Sorry I’m late on posting however maybe better late than never. I’m from the Youth Service in the UK in West Sussex and involved in working towards a social media strategy. We also have a number of work streams going on around e-safety at differing levels throughout the organisation. One of these is through the Social Media group made up of youth work practioners. This group will be undertaking the CEOP Think U Know training and then looking towards how they might be able to implement online saftey messages within their current practice.
Happy to talk further if it’s of any help.
All the best
Hilary

i’m sure there are lots of librarians out there developing programs. at my library, i think it’s more about developing relationships with individuals, and providing them with resources and a place to experiment.

We are supporting them to hold these discussions in their own online spaces (including SN pages) and providing supporting information to engage and inform them. We also provide structured space to publish results and work with policy-makers (elected representatives and relevant government staff) to get young people’s ideas read, used and some feedback provided.

We are hoping that through this process, young people’s awareness of safety issues and best practice will increase (though this is not our primary aim).

At the moment, we’re designing the online support, hoping to launch everything before xmas.

The project’s a pilot, running in Estonia, Germany, Republic of Ireland and UK.

Get in touch with me directly (e.taylor-smith@napier.ac.uk) or via the project website if you want to know more or get involved.

-Ella

1. Most of us have no idea how to use social media ourselves much less advise the parents and kids we work with. At best, most of us only use the internet for Googling and e-mail. I started a blog earlier this year & most of the professionals I’ve mentioned it to don’t even know what a blog is!

2. The risks associated with on-line use are way minor compared to the everyday physical risks we front-line folks are still trying to educate kids about–alcohol & drug use, drunk driving, unsafe sex, violence, suicide, child abuse & sexual assault, etc. I can speak directly to the latter having spent 16 yrs+ treating child & adolescent victims of child abuse & sexual assault & participating in community education & other prevention efforts. Internet predators are the one on-line risk we did address, though tangentially, since the incidence is so small compared to the much greater risks of the things I mentioned above.

3. On the cynical side, with perennial funding problems affecting social services & insurance industry practices negatively affecting mental health services, no one pays any of us to address on-line safety or is likely to.

Nevertheless, good-luck with your efforts. This is the first time I’ve been to your blog & I’ll be back to further my own education.

I work with teachers, students, and administrators in my own independent school and in many of those in the Washington, DC area to create an integrated and common-sense approach to addressing these issues. I have shared many materials with other educators doing the same thing on our independent school ning: http://isenet.ning.com/group/evolvinginternetsafetysocialnetworkingdiscussions

The main thrust of our discussions includes the questions you are asking about many approaches from many different practitioners, but also letting go the scare tactics and approaching the questions with understanding, common sense, and an awareness of all the rapid changes that take place each day in this area! We are using Digital Citizenship as a title for the discussions now, understanding that it’s more than safety, it’s about how you interact and behave.

Jenni Swanson Voorhees

I’m also really interested in learning more about what is out there from a broad-based risk reduction POV, vs. a purely individual-level prevention POV. I’m looking at how sexual assault educational curricula have been expanded in recent years — to move from “don’t dress like that” to “watch your drink!” and “walk with friends!” to addressing relationship/partner assault and looking at the sociocultural factors that promote silence around rape. If people out there are doing that work around online forms of bullying, stalking, and abuse, or want support, I’d love to be looped in.

Just read about this today and thought it might be of interest

I work for a local authority in the UK (Herts) who support about 550 schools. We are working with social services and child support, police and child protection to try and develop a united, proactive but measured approach to eSafety. We are really keen to facilitate the teaching of social networking in schools, and offer a variety of filtering options to try and encourage schools to provide a rich, appropriate curriculum. We still have a long way to go, but do look at our website:
http://www.thegrid.org.uk/eservices/safety/index.shtml
We would love to talk to you – lots of our schools are doing great things, and some have some way to go – but we are all keen to provide the best support we can – would love your help!!

It would be worthwhile for you to pose this question to Lena Trudeau, Vice President, National Academy of Administration, at (202) 315-5476, ltrudeau@napawash.org, and http://www.napawash.org/about_academy/staff_bios/trudeau.htm. The Academy has done research and consulting that intersects with all these groups, and Lena sits at the intersection of federal/state/local government and social media.

Another good source is the Kennedy School’s Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation, http://ashinstitute.harvard.edu/innovation – they may have received a nomination for, or may have awarded, a group that would meet your criteria.

Best wishes,
Kitty Wooley