Safeguarding Awareness Week 2025: Keeping our students safe

Safeguarding Awareness Week is an annual event dedicated to highlighting the importance of safeguarding in schools and colleges.  

With the rise of technology and digital platforms and the concerns surrounding children being online, this year's focus is: Empowering and protecting students in a digital world.   

Online safety and digital risks are more critical than ever – as technology continues to evolve and digital platforms play an increasing role in young people's lives, the risks they face online are becoming more complex and more challenging to detect. 

Research collated by Tes as part of Safeguarding Awareness Week shows that: 

• 43% of children feel pressured to keep up with social media trends and features.

• 48% of children believe changing technology makes it harder to control their online privacy.

• 75% of children say technology and the internet are key to their independence.

• 60% of children who have used Gen AI believe it has safety risks.

• 89% increase in online grooming crimes against children in the last 6 years.

• 900+ Childline counselling sessions in 2023/24 for sextortion.

• 67% (2 in 3) children report experiencing online harm.

• 48% (Nearly half) of 15–16-year-old girls have been contacted by strangers online. 

Are you a parent/carer that was impacted or affected by Adolescence? Want to learn more about how to support your young person? 

There’s been an increase in parents/carers becoming more aware of the wellbeing of their children and young people after watching the Netflix drama, Adolescence.  

To support this, there’s a virtual webinar about the wellbeing of young people for parents/carers in Greater Manchester on Thursday 5th June, 6pm – 6.45pm. 

Parents/carers can register to either attend or receive a recording of the session.  

Register for the Bury session here >> The Voice of Young People << 

Understanding Dark Emojis 

A recent development to address is the growing concern over sinister emojis being used by some young people online. 

These emojis may seem harmless at first glance, but they can carry hidden meanings that signal distress or lead to harmful online spaces.  

The emojis featured in Adolescence have been a focal point of attention, but we also need to reflect on the broader issues: the beliefs, behaviours, and digital spaces that shape how young people, especially boys, view themselves and others. 

In line with this, we want to ensure that our students’ parents/carers are equipped with the tools to understand and respond to these issues. 

The Kids’ Online World ‘Dark Emoji’ information sheet is now available, which explains the hidden meanings behind certain emojis that young people use online.  

We highly recommend that you take the time to review this resource. You can download it for free here. 

Colleges Week 2025: Keeping Holy Cross students safe 

We chose to showcase the role our College plays in our communities as part of Colleges Week in March.   

We invited Lisa Valentine from the Bury Times to meet with members of our safeguarding and wellbeing team to find out more about the work they do to help keep students and the community safe.  

This includes our one-to-one and group wellbeing support, counselling and mental health support to students, along with dedicated events and campaigns around topics such as consent, radicalisation and knife crime.   

They also talked about our volunteer mentor programme, where students can offer support to one another and are given training from staff members and the Association of Colleges (AOC).  

Bury Times: Highlighting how we keep Holy Cross students safe