Education and Training 2023 winners: South West Grid for Learning
Why they won
- Outcomes: The services have been adopted by thousands of schools across the UK
- Innovation: Continually identifies new problems created by digital technologies and moves quickly to find and share solutions
- Sustainability: The charity has been running for 23 years already. It receives a regular income from selling some services, enabling it to provide others for free
South West Grid for Learning (SWGfL) has worked for over 20 years to improve online safety awareness, advising schools, public bodies and technology industries on correct practices and policies for keeping children and young people safe online.
Online safety rapidly became an area of concern as advances in technology opened up opportunities for harm on a wide scale. With increased internet use came the need to limit the detrimental impact that technology can have on individuals. Schools in particular quickly needed to factor in an area of safeguarding where there was very little guidance or support.
SWGfL started in 2000 with the goal of ensuring all 2,438 schools across the South West of England had safer internet connections, and that inappropriate and dangerous content was filtered out. From this work, it wrote appropriate filtering and monitoring definitions that would go on to set the standards for how all schools should operate.
It moved on to helping schools take an active approach towards improving online safety standards while also incorporating digital development into the school curriculum. The creation of its 360Safe free online safety self-review tool and ProjectEVOLVE, a free digital education toolkit, aimed to give any UK school the opportunity to independently improve, while consistently reaffirming what the appropriate benchmarks and goals were for appropriate online safety standards.
360Safe is being actively used by 15,500 schools throughout the UK, and the most recent data has shown that the vast majority of schools now have an effective online safety policy in place as a direct result. ProjectEVOLVE is being used by a third of schools and 50,000 professionals who are actively bringing online safety discussions into UK classrooms.
Since 2011, SWGfL formed the UK Safer Internet Centre with ChildNet and the Internet Watch Foundation, from which sprang the Professionals Online Safety Helpline and the Revenge Porn Helpline. Staff working on the Revenge Porn Helpline have removed almost 300,000 intimate images from the internet.
The charity now runs four helplines for members of the public and professionals that work with young people and uses the data from these calls to identify topics and trends for further tools and training. It operates nine websites as well as various apps and services including Swiggle, a child-friendly search engine used as the default by thousands of schools; Assisted Monitoring, software that monitors students’ online behaviour, and StopNCII.org, which helps to prevent the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. And it has trained 27,000 professionals in how to better protect young people online.
Nicola Toyer said: “I really liked this, they’re having a massive impact across the UK.”
Ruth Davison said it was “such essential work, particularly in schools”, and added that the Revenge Porn Helpline has been a lifeline to thousands of people affected by harassment and abuse around nude images.
“I think they’re brilliant, very collaborative and positive as a digital tech abuse charity.”
CC Reg no. 1120354
Highly Commended
Diverse Cymru
Research on equality, diversity and inclusion issues has revealed overwhelming acknowledgement and acceptance of the inequities faced by People of Colour (POC) in the UK. Key factors are the effects of unconscious bias and barriers to accessing culturally competent services and as a result, many POC believe that services for health, criminal justice, poverty, housing, homelessness and employment are fundamentally flawed or actively rigged against them. Diverse Cymru’s Cultural Competence Certification Scheme is an organisational workplace developmental tool which seeks to improve workplace interaction and service delivery outcomes for POC individuals. Almost 150 workplace areas within health boards are now participating in the scheme, and talks are under way to expand it to other sectors including social care and local authorities.
Support Through Court
Support Through Court exists to provide practical and emotional support for people going though court without representation. As the cost-of-living crisis deepened, it was seeing more people unable to access the support needed. Faced with a precarious financial situation, it developed new services in partnership with seven universities across the country. This collaboration provides law students with crucial work experience opportunities, and has so far delivered vital guidance and support to 14,052 people navigating the court system. As well as recording positive outcomes for clients and students, there have been great benefits for the staff team from moving to university campuses, including improved wifi and IT equipment.
