Website: https://youthworksconsulting.co.uk/ and http://thecybersurvey.co.uk/
Twitter: @AdrienneKatz1
CPD accredited trainer, Director of Youthworks Consulting, 2008 – present
Awarded joint Inspirational Individual of the year 2018 by the Ben Cohen Stand up Foundation.
Current special areas of interest
Vulnerable Children In a Digital World – Research programme and policy change
The Cybersurvey – Annual survey of young people’s experiences in a digital environment
Current projects:
- In partnership with Internet Matters Adrienne is creating a resource to enable young people with SEN to use social media safely. Aimed at young people, parents and carers. Funded by Facebook.
- Cybersurvey by Youthworks 2019 in partnership with Internet Matters.
- Research programme in partnership with Kingston University, funded by E-Nurture Network Vulnerability, Online Lives and Mental Health: towards a new practice model.
Author, Accredited CPD Trainer, Consultant and Evaluator.
The Cybersurvey: While working as Regional Adviser for the Anti-Bullying Alliance across 14 local authorities between 2004-11, I became aware of the need to understand young people’s experiences online and on early mobiles. There was no data in the region, nobody knew the scale of cyber harms, bullying or how we could help. The Cybersurvey was launched in 2008 and it runs annually. The insights it brought and the democratic way it evolved, took my work into all aspects of online behaviour, risk and harm. But it did not overlook the enabling, exciting aspects of technology, new devices, apps and skills.
Local authority services and the participation of young people enabled us to gain an understanding of the fluid and fast changing digital experience of our young people in England. The Cybersurvey continues to provide, messages from the frontline to teachers, care managers and children’s services. The learning has been used in books, training programmes, research, resources and policy making.
Research: A research partnership was formed in 2016 with Dr Aiman El Asam, of the Department of Psychology at Kingston University focused on vulnerable children and their experiences online. Our study was published in March 2018 in the journal Human-Computer Interaction. Margot James, Minister of State for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport launched our report Vulnerable Children in a Digital World in February 2019. This resulted in a new working group on Vulnerable Children within UKCIS.
Evaluations:I acted as external evaluator for ‘Make A Noise’, a DfE funded project and for an FE College. With my colleague Dr Cathy Street I’ve explored how local authority agencies respond to cases with an online component. Youthworks led a team developing new statutory anti-bullying guidance for schools in Wales with an online Toolkit of resources to support it.
Author: The Cybersurvey data set has led me to write three books and many reports and briefing papers. Visits to schools and workshops with young people give us the opportunity to explore their views further.
Where is online safety going? Should it even be a separate subject? Is it fit for what is needed now? And what do young people think of what they have been taught? These questions are challenging. I hope to make a small contribution to this debate.
