Online Harms and Grooming: Supporting Adults with Learning Disabilities and Autism to Stay Safe on Social Media: A Workshop for Support Staff – 30 October 2024

This half-day online workshop is designed to raise awareness of online harms (especially grooming) for those with a learning disability and autistic people. It is aimed at social care support staff. 
               
30 October 2024 – 9.30am – 1.00pm
                                                 

People with learning disabilities and autistic people are at disproportionate risk from online harms. ARC England’s experience of user-led projects on mate crime, sexual exploitation, and social media grooming turned up a host of alarming stories. Get SMART found that nearly all the young people involved in the project preferred their life online to the ‘real’ world and that the staff supporting them were not equipped to respond to this profound cultural shift.                                                                                                                              Teenager facetiming friend about puzzles Photo by Tabitha Turner on Unsplash

Often individuals who get into trouble online are simply banned from the use of the internet and social media. This training argues that this approach is ineffective, against human rights legislation and actually counter-productive.  A more mature response is needed. This new ARC England workshop encourages positive engagement with the people most at risk, utilising harm mitigation and risk enablement approaches.

Feedback from a course attendee: “Really informative and interesting – great to see the acknowledgement that it’s about managing risk as you can’t eliminate it and nor should you. Empowering people to keep themselves safe. Also interesting about the susceptibility of autistic people to online vigilantes.”

It looks at how to intervene and support those at risk.  The workshop draws on learning from:

Workshop content
  • Background: what are we afraid of?
  • Radicalisation, learning disability and autism
  • ‘Get SMART’ project findings
  • Online harms: what are the risks?
  • Grooming: risk factors, process and indicators
  • What does and doesn’t work?
  • Key tools: MCA and Risk Enablement
  • What next?

The workshop is highly interactive and comprise tutor input, discussions, case studies, polls, small group work and reflections on assignments.

Who is the workshop for? 

Anyone working in social care and supporting people with a learning disability, autism or both.

To find out more about course content please contact the course tutor Rod Landman [email protected].

Cost
  • £69 (ARC Members)
  • £90 (Non-members)
How to book your place

**The workshop will only go ahead if the minimum number of places are filled

In-house workshops
This half-day workshop for social care staff can be delivered exclusively and cost-effectively just for your organisation for up to 16 people. To find out more please contact our Training Administrator Denise Adams at [email protected]