Online (Internet) Harms and Grooming: Supporting Adults with Learning Disabilities and Autism to Stay Safe on Social Media

A one-day online ARC England workshop

This training is co-delivered by supported people with lived experience of online harms and ARC staff.

The workshop is designed to raise awareness and develop good practice responses to online harms. It is suitable for anyone supporting people with learning disabilities and autistic people.

 

Supported people are at disproportionate risk from online harms. ARC England’s experience of peer-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.

Often individuals who get into trouble online are simply banned from the use of the internet and social media. Our training argues that this approach is ineffective, often unlawful and counter-productive. There is a specific focus on grooming, which lies behind most online harms.

This newly-updated and expanded ARC England workshop encourages positive engagement with the people most at risk, utilising harm mitigation and risk enablement approaches. It looks at how to intervene and support those at risk.  The training draws on learning from:

• Supported people’s reflections on their lived experience
• ARC projects about mate crime, sexual exploitation, and social media grooming for radicalisation and extremism.
• Court of Protection case law.
• Bond & Phippen: ‘Safeguarding Adults Online’ [book]

 

Workshop content

• Background: what are we afraid of?
• Project findings
• Online harms: what are the risks?
• Focus on grooming: risk factors, process and indicators
• How people at risk want to be supported
• What does and doesn’t work?
• Key tools: MCA and Risk Enablement
• Good practice in interventions
• What next?

The workshop is highly interactive and comprises input from supported people and an expert tutor, discussions, detailed case studies, polls, small group work and short assignments.

Our learners say

“Great knowledge from the trainers, interactive session and full of advice and tips.”

“Great training for anyone supporting people with learning disabilities or autism to stay safe online. The lived experiences brought the training to life.”

“Excellent and excellent resources. Good to have input from experts by experience.”

“Very productive and realistic. Good broad overview as well as practical detail.”

Post-workshop evaluation:

• 100% of learners said the workshop did what it said it would do
• 99% would recommend it to others
• 100% of learners said that it had increased their confidence in the area
• 100% said it had increased their knowledge
• 99% said their practice would change

How to book places

Find out when this workshop is running by visiting our Scheduled workshops are held twice a year.

Cost per individual place

• £105 (ARC Members)
• £136 (Non-members)

 

In-house workshops

We also offer our workshops on an in-house basis exclusively for your organisation. We also offer this workshop on an in-house basis exclusively for your organisation on dates most convenient to you.  Our expert trainer can deliver this training course for up to 16 people per session.

Costs for in-house delivery:

• £780 (ARC members)
• £885 (non-ARC members)

 

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