Chamber and committees

Keeping children safe from child sexual abuse and exploitation, including online abuse, is a key priority for the Scottish Government.

We are committed to ensuring that our young people are safe online and our response is multi-faceted. It involves equipping children with the tools and skills they need to stay safe online, and supporting parents and carers to ensure that they have the information to guide children and recognise when a child is at risk. We equip professionals with the knowledge and skills to build children’s resilience, to recognise abuse and exploitation and respond with high quality support. This is accompanied by work to detect, disrupt and prosecute perpetrators and reduce re-offending.

In our schools, teachers deliver the technology experiences and outcomes area of the curriculum to provide learning on internet safety and cyber resilience. These help teachers support children to learn about the safe and responsible use of technologies, including the internet and social media, as part of their broad general education under our Curriculum for Excellence.

We are also committed to ensuring all children and young people receive high quality relationships and sexual health education to help them build safe and positive relationships as they grow older.

Public messaging is key in preventing online abuse. In March 2023, we re-ran our successful public awareness campaign which supported parents and carers to keep children safe online, emphasising the importance of talking regularly to children about online safety, setting safety measures and agreeing boundaries. The campaign had a strong impact on behaviour. Nine in ten of those who had seen the campaign reported taking action as a result of it, the highest rate of any Parent Club campaign.

This campaign linked to an Online Safety Hub on the SG Parent Club website, which provides information and advice on how to keep children safe from online harms.

Cross-Government workstreams collectively take action to prevent and protect children in Scotland from child sexual abuse and exploitation and provide appropriate support to victims and survivors of such abuse. This includes funding for a range of activity and programmes with a particular focus on prevention and early intervention. In particular, we provide funding to the Lucy Faithfull Foundation Scotland, to deliver online child sexual abuse prevention work.

The National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland 2021, updated in 2023 supports frontline workers in their prevention roles by defining and clarifying the roles and responsibilities for everyone working with children and young people, setting out the foundation for protective action to keep young people safe from harms including sexual abuse and exploitation.

In terms of those that seek to cause harm online, we are working with Police Scotland to find effective ways to deter potential perpetrators from committing online abuse in the first place.

Though regulation of the internet is a reserved matter and falls to the UK Government, the Scottish Government is committed to securing the online safety of our children and young people which is why the First Minister urged the UK Government to include additional measures in the Online Safety Act 2023 to protect children and vulnerable adults online and go further to encourage tech firms to design out illegal and harmful material.