Addressing online extremism by building resilient families.
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Background
Resilient Families is an education, training and engagement programme that tackles online radicalisation and extremism. It reaches schools, local authorities, professionals and teachers, parents and carers, and children.
The programme is created by Parent Zone and is funded by, and part of, the Home Office’s Prevent programme. Using the Digital Resilience Framework to inform its resources, the programme outlines a process whereby children can be more resilient to online extremism and other online risks and harms.
“The challenge is to communicate a consistent online message across multiple training and educational resources designed for this diverse audience, in a way that can intersect and be applied across a whole community.”
In 2020-21, Resilient Families is being delivered as a remote online-based programme – delivering training, advice and support directly to the professionals and parents who need it. It also provides expert online educational resources specifically for Primary and Secondary school-age children.
These resources include:
Webinar-based training sessions for family professionals and school staff
Interactive video training for parents and careers
Interactive classroom sessions for both Primary and Secondary-age children, with lesson plans and worksheets
A library of resources and ongoing support through Parent Zone Membership
How we used the digital resilience framework
In tackling online extremism, the Resilient Families programme addresses a very serious and complex issue – and it does this for a wide-ranging audience of ages, knowledge and experience. This audience includes those who may understand the risks (such as teachers and family professionals) and those who may not (such as children). It also includes those (such as parents and carers) who may understand the risks of extremism, but perhaps do not understand how these risks affect their child’s online world, or know how to support their child in dealing with them.
The challenge is to communicate a consistent online message across multiple training and educational resources designed for this diverse audience, in a way that can intersect and be applied across a whole community.
The Digital Resilience Framework provides a flexible process to approaching the specific risks and harms of online extremism.
The power of the framework is that it can be applied in many ways for specific scenarios – and that certain strands of the framework can be forefronted in an approach for a professional, parent or child.
For example:
For primary school age, the programme uses the framework to develop critical thinking around misinformation and spotting risks online (Understand) and what things can help you to stay safer (Know).
For a parent/carer, it explains better approaches to helping a child respond if something goes wrong (Recovery) and ways to help a child use their experiences to adapt their future choices (Learn).
For professionals and school staff, it explains the full methodology of the framework and how you can apply each strand in a way that develops more resilient children.
Why the digital resilience framework was helpful
The framework is equally powerful in that it is adaptable to a wider approach to digital life. While the Resilient Families programme is used to address the risks of extremism, its messages can also be applied to other on- and offline risks and harms – such as sexting, bullying, grooming and screen time, as well as the many opportunities for children online.
“The power of the framework is that it can be applied in many ways for specific scenarios.”
And with access to Parent Zone Membership, all participating bodies and individuals receive ongoing support, new weekly resources and policy guidance, all informed by the framework – providing a whole community approach to digital resilience.