What does a holistic, community-led approach to children’s digital safety look like?

Storypark has always had children’s digital safety at the heart, however like the vast majority of the ECEC sector, recent events in Australia have given us pause to deeply reflect and evaluate our contribution.

Our discussions led us to a powerful guiding question:

What does a holistic, community-led approach to children’s digital safety look like?

This question emerged from reflection on how we’ve always worked: in partnership with our customers, and their communities – large and small. Rather than dictating a top-down solution, this question encourages us to explore what safety looks like when it’s shaped with the sector, not just for it.

Why a community-led approach?

This is a question that the ECEC community is ripe to explore together and commit to. We’ve found time and time again that ECE environments are marked by empathy, understanding, and respect which is actively lived (not only taught) and there is no reason why this cannot inform an approach to children’s digital safety.

We’ve seen earlier models of ‘cyber security’ in ECE settings be exclusionary and leave children’s digital safety up to a small handful of people.

This creates a spectrum:
On one end, people might feel intimidated, saying things like “I’m not great with technology.”

On the other, some might feel it’s not their responsibility, “someone else will take care of it”or “It’s not my responsibility.”

Connection, curiosity and care matter in early childhood education, so we think a refreshed approach to children’s digital safety holds a key to doing it better, together.

The ECEC community is made up of people who care deeply about the safety and wellbeing of the children in their care, so it makes sense to all partner together to create, maintain and improve children’s digital safety.

Everyone has a valid role

A community-led approach is not just the responsibility of IT teams or ‘tech savvy’ people, rather, an active and ongoing collective effort. Everyone brings something valuable to the table:

• Organisational leaders
• Service managers
• Educators
• Administrators
• Parents and extended families
• Software partners (Like Storypark)

When everyone participates:

• Knowledge and experience gaps can be identified and bridged
• Motivation grows because people understand why digital safety matters
• Expertise of every group is shared and respected
• Everyone feels confident that they have channels in which to speak up and gain understanding
• Expectations are transparent — everyone knows what they’re responsible for and how others contribute

This creates a system where nobody has to ask, “What are educators doing?” or “What’s the software doing?” Because it’s clear, visible, and collaborative.

Pause. What are we protecting?

Before delving further into this framework, it’s worth a reminder – what are we protecting and safeguarding when we talk about children’s digital safety?
In the Queensland Guidelines for Implementing Child Safety Standards, this is what children and young people said about feeling safe:

You can be yourself
You feel welcomed
Feeling safe is a warm feeling
Feeling safe is not just a physical feeling, it’s a social, emotional and mental experience too
You have a sense of ease

Introducing the four focus areas of a community-led approach to children’s digital safety

This approach plays out across four interconnected areas in the daily life of early childhood services, families and digital platforms:

Content creation and storage
User management
Device management
Digital platforms

Each one of these areas can be defined by a set of child safeguarding practices and mindsets that both encourage people to do the right thing and help to prevent people from doing harm. Mindsets are just as important as practices, as the saying goes ‘children may forget what we say, but they never miss what we model.’ It’s important that these practices become part of our routines, so that when people in a child’s environment change (when leaders or educators change jobs for example), the commitment to safety does not.

Here are some examples of practices and mindsets:

Focus area one: Content creation

Focus area two: User management

Focus area three: Device management

Focus area four: Digital platforms

A layered approach matters

There’s no single bandaid or approach that can totally ensure children’s digital safety. One feature, one policy, one ban, none of that is enough on its own.
Instead, we need a layered approach where we consider the following together:

• Multiple tools and features
• Clear policies and procedures
• Community dialogue
• Ongoing support and knowledge sharing
• Practical actions and mindsets

Together, these form a resilient and sustainable approach — one that’s shaped by the community engaging with it.

Storypark’s place in the framework

We are one of the partners in an organisation’s community-led approach to digital safety. As a partner we bring:

• Knowledge around best practice for user and device management
• Providing and facilitating ongoing support and training on digital safety literacy and practice that empowers everyone in the community to own their part
• Commitment to participating in both child safeguarding and child protection processes (where appropriate)
• Reviewing and evolving our platform.

Our current areas of focus for review

What does reviewing and evolving Storypark look like? In regards to digital safety and with respect to the upcoming NQF Safety Changes we have been and will continue to explore ways to ensure Storypark is used in a secure and centre-controlled environment, as well as assisting services to facilitate good digital behaviours.

To be more impactful, we wanted to keep a tight focus, addressing the following focus areas:
Reviewing the processes around introducing new educators to Storypark, to highlight children’s digital safety.
Supporting services who want to restrict who and how Storypark is used. We’ve recently introduced support for both Single Sign-On (SSO) and Multi-factor authentication (MFA) as a first step in this area. Where possible, we’ll also encourage services to take full advantage of any existing managed device programs already in place.
We’re also looking at how we can make it easier for educators to follow secure and effective practices when using shared devices.
Supporting services in managing the safe use, storage and deletion of media involving children. As a first step here, we’ve recently expanded our guidance for interacting with our support teams to ensure children’s privacy is protected.

Where this framework comes from

This approach didn’t solely come from us. It’s informed by expert resources, regulations, research, and the generous feedback from the leaders, administrators, educators and families who use Storypark. We are committed to continuing to learn and shape our approach with their guidance.

We have been informed by the following resources that we can also recommend:
Providing a child safe environment: Guidelines for the National Model Code
National Model Code FAQS
NQF Online Safety Guide and NQF Child Safe Culture Guide
Child safety policies and procedures checklist
National Principles for Child Safe Organisations
A guide for creating a child safe organisation – VIC
Guide to the Child Safe Standards – NSW
Guidelines for implementing the Universal Principle and Child Safe Standards in Queensland
Implementing Child Safe Standards in Early Education Settings: Understanding the Ecology of Policy and Practices
eSafety checklist for early learning services
Adapting Common Sense’s Digital Citizenship Curriculum for use in Australian primary schools and early education settings
Netsafe – Online Parent Safety Toolkit
UNESCO – Minding the data: Protecting learners’ privacy and security

If this sparked any thoughts, questions, or suggestions – if there’s something you think we missed, or something we should be doing – please reach out. We’d love to hear from you. Together, we can keep improving and strengthening children’s digital safety – for everyone’s benefit.

Over the coming weeks we’ll also share practical resources that can support you in the four focus areas of a community-led approach to children’s digital safety — keep your eye out for them.