There is lots of support available for students in school, and we would always encourage students to come and chat with us if they are, at any time, feeling worried, anxious, unhappy or sad.

Form tutors and Sixth Form mentors are the first point of contact for students. Students may also, of course, talk to their Head of Year and Progress Leader as well as the Deputy Head and Assistant Heads who lead their Key Stage team. Mr Linz, our Student Wellbeing Lead, is also available for students, as is our Inclusion Team.

If students prefer to make contact about wellbeing by email, we have a dedicated wellbeing email, smile@littleheath.org.uk which is monitored between 8am and 5pm on weekdays during term time. Little Heath School website has a page dedicated to student wellbeing - Little Heath School - Student Wellbeing and there is a support form accessible from this page.

This type of crime involves an adult offender (often from an organised crime group based overseas) threatening to release nude or semi-nude images and/or videos of a child or young person, unless they pay money, or meet another financial demand, such as purchasing a pre-paid gift card.

Victims of any age and gender can be targets. However, a large proportion of cases have involved male victims aged 14-18. A child or young person is never to blame if they have been a victim. Offenders will have tricked, groomed and/or manipulated them into sharing an image. Find out more about online blackmail on CEOP Education’s parents and carers website:

• Chat regularly about their life online: have ongoing conversations with them about their life and time online. Continue to take an interest as they grow, explore new apps and sites together and talk in a balanced way, considering the benefits and the potential harms.
• Talk about where to find information about relationships and sex: organisations like CEOP Education, Childline and Brook have age appropriate advice topics such as sexual communication and image sharing. This will help your child to understand what unhealthy relationships look like, such as applying pressure and blackmail; and give them trusted sources of information to explore these topics. Protecting the public from serious and organised crime.
• Review privacy settings: talk to your child about the importance of using privacy settings on their accounts to restrict who can contact them. Read CEOP Education’s advice on how to talk your child about their privacy settings: A parent's guide to privacy settings (ceopeducation.co.uk)
• Make sure they know where to go for support: let them know that they can come to you with any concerns and won’t be judged. It’s also important to make them aware of other trusted adults or sources of support, if they feel they can’t talk to you, such as Childline.
• Make sure they know where to report: remind your child how you can help them to report an incident to the police or using the CEOP Safety Centre. Let them know that if a nude or semi-nude of them has been shared without their consent, they can take these 3 steps to try and get them removed:

1. Use Report Remove | Childline, a tool from Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation. Your child can use this to remove images that have been shared or might be shared.

2. Use Take It Down (ncmec.org), a tool from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Your child can use this to remove or stop the online sharing of images or videos.

3. Report directly to the platform or app that the incident has occurred on. For advice on how to report to major social media platforms, visit Internet Matters - Report online issues to protect your child.

What can I do if this has happened to my child?

If your child tells you that someone is trying to trick, threaten or blackmail them online:

• Don’t pay, do stop contact and block: you may be tempted to pay, but there is no guarantee that this will stop the threats. As the offender’s motive is to get money, once you have shown you can pay, they will likely ask for more and blackmail may continue. If you have paid, don’t panic but don’t pay anything more. Help your child to stop all communication with the offender and block them on any accounts that they have been contacted on.
• Avoid deleting anything: try not to delete anything that could be used as evidence such as messages, images and bank account details. Protecting the public from serious and organised crime
• Report to the police or CEOP: call 101 or 999 if there is an immediate risk of harm to your child. Or you can use the CEOP Safety Centre to report any online blackmail attempts. If it has already happened and your child has shared an image and sent money to someone exploiting them:
• Reassure them that they’ve done the right thing by telling you: make sure they know they are not to blame for what has happened and they have done the right thing to ask for your help. Children and young people’s mental health may be negatively impacted by experiences of exploitation; you can find advice on looking after your child’s mental health from the NHS here: Children's mental health - Every Mind Matters
• Report to the police or CEOP: call 101 or 999 if there is an immediate risk of harm to your child. Or you can use the CEOP Safety Centre to report an incident. If your child is 18 and over, call 101 or 999 if they are at risk of immediate harm.

Report any images or videos that have been shared: help your child to remove images that are online or prevent images being shared online by following the steps outlined above.

CEOP is also available if a child has been contacted in an inappropriate manner or if they are in danger of being tracked or abused. The CEOP website allows you to complete an online form which goes directly to the police. This is for when someone is in danger from another person.

You can make a report here:

'PARENTING IN THE DIGITAL AGE' WEBINAR

Here is a link to the recording of the session Dr Gemma Maynard held about the risks associated with young people and children having mobile phones and ways to keep them safe. We hope it might be of interest:

There is support available for parents and carers to support the wellbeing of young people: