Online community management training

Elearning to help you safely manage online communities for children and young people

If you're setting up an online community or already running online support services, it’s vital that your messenger platform, online forum or any type of virtual environment is safe for children.

Developed with assistance from experts at Childline, this elearning course will give you the guidance you need to manage a safe online community and consider your safeguarding and child protection responsibilities to ensure a safe space for young people.

What will I learn?

How to assess the needs and aims of an online community for children and young people
How to manage your online presence
What policies and procedures you must have in place
Moderation and responding to concerns
How to effectively deploy staff and resources
How to communicate clear boundaries for your staff and volunteers between their personal digital profiles, and their digital work as part of their role
The need for safer recruitment of staff and volunteers, including appropriate vetting checks
Your responsibilities under Data Protection law and what to do with information that’s collected.

Looking to this buy this course as part of a package?

Take a look at our cost-effective online training package for the voluntary sector.

Benefits of the course

CPD certified.
Developed with assistance from experts at Childline who specialise in running online services for young people.
Regularly updated to reflect changes in legislation, guidance and best practice advice.
Includes film interviews with experts, interactive quizzes and reflective tasks to help you develop your understanding and confidence.
Complete at your own pace and in your own time.
Train anytime, anywhere and take the course as many times as you like within one year.
Personalised downloadable certificate of achievement.
If you purchase licences on behalf of your team, you can download a report to show who has completed the course.
Once you’ve taken the course, it doesn’t stop there. We have a range of further information, training and downloadable resources to help you protect the children you work with.
Income generated from the sale of our training courses is reinvested back into the NSPCC to help protect children.

98%

of our customers would recommend NSPCC training

* We received 39,176 evaluation forms from people who had taken our elearning and face-to-face/virtual live training courses between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023. 38,394 (98%) said they would recommend the course they had taken.

What is an online community?

An online community is a group of people who come together in a virtual environment. Online communities can provide people with peer support and advice, like the Childline message boards, and also a place to communicate about different topics. They can be formed within messenger platforms and apps, gaming and social media platforms or embedded in a website through forums, message boards or chat rooms.

Who is this course for?

This course is for organisations, associations, groups or individuals who:

are setting up an online community
already have an online community and want to check that their safeguarding and child protection procedures are up to date and relevant
are setting up social media groups and want to send updates to parents, or invite members to email them via their website
have an existing website but thinking about adding a forum.

Why take your training with the NSPCC?

At the NSPCC, we work to keep children and young people safe from abuse and neglect every day.

As experts in safeguarding and child protection, we understand the issues organisations and people working with children can face. That’s why professionals trust us to provide the support, training and resources they need to help protect the children and young people they work with.

Our highly-rated training courses are developed by experts. We work with a number of organisations, experienced consultants and subject matter experts in a range of sectors to develop courses that are clear, easy-to-use, up-to-date and in line with the latest statutory guidance, and tailored to your needs.

And as a charity, income generated from the sale of our training courses is reinvested back into the NSPCC to help protect children.

CPD-certified online course

This elearning course is CPD certified by the CPD Certification Service. This means you can be confident that the training meets the highest standards.

Continuing professional development, or CPD for short, helps professionals keep their skills and knowledge up to date. It demonstrates your commitment to safeguarding children and upholding the standards of your profession.

Some professional associations have mandatory CPD or safeguarding training requirements for their members, but all professionals will benefit from investing time in their CPD. And taking an online CPD course means you can train at your own pace, wherever suits you.

Technical requirements

Our online courses will work in most browsers, though we recommend that you use Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Safari (not Firefox). You will need to make sure your browser is up to date for the course to run.

This course can be taken on PCs and Macs, as well as iPads or other tablet devices. Please note, we are unable to provide full technical support for tablet users. We do not support other mobile devices.

Having trouble with the course?

Try:

clearing your cache
accepting our cookies (essential cookies are required for the purposes of undertaking our elearning)
turning off private browsing
permitting access to videos on Vimeo
setting the following web domain to ‘trusted’: https://mylearning.nspcc.org.uk

Call us on 0116 234 7246 or email learning@nspcc.org.uk if you have any questions.