Technology

Chapter Contents

Our foster families are expected to provide children with access to technology that they need for studying, completing homework from school, and age-appropriate socialising. The child’s Risk Assessment and Safer Care Plan will consider what they need and how much support and supervision is necessary.

We offer training for foster parents to understand potential online risks, and how to safeguard children. Our CEOP Education Ambassador also trains staff within our local teams and is available for advice.

We recommend the Internet Matters website as a source of information about parental controls, and the CEOP Education website for online safety advice for the family.

All foster homes should have access to the internet, and children should be able to connect to your broadband when they need it.

This means that you will need to ensure that your broadband is filtering inappropriate content. This will always include ‘adult’ content, but the child’s Risk Assessment may advise additional filters be applied.

You can apply content filters yourself, through your broadband account, or you can ask your provider to apply them for you. The Internet matters website has detailed instructions for the main broadband providers, including video tutorials. Click here for a direct link.

If your child has a mobile phone, they can connect to your broadband when at home. When they are away from home, they may be able to connect to Wifi at a friend’s house, or a pubic Wifi connection. If you need to prevent this, you will need to use a parental control app and switch off their internet connection whilst they are away from home. If they have mobile data, you will need to apply content filtering in the same way that you do at home. You can find instructions on how to do this from the Internet Matters website.

It is expected that all fostering households will have a computer (PC or laptop) that a child can use for their homework from school.

If it is a Microsoft Windows computer, you should use the Microsoft Family parental controls. Create a separate account for each child, to ensure that you can set bespoke safety controls for each child. You will be able to restrict the times that they can access the internet and apply age restrictions on content. Ensure that they cannot download apps without your permission. Here, for example, are the Windows 11 instructions.

If you have a Chromebook, use Google Family Link and the ChromeOS parental controls. See here for details.

Tablets, e.g. IPads as an alternative to a computer can work well for older young people. They can also be a way for younger children to enjoy game apps before they have a mobile phone. Internet Matters have a guide to the different tablets on the market.

For all computers, laptops, Chromebooks and tablets, it is advisable to ensure that the parental controls stop the child from downloading apps to the device without your permission. This will prevent them from downloading inappropriate content, and VPN apps (Virtual Private Network) that will give them online access by an alternative route to your controlled broadband.

Teens and pre-teens typically have their own mobile phone. The age at which your child will ask for, and allowed by their social worker to have a mobile phone will depend upon their personal circumstances and known risk factors. When the time is right, you will be asked to provide them with a phone. This can be safer than them receiving a phone from their family as you will be able to control the narrative around required parental controls.

If a child comes to live with you and already has a mobile phone, please discuss the parental control requirements with their social worker, and ask the social worker for their support in applying these if the young person is reluctant to let you touch their phone. Sometimes, social workers will remove existing phones and ask you to provide one that you control. How the issue is managed will depend on an individual risk assessment.

All mobile phones will have some built-in parental controls, but you may also be advised to use an additional parental control app, e.g. Net Nanny, Qustodio or Our Pact.

If the phone package includes mobile data, you will need to apply the appropriate settings to control internet access through this route. See the section above about this.

If your family enjoy gaming, we recommend having devices that belong to the whole family, with individual user accounts for each family member. This will allow you to apply appropriate parental controls for each child, using the device’s ‘family safety’ programme. For some of these programmes, it is not possible to remove a child’s account from the family and this can create problems if a child leaves placement and their account cannot be removed without being deleted (which they may not wish to happen if, for example, games have been purchased to the account).

All games come with age-restriction advice. The age on the game relates to the appropriateness of the content and not the difficulty of game play. Please do not buy or permit children to play games that are rated above their chronological age.

Click here for advice on different gaming platforms and the parental control options.

VR headsets are used by some gamers for an immersive experience. They typically involve gaming in an environment with other players. Characters can interact with each other, and this creates a clear safety risk for young children if they are playing against people they don’t know. The VR gaming systems do have some parental controls, e.g. age restrictions and controlling who the child can play with. We advise researching VR gaming systems throughly before choosing one, and trying games before a child plays them.

Here is a parent’s guide that you may find helpful.

Smart TVs offer access to entertainment apps and a wide range of TV channels. You will need to set a parental control PIN to restrict access to age-inappropriate programmes, and you may need to also restrict access to particular apps such as YouTube. Please refer to your television’s instruction guide for information on what you can restrict, and how to do it.

If you have a Netflix account for the family, create individual, PIN protected user accounts for the children, with age-appropriate programme filters. You can find out how to do this here. You will need to do the same for any other television streaming services you have.

AI is a developing technology that involves programming computers to respond like humans. Children are most likely to encounter AI in ‘Chatbots’, ‘My AI’ in Snapchat and programmes like Chat GPT. They can ask a question and receive an answer, but unfortunately, answers are not always reliable. They can be inaccurate, misleading and sometimes offensive.

Schools are beginning to see evidence of students using AI to assist with homework, and may use online checking tools to scan work for likely AI-generated content. This could result in students failing assessments so they should be warned to avoid doing this.

AI can also be used to generate images and videos. This can be a helpful tool but there are concerns around fake images and videos being presented as genuine and there is the potential that these can be used to embarrass or otherwise cause harm.

There is a parent guide to AI at Internet Matters.