The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) is a UK police agency with a difference. It has the teeth of any other police force and works to track offenders wherever they may be. CEOP also delivers free education programmes into schools to help children of all ages stay safe online and is active in sharing best practice techniques with the wider child protection community through a number of training initiatives. The CEOP Education Training Programme is called Think U Know.
The CEOP Corporate Film is embedded below (You Tube):
The Think You Know website allows you to find the latest information on the sites you like to visit, mobile phones and new technology. You can find out what’s good, what’s not and what you can do about it.
If you look after young people there’s an area for you too – with resources you can use in the classroom, at home or just to get with it. Most importantly, there’s also a place which anyone can use to report if they feel uncomfortable or worried about someone they are chatting to online.
The Think You Know Secondary Schools Training programme is in place in many of the East Lothian Secondary Schools. One of the films used in this training programme is embedded below (You Tube):
CEOP is a member of the Virtual Global Taskforce (VGT). The VGT is made up of law enforcement agencies from around the world working together to fight child abuse online. The aim of the VGT is to build an effective, international partnership of law enforcement agencies that helps to protect children from online child abuse.
The objectives of the VGT are:
- to make the Internet a safer place;
- to identify, locate and help children at risk; and
- to hold perpetrators appropriately to account.
The VGT is made up of the Australian Federal Police, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre in the UK, the Italian Postal and Communication Police Service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the US Department of Homeland Security and Interpol. Jim Gamble, the Chief Executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre is the Chair of the VGT.
The VGT delivers low-cost, high impact initiatives that prevent and deter paedophiles from exploiting children online.
Below is the television commercial produced by the VGT to support Safer Internet Day. (You Tube video embedded below)