Emma Soutar – Child Protection Training Officer
Emma Soutar is the Training Officer at the International Centre for Child Protection. She has made the most of technology to reach all who need these child protection skills nationally and internationally during this time of lockdown and limited travel. This is a summary of some of the vital work she has focused on recently resulting in high quality, impactful sessions, including her adaption of face-to-face simulation training to popular online interactive sessions.
Free Webinar with ChildHub – 21 April 2020
The whole team worked with Child Hub to deliver a Webinar in the first weeks of the Lockdown: The International Centre for Child Protection – an innovative knowledge hub for practitioners.
More details of the webinar are available on the ChildHub website.
Free Webinars – 3 and 9 June 2020
To provide support during lockdown, Emma then designed a free webinar looking at ‘Push and pull factors of online grooming’. It sold out to 100 delegates in less than 15 minutes, and demand necessitated a second one a week later, which also sold out.
Themes of the webinars: As online life becomes the new norm now it is more important than ever to be aware of online safety and include this our conversation and interactions with children and young people. Creating resilience to be able to form and maintain healthy relationships and to recognise signs of unhealthy relationships is vital. Emma navigated the Centre’s simulations Looking out for Lottie, Maryam and Joe: Behind Closed Doors and Zak to show how they support professionals and children and young people to develop those skills. The session concluded with an online discussion about creating dialogue and rapport with children and young people when discussing their online life, using the experiences of four characters to promote debate.
Online training
As Emma could not travel to deliver face-to-face sessions it was important to reach delegates despite Covid-19 without losing the benefits of interaction and discussion. During the new online training sessions, Emma fully utilises conferencing platforms to ensure group work can continue in the new online arena. She proactively works with each delegate to make sure they are comfortable with the online aspects and related technical requirements to ensure the success of the sessions. A number of child protection sessions have been held recently with excellent feedback and I wanted to share some details and testimonials.
1.Crossing the Line
This training looks at gangs, knife crime and county lines using a contextual safeguarding* approach to inform practice. Using a new interactive, research and theory based tool aimed at practitioners ‘Crossing the Line’, enables delegates to assess the risks of grooming, entrapment and serious violence within the gang for different individuals. Through an interactive street map linked to the gang members, delegates evaluate safeguarding pathways for individuals and evaluate the potential risks associated with different types of interventions.
*The approach of Contextual safeguarding was originally developed by Dr. Carlene Firmin at the University of Bedfordshire’s Contextual Safeguarding Network. This technique recognises young people are influenced by a whole range of environments and people outside of their family.
“Emma was a really good trainer and it was apparent that she had really good knowledge of the subject and the delivery of this was excellent, I would definitely recommend. I was sceptical about how it would work over Zoom and if it would be the same as training in the classroom, but I feel that is worked really well and had the same impact. “
“This course is extremely informative and I looks at current issues around gang culture and violence. This course is a must if you are involved in youth work.”
2.’Maryam and Joe: Behind Closed Doors’ (BCD)
Our social media style simulation provides a platform to learn about radicalisation and is designed to use directly with young people and vulnerable adults to promote discussion. It includes real life news clips from Sky news and the BBC open each scene and offer the opportunity to discuss complex topics in relation to radicalisation and British Values. These include hate crime, freedom of speech, propaganda, online grooming, far right extremism and terrorism.
“Maryam and Joe – Behind Closed Doors is an excellent resource to see the use of social media influencing and connecting young people, the viewpoint from each young person, theirs and their networks responses. The fact that it is an online interactive programme adds to the accessibility for young people to use. It will also alert professionals and parents who may not be as technically skilled as their children.”
3.’Looking out for Lottie’ and ‘BCD’
Our social media style simulation provides a platform to learn about child sexual exploitation (CSE). Updated in collaboration with NSPCC. Featured in Childline’s healthy/unhealthy relationships campaign because Lottie, as well as spotting the signs of CSE, looks at how to recognise unhealthy relationships; how relationships may affect health and wellbeing, including mental health; healthy relationships and safety online.
“Excellent, well throughout and thoroughly explained training sessions. Utilising Zoom at this time worked well with breakout rooms, and I appreciated working with other and sharing my screen to aid engagement.”
Next steps
Emma would love to hear from you, so if you want to find out more, or to introduce yourself, then please email, she would be happy to chat further.
To find out more about our simulations and upcoming dates please visit our Eventbrite page or email ccp@kent.ac.uk and check our our website which contains a wealth of information on even more simulations.
Our simulations are used on our MA in Advanced Child Protection, contact us for details of this important area of the Centre’s work.
These are just some of many initiatives that the University of Kent has put in place to share knowledge and embrace the potential of blended learning, follow the centre on Twitter and also follow the School Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research on Twitter, for the latest events and news.
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Best wishes
Karen Slade
International Centre for Child Protection