Swansea University launches DRAGON-Shield – a unique online grooming prevention training platform aimed at child safeguarding practitioners
Swansea University, is delighted to launch of DRAGON-Shield - an interactive, multimedia training platform that can strengthen child safeguarding practitioners’ ability to prevent children from being sexually groomed online.
DRAGON-Shield will deliver specialist training knowledge to assist child safeguarding practitioners in recognising both children’s communicative behaviour and that of offenders, during online grooming episodes. It also uses a real-time conversation simulator from a child’s perspective, a collaborative user wellbeing library and a resource pack, including digital video animations, interactive activities and more, to aid in advising children and young people of the risks of online child sexual abuse.
The unique platform has been developed by Project DRAGON-S, a Swansea University research project led by Professor Nuria Lorenzo-Dus and primarily funded by the Safe Online Initiative at End Violence.
The online launch will take place on Thursday 21 September 2023, 2pm-3pm and is aimed at child safeguarding practitioners and key sector representatives. Attendance is free.
The purpose of the event is to:
- Introduce Project DRAGON-S and provide an overview of the DRAGON-Spotter and DRAGON-Shield.
- Introduce DRAGON-Shield tool and development to date.
- Provide an overview of the 2023 DRAGON-Shield pilot study, evaluation, and results.
- Provide an overview of what is next in the pipeline for DRAGON-Shield.
Book your ticket via: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dragon-shield-launch-tickets-705896815377?aff=oddtdtcreator
Those who attend will also be offered priority places for DRAGON-Shield training in 2024 and will have early access to the Project DRAGON-S Cambridge Element digital publication, which explains the research that underpins the DRAGON-Shield training portal. The event is being hosted by the NWG Network.
DRAGON-Shield background:
DRAGON-Shield was designed in 2021-2022. Resources were then tested through a series of focus groups hosted by Youth Cymru in 2022-2023, with one participant who had first-hand experience of online grooming commenting:
“If I had seen this video before it would have made me realise what the person [groomer] was doing and I would not have met up with him.”
DRAGON-Shield was then successful piloted across four international sites during 2023.
Sixty-six practitioners across Wales, England, New Zealand, and Australia, participated in the pilot over a 6-week period, progressing through eight modules and providing reflections and insights at the end of each. This provided valuable information help to further refine the tool’s content and interface.
100% of the pilot participants agreed that they were knowledgeable about the tactics used by groomers to communicatively entrap children and young people. 100% would recommend this training to other child safeguarding practitioners.
Following the pilot testing, a further in-depth analysis was then undertaken through a series of focus groups, 1-1 interviews and reflective questionnaires. Participants further reported having already applied the learning gained from the platform in their professional work:
Pilot participants commented:
“[…] there is a case that came into us, which the training made me look at it in a different way. […] So, as experienced as I think I am in terms of being a police officer, it's […] more detailed things like that there were, I’d say eye-opening but really just thought-provoking and kind of just opened my mind really a bit more.”
“This is great work, the concept and the research that sits behind the training is very well done. The training is extremely informative.”
The results from the 2023 pilot evaluation will be available at https://www.swansea.ac.uk/project-dragon-s/
If you are interested in hearing more about the DRAGON-Shield training portal and how to embed novel insights and research about preventing online grooming into your child safeguarding practices, please email: project.dragons@swansea.ac.uk.
DRAGON-Spotter
Project DRAGON-S is also currently developing and testing DRAGON-Spotter. This is a linguistics-AI integrated tool for detecting OG designed for law enforcement agencies. To find out more about DRAGON-Spotter or for project updates, please visit www.swansea.ac.uk/project-dragon-s.