Can I read my foster child's messages?

Check the placement plan and your fostering service's policy. Generally, transparent oversight ('I check in on chats together with you') is more sustainable and more therapeutic than covert monitoring. Always discuss approach with the social worker first.

What if my foster child is contacting birth family against the plan?

Do not just block and remove. Talk to the social worker urgently. The child usually has a reason — often a powerful one — and that reason needs to be heard even if the contact is not safe.

How do I help a child who arrived already exposed to harmful content?

Work with the therapeutic team and social worker. Do not interrogate. Provide steady, calm structure, and a clear adult who is not shocked by anything they hear.

Online Safety for Looked-After Children

For foster carers, kinship carers, and social workers supporting children in care online — contact, identity, and trauma-aware approaches.

Overview

Children in care often arrive with complex histories, including disrupted attachments, prior exposure to risk, and existing online lives that pre-date their current placement. Online safety for looked-after children is not just about platforms and settings — it is about contact, identity, and the slow rebuilding of trust.

This guide is for foster carers, kinship carers, and the wider team around the child. It assumes you are working alongside social workers and education staff, and that your child is online in some form already.

Starting from strengths

Many looked-after children are extraordinarily resourceful, perceptive, and resilient. They have often had to manage adult-sized situations young. Online connections — with siblings, former carers, online friends, or supportive communities — can be a positive thread of continuity in a life that has had a lot of upheaval. Good online-safety practice respects those connections rather than severing them.

Common challenges and what helps

Unauthorised contact with birth family or unsafe adults via social media

Work with the social worker on a clear, written contact plan. Be honest with the child about what is allowed and why, in age-appropriate terms. Sudden removals of contact without explanation usually backfire.

Existing accounts, history, and content the child arrived with

Do not bulk-delete. Sit with the child and review together. Their history matters. Where content needs to be reported, involve the social worker and police as needed.

Trauma responses to online conflict, exposure, or memories

Use a trauma-informed approach: low voice, no shame, focus on the child's safety not on 'getting the truth'. Loop in the therapeutic team early.

Repeated targeting by online predators who specifically seek out looked-after young people

Predators do target this group. Make this fact known to the child — without blame — and rehearse exactly what to do if it happens.

Practical steps

•Establish a written online-contact plan as part of the placement plan, agreed with the social worker.
•Set up the device together where possible, talking through privacy and contact settings.
•Keep devices in shared family space, especially in the early weeks of a placement.
•Use child-account-level controls but avoid invasive 'surveillance' framing — be transparent.
•Have regular, low-key check-ins about online life. Do not save it for crises.
•Loop in the school's designated teacher for looked-after children.
•Record concerns formally — log books, contact notes — so patterns are visible across the team.

Conversation starters

Phrases that help

Who do you most like to chat with online at the moment?
Is there anyone you wish you could be in touch with but feel you cannot?
Has anyone online ever asked you about being in foster care or kinship care?
If something difficult comes up online, what would you want me to do?
Is there anything on your phone we should look at together this week?

Working with school

The designated teacher for looked-after children should be your point of contact in school for online-safety concerns. Ensure the personal education plan includes online-safety needs. Share — with the child's knowledge — relevant context with school so they can respond appropriately. The Coram Voice helpline (0808 800 5792) supports children in care, and Become (0800 023 2033) supports care-experienced young people.

Signs to take seriously

!A new online contact who knows the child is in care and offers 'help' or 'family'.
!Pressure from an online contact to share location, school, or carer details.
!Sudden secrecy, especially combined with new gifts, money, or in-game items.
!Re-emergence of unsafe birth-family contact outside the agreed plan.
!Self-harm content, suicidal ideation expressed online, or coordinated 'communities' encouraging this.

When to escalate

Always loop in the social worker for any significant concern. For suspected grooming, sextortion, or contact from an unknown adult, report to CEOP at ceop.police.uk and call 101 (999 if there is immediate danger). The NSPCC helpline (0808 800 5000) and Coram Voice (0808 800 5792) can support both carer and child. Log everything in placement records.

Frequently Asked Questions

Last reviewed: 2026-05-16 · This page is educational guidance, not a substitute for clinical advice, safeguarding professionals, or emergency services.

This is practical educational content to support families. For case-specific concerns about a child's safety, contact the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000 or your local safeguarding team.