Protecting Vulnerable Students

We have a highly vulnerable student who has a learning disability and started with us this term. She has become very sophisticated in the use of chat rooms to make contact with strangers and has actually met up with one or two people in the past. We feel we have a duty of care to reduce the chances of her contacting people in this way, whilst we try to build up her awareness and skills in developing relationships. We have the JANET web-filter but it does not intervene in these circumstances. Do you know of any tool that might reduce the need for constant checking and intervention by staff while we work on raising her awareness?

Personal internet safety is a real issue and especially with young and vulnerable learners. Whilst the benefits of the Internet are indisputable, the culture of non-censorship and the ‘primacy of privacy’ protects exploiters at the expense of the vulnerable. One resource that might be of interest is a website specifically designed for people who have learning disabilities. It’s called Common Knowledge www.ckfriends.org.uk/index.html. Offering alternative sites may not help in that it won’t stop her using sites she already uses and you may wish to consider a more traditional filtering programme. There are many filtering programme available. Here is one that is free for personal use: http://www1.k9webprotection.com/