The focus and aim of the CDS (CIC) is to allow children and young people to have a clear voice within the UK Safety Tech and social care sectors. It will also act as a body that can lobby Government and drive forward the two connecting agendas of the digital safety tech and social care sectors. By acting as an exemplar for children’s digital rights within a safeguarding context to promote national change to increase innovative digital technologies for social care, child protection and safeguarding. In doing so children and young people will be equal in the process of research, co-design and influencing policy.
Vision: To be the world’s first safeguarding digital co-design centre for children and young people.
Pathway to Success: Children and young people grow and develop through having their voice and ideas heard and put into practice. CDS believes that the digital platform will allow children and young people the opportunity for them as digital natives to express their views, identify gaps and contribute to solutions for the effective integration of digital technologies within the social care sector. Children and young people need to develop as part of a safe and secure online community and as equal partners within the online safety tech community.
Safeguarding Digital Centre: The centre to establish a digital platform which involves children and young people being equal partners. Once children and young people believe their voice is being heard and see their ideas being created this will them opportunity to have co-design conversations where systems can be truly child centred.
The strategic objectives for innovation and change where children and young people are:
• Safeguarding children and young people by combining the social care and digital agendas.
• To ensure that children and young people can contribute through research and design, to the development of new technology and systems.
• To create a safe and secure digital platform for all children and young people as an enabler to stay safe.
As children and young people are out of necessity online more than ever due to the unprecedented home online tuition/schooling, lack of face to face socialising and isolation due to Covid-19 restrictions. We need to find a new child friendly way to engaged and include them in safety tech and social care systems and processes.
One the greatest challenges is that nearly all the funding streams are aimed at health tech or now targeted Covid-19 projects. There is limited development and innovation in this space of online safety, social care tech and none within child protection. Social care tech barely exists, and this is proving the most difficult challenge as this solution has never been undertaken before.
So far I have undertaken user research with around 100 children (aged between 9 years and 16 years old) as part of a series of face-to-face workshop activities. This provided valuable data about how the digital platform would work, what it would look and feel. My PhD (Carlick, 2018) has shown and provided new opportunities for methodological developments of mixed-methods approaches by using creative technologies for children and young people being equal research partners within Human –Computer Interaction (HCI). Currently I am running a series of virtual workshops with key stakeholders from public, private, voluntary and academic organisations as well as a cohort of young people. These are looking at new opportunities for innovation in research methods co-creating technology with children as equal partners in addressing many of the real world problems they face. It will establish the UK as an internationally leading research and design center of excellence for safeguarding and digital developments. Furthermore, it gives strong justification for a UK research and design centre of excellence for safeguarding and Children-Computer Interaction (CCI). It is a new approach to user-centred design, which certainly needs to be considered. Child-centred, cooperative enquiry is the key to design and usability.
• Integrates & prioritises the ‘voice of the child’ by the use of tech for good for the social care sector. • Spear heads and accelerates social care tech by working with multi-agency partners.
• Provides all children & young people a ‘safe technical space’.
• Local citizenship which is for all children. I have conversed with senior stakeholders i.e. Social Care Directors (Local Authorities), Chief Constable’s (Police) and Senior Commissioning partners (NHS & CCGs) whom all have not only shown support but have offered some their views which included some of the flowing statements.
• Need for empowerment of children & they need this to gather aggregated user data for Local Safeguarding Partnerships.
• Saves time and money.
• Offers direct access to children to hear their voice loud and clear.
• Is an effective, efficient & modern way of engaging children who routinely tell us they want us to engage digitally with them (police).
The project builds upon my PhD (Carlick, 2018) that has tested the methodology and used child user centred design for integrating a safeguarding app within the MASH (ESCR Ref 1224395). The PhD took a mixed-methods approach that ensured the wide interdisciplinary scope of this project was covered. Market analysis (2014, 2017, 2020) has been conducted, representing the first study of its kind to examine apps for safeguarding children and young people.
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