Safeguarding Audits: Ensuring Child Safety in Schools Written by Sharon Barnes …

How worried should we be about TikTok challenges?
When I am delivering Safeguarding training, I regularly talk about the blackout challenge. The challenge involves children choking themselves to achieve a ‘high’, which causes them to lose consciousness and faint. Sadly, this challenge has led to many deaths of children as you may have seen in the news.
I was recently out with a friend who works in a school. They told me about a TikTok challenge, where a child attended a different school from their own for the day. The challenge was to see how long they could last before anyone noticed. The child in question borrowed their friend’s uniform and attended lessons. They made it to period 5 before anyone noticed!
There are so many things wrong with this regarding the safeguarding practices of the school they attended. How did no one find them until period 5? The child was safe and had a great day, so much so that they wanted to move schools. But the point is, no one knew where the child was or if they were safe until later in the day. The child had no idea the chaos they caused. Wasting police time, 2 schools panicking and parents losing their minds – all for a TikTok challenge!
I then investigated more TikTok challenges relating to schools and there are so many! From slapping a teacher, to stealing items from school, to jabbing breasts.
There are also so many dangerous ones like The Benadryl Challenge. This is where the child drinks a whole bottle of Benadryl which can lead to serious health issues, including seizures and death. Or even the Fire Challenge, where a child covers their body in a flammable substance and sets themselves on fire. I read that despite its obvious dangers, this challenge attracted children aged 12 and 13 and resulted in them being hospitalised for first and second-degree burns.
All for the praise of ‘randomers’ on TikTok.
What are these children missing in their lives that they feel the need to do these challenges? Do they need to feel part of something? Do they need to be praised because they aren’t getting it from anywhere else? Do they need attention because they are lacking this in the ‘real’ world? Do they just want to be noticed? Are they crying out for help?
So, what can we do? We can listen and find out how we can support their needs. We can educate them, in the hope that they know how to safeguard and protect themselves and each other from this ‘challenge’ culture and hopefully, in extreme cases, save lives!
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