Digital Safeguarding Conference
🏷️ From £235
🎧 All those working with children, young people or vulnerable individuals, including DSLs, DSOs and DDSLs
đź“Ť Online
🎥 Watch live or on catch up
✅ Included in BSA CPD Pass
In an age where digital technology is included in every part of life; from education and work to social life, the practice of safeguarding has fundamentally changed. Especially in the digital landscape.Â
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Protecting young people and vulnerable individuals today means engaging with complex online environments and emerging digital risks, not just traditional face-to-face contexts.Â
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The Digital Safeguarding Conference is a practical, forward-looking event for professionals dedicated to evolving safeguarding practice to keep pace with digital transformation. You’ll gain fresh insights from expert voices, explore real-world challenges from AI to online harms, and be equipped with strategies you can apply immediately in your organisation or as a parent.Â
This event will be held jointly with:
Digital Childhoods, Real Harm: What Safeguarding Must Become by 2027Â
Programme:
09:00 – 09:30
Welcome and Introduction
Setting the scene for the day by exploring how technology is reshaping childhood and the opportunities and challenges this presents for safeguarding professionals.
Speaker: TBCÂ
09:30 – 10:00
Children’s Voices: Growing Up in a Connected World
Explore how digital environments are influencing children’s development, identity, resilience and wellbeing, and what this means for safeguarding practice.
Speaker: TBCÂ
10:00 – 10:15 – BREAK
10:15 – 11:30
If Attachment Is the Vaccine, Are We Investing Enough in Relationships?
Speaker: Sharon Kuhn, Executive Coach, Author, Speaker, and member of the Forbes Coaches Council
Examine the protective role of trusted relationships and belonging in helping children navigate an increasingly digital world.
11:30 – 12:15
Trauma Has Gone Digital
Understand how online experiences can impact children’s emotional wellbeing and explore trauma-informed approaches to responding to digital harm. Â
Speaker: Dr Catherine Knibbs (PhD), CEO Children and Tech. Consultant Child/Adult Trauma Psychotherapist and Researcher, Online Harm Specialist, Writer, Speaker and Trainer. Award winning influencer for Online Harm, Cyber Psychology and Tech Ethics for over 20 years.
12:15 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 13:45
The Search for Belonging: Radicalisation, Racism and Digital Childhoods: A flagship conference session
Explore how children’s need and identity and belonging can make them vulnerable to online radicalisation, hate, misinformation and harmful online communities.
Speaker: TBCÂ
13:45 – 14:15
The Parents We Need, The Parents We Have
Discover how professionals can support parents to build children’s digital resilience, strengthen relationships and navigate the challenges of raising children in an AI- enabled world.
Speaker: TBCÂ
14:15 – 14:30 – BREAK
14:30 – 15:00
What Can the World Teach Us About Childhood?
An international perspective on children’s rights, digital wellbeing and innovative approaches to safeguarding children in an increasingly connected world.
Speaker: TBCÂ
15:00 – 15:30
What Must Safeguarding Become? Future Skills for the Safeguarding Workforce
Explore the knowledge, leadership and organisational capabilities needed to prepare the safeguarding workforce for emerging challenges.
Speaker: TBCÂ
15:30 – 16:30
Childhood Reimagined: Development, Identity and Wellbeing in a Connected World
Hear directly from young people as they share their experiences of growing up online and what they believe adults need to understand about safety, relationships and belonging.
Speaker:Dr Bruce Perry, Principal of the Neurosequential Network and a Professor (Adjunct) at the School of Allied Health, Human Services and Sport, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria Australia
16:30 – 16:35
Closing Reflections: From Protection to Flourishing
A closing reflection on how safeguarding can move beyond preventing harm to creating conditions that enable every child to flourish in a digital world.
Speakers:
Dr Bruce Perry, Principal of the Neurosequential Network and a Professor (Adjunct) at the School of Allied Health, Human Services and Sport, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria Australia.
Over the last forty years, Dr. Perry has been an active teacher, clinician and researcher in children’s mental health and the neurosciences holding a variety of academic positions. His work on the impact of abuse, neglect and trauma on development has informed clinical practice, programs and policy across the world. Dr. Perry is the author, with Maia Szalavitz, of The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog (2006, 2017, 2026) a bestselling book based on his work with maltreated children and Born For Love: Why Empathy is Essential and Endangered (2010). Dr. Perry’s most recent book, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing (2021, 2026), co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, has been translated into 26 languages and has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for over 100 weeks after becoming #1 on the list in April of 2021.
His experience as a clinician and a researcher with traumatized children has led many community and governmental agencies to consult Dr. Perry following high-profile incidents involving traumatized children and youth including the Branch Davidian siege in Waco (1993), the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), the Columbine school shootings (1999), the September 11th terrorist attacks (2001), Hurricane Katrina (2005), the FLDS polygamist sect (2008), the earthquake in Haiti (2010), the tsunami in Tohoku Japan (2011), the Sandy Hook Elementary school shootings (2012), the Camp wildfire in California (2018) and the Turkey-Syria earthquake (2022), among many others.
For more information on the work of Dr. Perry and the Neurosequential Network see the NMN YouTube Channel @infonmn326 and BDPerry.com
Sharon A. Kuhn, Â Executive Coach, Author, Speaker, and member of the Forbes Coaches Council
With more than 30 years of experience in talent discovery, brain science, emotional intelligence, and trauma-informed work with individuals, families, and organizations. Sharon is the author of Empathy, A Guide to Maximizing Human Potential and creator of Your Interior Design™, a brain-based identity framework designed to develop secure attachment, selfunderstanding, empathy, emotional intelligence, and human potential. Sharon’s work integrates neuroscience, attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, and traumainformed care. She believes that understanding ourselves and building strong, trusted relationships are foundational to emotional regulation, resilience, confidence, and the ability to engage the full potential of ourselves and others. Through her Identity Leadership Model, she helps people of all ages develop the self-awareness and relational capacity needed to create environments where people can feel connected, valued, and able to thrive
Dr Catherine Knibbs (PhD), CEO Children and Tech. Consultant Child/Adult Trauma Psychotherapist and Researcher, Online Harm Specialist, Writer, Speaker and Trainer. Award winning influencer for Online Harm, Cyber Psychology and Tech Ethics for over 20 years.
Dr Catherine Knibbs (PhD) is a Consultant Child/Adult Psychotherapist specialising in the effects of Online Harm. She is a cyberpsychologist, researcher, clinician, author of 7 books so far and a mum. She created Cybertrauma theory after her own children were exposed to graphic and gory media on a flip phone in 2010. CEO of Children and Tech (training academy) where professionals can learn how to apply cyberethics and cybertrauma theory to child protection and safeguarding systems in your setting.
For more information about Catherine’s work and resources, please visit:Â https://catherineknibbs.co.uk/about
