Hello and welcome to Safeguarding Soundbites!

I’m Colin Stitt, Head of Safer Schools and on this week’s episode, I’ll be talking about the impact of exam stress on young people and how you can help, international missing children’s day and, as always, getting you in the loop on the latest in safeguarding news.

It’s officially exam season – the culmination of many hours spent learning and studying for students. Although always a high-pressure time, with the impacts of the pandemic and lockdowns on young people’s education and mental health, we’d like everyone in the care of young people to be aware of how exam stress affects them. By knowing the signs to look out for and how you can help, we can all take steps to mitigate and soften exam stress pressure. You can find out more by visiting our website saferschoolsni.co.uk to learn more.

Also this week, was International Missing Children’s Day – what springs to your mind when you think of missing children? For many, it’s children like Madeleine McCann or Ben Needham. But there are also lots of children that go missing in the U.K. in different circumstances, like running away from care or being sexually or criminally exploited. Ineqe Safeguarding Group’s CEO Jim Gamble explains more in our article ‘Understanding Missing’ – find it on safer schoolsni.co.uk

In the news this week, a facial recognition firm has been fined over 7.50 million pounds by the U.K’s data watchdog. ‘Clearview AI’ was found to be sourcing image of people’s face from social media platforms and other online places they added these to a global database and collected over twenty billion images.

Also new research has shown that Covid-19 has left children aged eleven to fifteen more depressed and less satisfied with their lives. The joint research from organisations such as the University of Dundee also found that girls exposed to the pandemic exhibited greater depressive symptoms, behavioural issues and lower wellbeing.

And on social media TikTok users are being targeted by scammers in fake get-rich-quick schemes. Users who watch financial advice videos are particularly at risk, with scammers using tactics such as cloned accounts to fool people into thinking they’re being contacted by the financial advice accounts they watch.

Also in TikTok news- Northern Ireland has it’s very first TikTok house! Popular in America, TikTok houses are places where top influencers live and create content together. Unlike the US houses, the participants of the Northern Ireland house, named the VAVA club, will live together for just one week.

That’s everything from me for this week! Please join me next time for more safeguarding news and advice. In the meantime, you can get in touch with us on our social media – just search for Safer Schools NI. And if you enjoyed this podcast, we’d love for you to share it with friends, family and colleagues! Thanks for listening and Stay Safe