Last Updated on 14th April 2026
Welcome Back to Your March Newsletter!
Educate – Empower – Protect
2026 is moving fast, and we’re here to help you stay ahead. This month, we dive into the “Growing up in the online world” consultation and provide critical alerts on “Com Networks” and AI-generated imagery. From app tips to our latest 2026 webinars, this edition has everything you need to educate, empower, and protect your school community.
News and Alerts ℹ️
Key updates and alerts as seen on your app’s news feed.
🫂 Talking to Children and Young People about War, Conflict and Civil Unrest
Check out our updated shareables (posters) which help you to navigate
conversations around distressing news with the children and young people in your care. Concerning the recent updates on world events, it’s important to know how to best reassure and support them through uncertain times.
Don’t forget your Teach Hub license key is EDU-SAF-SCH-TH
🛡️Growing Up Online: A Guide to the UK Government Consultation
The 2026 “Growing up in the online world” consultation was a landmark UK initiative that gathered evidence to improve digital protections for children. It addressed critical issues like social media age limits, AI dependency, and addictive algorithms. Now concluded, its findings are being used to implement “safety by design” legislation and nationwide digital literacy programs.
⚠️Understanding Com Networks: A Safeguarding Update for Families and Professionals
Read our safeguarding update on “Com Networks”, sadistic online groups where members gain status through self-harm and abuse. Following a surge in UK cases, authorities advise monitoring for extreme digital secrecy and using “supported exits” to protect vulnerable youth, prioritizing evidence preservation and professional help over simple device confiscation.
✨Read more within your Online Safety Guidance section of the App.✨
Technical Support 👩🏼💻
Updates and tips from our Support Centre.
Ensure You’re Connected to Your School
To access role-specific guidance and school-wide information, please verify that you are logged into your school’s official account.
The Logo Test: The home screen of your app should display your school’s logo. If you see the Safer Schools default badge instead (like the one in the app icon), follow these steps to fix it:
To access your 4-digit code, you will need to ask the member(s) of your staff team who are your school’s app administrators.
Training 🗓️
Your pathway to continuous professional development
New training registration now live!
Click here to view the webinars scheduled for 2026, covering topics such as AI, Sextortion and Misogyny. For all professionals registered with Safer Schools, these courses are fully funded and can be used to further your professional development. Book your seat today!
Meet our trainers!
Danielle McCreedy
Head of Education and Learning INEQE Safeguarding Group
Danielle, our Head of Education and Learning, holds a degree in Primary Education from the University of Greenwich. With extensive teaching experience across Northern Ireland and England, she specialises in safeguarding and child protection, focusing specifically on supporting students impacted by domestic abuse and childhood trauma.
Dr Laura Milner
Senior Research Analyst and Trainer INEQE Safeguarding Group
Laura is our lead Research Analyst. She holds a PhD in Sociology. Her research areas centre on the construction of childhood, the construction of gender and sexuality and how this impacts girls and young women as well as the impact of the digital age on the expression of gender and sexuality.
Resource Highlight ✨
The ready-to-use, relevant resource you need
Student Use of AI to Create Sexual Images of Peers
As AI technology evolves, so do the challenges facing our school communities. We are seeing a concerning rise in the misuse of AI to create harmful, sexualised, or manipulated imagery of others.
To help you navigate this, our latest Staffroom Briefing provides the essential tools to:
Teacher Targeted Bullying
The digital landscape is shifting, with AI tools now being misused to target staff members online. Although this behaviour mirrors traditional bullying, AI allows these acts to be carried out with greater speed and intensity.
We are committed to supporting our educators. Our latest in-app content offers dedicated resources for staff, parents, and carers to help manage and mitigate the risks of Teacher-Targeted Bullying.
Community News and Updates 📢
The latest in the locality
We were proud to support the CCEA Symposium at Stranmillis University for the Domestic and Sexual Abuse and Ending Violence Against Women and Girls in March. Hannah Paul, our Director of Operations, provided an inside look at how our tools and resources can help schools educate, empower and protect. Our team were delighted to speak to a few of you at our Safer Schools stall to chat about the resources available to you within your app.
A note from Hannah:
“We must listen to young people’s lived experiences of image sharing and respond with proactive safeguarding—not judgement. What goes online doesn’t have to stay there. When we remove the shame, we open the door to genuine support.”
Feature Spotlight 🔦
Unlock your app’s full potential
Put Your News in Their Pocket 📱
If you aren’t already using our ‘Latest News’ feature, it’s the perfect time to start! This tool allows you to centralize all your school updates in one accessible place.
Whether you want to signpost readers to an existing newsletter or you’re looking to launch a brand-new one, you can do it all directly within the Safer Schools app. It’s the easiest way to ensure vital information is always at your community’s fingertips.
Media News 🗞️
Safeguarding and Online Safety News
🏫 Teachers warn of extreme online content influencing pupils in British schools – A major survey of over 10,000 UK teachers has highlighted the negative influence of harmful online content on pupils, as the government weighs various protective measures including a potential social media ban for those under 16.
🛡️Help your child stay safe online: UK Government Campaign – The UK government’s “Kids Online Safety” website offers parents and carers practical guidance on starting open conversations with their children about online risks, from setting up parental controls to identifying “toxic” content like misinformation and misogyny.
👻 Snapchat Safety Courses – Developed by safety experts, this interactive course uses realistic scenarios to help teens navigate online risks and master Snapchat’s safety tools. It empowers young people to handle challenges like harassment and exploitation while providing essential guidance for parents.
🛣️ Treat Online Privacy Like Road Safety – The Information Commissioner’s Office is urging parents of children aged 4 to 11 to treat online privacy as an essential life skill, comparable to teaching a child how to cross the road or understanding “stranger danger.” The regulator warns that a single click can create a permanent digital footprint that reveals a child’s location, friendships, and daily habits.
🛑 Charity urges for ‘zero tolerance’ of ‘dangerous’ AI child sexual abuse – The Internet Watch Foundation is calling for an immediate EU-wide ban on AI-generated child sexual abuse material and the tools used to create it, following a record-breaking surge in increasingly realistic and extreme criminal content.
License, Links and Logins 🔑
All the information you need to access the world of Safer Schools NI at your fingertips!
Reminder – You can also add additional school admins in the ‘Admin Users’ menu of the portal.
Did you know…
“Seven in ten (70%) children aged 11-17 had seen or heard some form of content harmful to children”
Source: Ofcom 2025
Make sure to follow us on social media for the latest updates and developments!
