they describe themselves.

But we were surprised at the number of youngsters, some as young as nine, who lied about their age in order to join social networking communities.

We decided to take a proactive approach by doing two things: Firstly put together a teaching pack, with resources and lesson plans, which covers internet safety for children from five to sixteen. This curriculum pack will enable teachers to cover the subject, in a sensitive, but effective way at age appropriate levels. All Darlington schools will receive this pack on a DVD before Easter.

The second project was to form a partnership with Humantics Community Interest Company, which brought industry professionals, including scriptwriter Bryan Johnson (Emmerdale and Byker Grove) and a professional actor, Jonathan Linsley (Last of the Summer Wine and Pirates of the Caribbean), as codirector.

These professionals acted as mentors to a group of teenagers from Darlington schools and colleges, in making a film to raise awareness of how internet “relationships” can go wrong.

THE young people were brilliant in sharing their ideas and guiding the writer on the type of “internet”

language in common use. Bryan Johnson effectively turned the young people’s ideas into a storyline and then a script.

The film is currently in production with young people acting alongside professional actors and others acquiring new skills by shadowing and assisting the crew in camera, sound and lighting operations.

The film plot, still under close wraps, is a dramatisation of a plausible e-safety scenario with a twist at the end provoking the audience to make the right choices. The film will be premiered at a multi-agency e-safety conference, organised by Darlington’s Safeguarding Children Board, on March 24.

Local singer and songwriter Hayley McKay wrote a soundtrack to accompany the film, which takes its title from her song, Cyberlove.

Online protection centre monitoring sex offenders

SEX offenders using the internet to contact youngsters should be aware not all their intended victims are who they appear to be.

This is the warning from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), which tackles online child abuse in the UK.

CEOP says that while children should know that people are not always who they say they are online, paedophiles should also be aware that their officers are conducting undercover online investigations 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

CEOP has more than 100 staff, including police officers, intelligence experts, computer experts, social workers, financial investigators and behaviour experts.

The Government agency deals with between 450 to 500 reports a month, many coming from the CEOP button which is placed on sites used by children.

CEOP says the internet does not create paedophiles, but it does give them access and opportunity to contact young people.

A spokeswoman said: “We know that where children will go, offenders will follow.

“However, we are keen to point out that they may think they are anonymous online, but this is not the case.”

The centre’s latest figures show about a half of all reports from social networking sites came from Bebo, while 20 per cent came from Facebook.

CEOP says that instant messenger services are popular with offenders trying to groom children using a webcam.

As well as Government agencies such as CEOP, a number of charities are trying to improve children’s safety online.

Lucinda Fell, from Childnet International, which aims to make the internet a great and safe place for children, said: “Because there are a wide range of services on the internet, some are better suited to children than others.

“We recommend that for young children wishing to chat online, their parents or carers should help them to look for moderated or supervised services.”

Further details on how stay safe online are available at kidsmart.org.uk