Wouldn’t it be great to have a safe mobile phone where families could see all the texts and calls the child has received, that could block all non-essential calls during school hours or after bedtime?
When WhatsApp stopped asking for age verification for new users, it meant any child with a smartphone could share photographs and videos with anyone anywhere in the world without their parents' knowledge. Parents looked to schools for help and advice and many responded by directing them to ParentShield.
Seema Solani, principal of Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham College, wrote: ‘Over the next few months your child may be spending more time than normal on the internet, working on their homework, playing games, maybe watching documentaries with you. We recommend that all parents install ParentShield on the device used by their child in order to safeguard and protect them.’
A lifeline or a distraction?
The company polled 17,000 UK schools. Just 6% of those schools reported collecting all phones at the start of the day and handing them back to students at home time but this becomes a huge logistical challenge, and practically impossible in a large school.
While an increasing number of schools favour a total ban on mobile phones, half of primary school students and 85% of secondary school students believe mobile phones should be allowed. One primary pupil said: ‘In an emergency on the way to or from school, a phone is the best way to get in touch with your parent/carer.’
This is the nub of the problem: parents do not want to see their child glued to a phone but they do want to be able to contact them, to keep them safe, and a mobile is the best way to do this.
Vigilance matters
Graham Tyers set up ParentShield in 2017 to provide a service to parents and other adults charged with protecting the children in their care. He said: ‘With phone boxes now being a thing of the past, it's no longer reasonable to presume a child can find a callbox to call home in an emergency, and children are generally provided their first mobile phone at a far younger age than ever before - bringing the stark difference between an adult and properly-designed child network into view.’
ParentShield started as the kernel of an idea to deal with a real live problem. In 2015, Graham was talking to a police friend in Leicester about a case they were working on at the time. Kayleigh Haywood was 15 when she began speaking to Luke Harlow, a man she had never met. Over the course of two weeks, they exchanged 2643 messages.
Harlow groomed Kayleigh, along with two other young girls. She finally agreed to his request to spend the night with him on Friday 13 November 2015. The following day she was introduced to Harlow’s neighbour, Stephen Beadman. In the early hours of Sunday 15 November, having been held against her will by the pair, Kayleigh was raped and murdered by Beadman.
How ParentShield works
ParentShield is the only mobile network that provides a unique set of monitoring, alert and control features that make it safe and appropriate for users of any age and level of ability. The company provides special Child Protection SIM cards that intercept and block any WhatsApp and other social media setup verification and SMS messages and informs parents instantly. The system offers a fully recorded Closed User Group so the child or young person can only call, or be called, or text or be texted by pre-defined safe numbers. It means that mobile phones in the group can call and text one another, but those outside the group have no way to route calls or SMS messages. There are no settings to make on the phone itself, and no way around the restriction because the call route at network level is unavailable. No matter what the child does, calls to other numbers are simply impossible.
In the most restrictive mode, a phone can be confined to receiving and sending calls only to and from the parents' phones; additional contacts and functions can be added as and when confidence and skills increase.
Advantages of ParentShield for families
Voice and SMS on a mobile phone are generally unmonitored because they are designed to protect adults and offer them privacy and confidentiality. However, this is a real risk when children go missing.
With ParentShield:
- Parents/ caregivers get instant alerts to their mobile and can see and hear what the child has received
- The SIM will work on any mobile so parents can start with a simple inexpensive device and trade up as the child gets older and less likely to lose or damage the phone
- Children can have an attractive phone that does not single them out or embarrass them in front of their friends
- The SIM works with all networks so users get the best signal strength in their location. This is important when children may be making desperate calls to family or emergency services
- The child’s phone does not need to be on the same network as the adult’s
- The SIM allows two “Home Numbers” that can be called, or texted, at any time, even if the child has run out of minutes or texts
- The adult can block absolutely everything or add chosen numbers to an allow-list, or block individual callers’ calls and texts with a single click instantly and without needing to touch the phone
- All texts are recorded and stored in an online account for the parent/ caregiver to review
- All calls are recorded and stored in a secure online portal for the adult to listen to and download
- Spending controls let the bill payer take full control of spending. No more shocks at the end of the month!
- Time controls mean that children cannot sit up making calls or sending texts to friends. Families can set a bedtime and make sure the child cannot use the phone, except to contact family in an emergency, during school hours
- There is no voicemail service. On many networks even if a caller is blocked, they can leave a voicemail. Even if voicemail is switched off, the user will see a missed call message with the caller’s number. Children have received distressing voicemails and the Phone Hacking Scandal showed that voicemail was not secure and could be tampered with. ParentShield, being designed with Child Protection from the ground up, has removed the traditional voicemail facility from its network
Teaching children to use a mobile phone
Parents are inclined to throw children in at the deep end when it comes to mobile phone ownership. All too often, parents say no when their children ask for a mobile phone and then when the child reaches the age of 11 or 12 and is off to secondary school, they buy them a smartphone with all the bells and whistles without any preparation for the risks and temptations it offers.
‘There are lots of lessons that children need to learn about mobile phones,’ says Graham Tyers. ‘Teaching them at an early age, how to look after a phone, how to charge it, lock it, and look after it and use it responsibly saves parents a huge headache at a later age when phones start getting more sophisticated and more expensive!’
Bills are especially important now. Children need to learn about data allowances and making decisions about how often and when they will use their phone and what is worth seeing. All too often children stand at the bus-stop or in the playground at break time, mindlessly flicking through Tik-Tok videos. Children - and some adults – send videos and massive images that eat up allowances and incur extra costs.
Graham recommends that children be encouraged to take charge of their data budgeting. Do they know how big a byte is? A megabyte? A gigabyte? Do they know whether a megabyte is the same as a megabit? Do they know how much data it takes to send an email, or to locate a phone, or view a web page?
Mobile phones for neurodiverse young people
Getting a mobile phone is a rite of passage these days but it is a big step for some children, especially those with limited language skills or conditions that are a barrier to communication.
Graham has a son with autism and communication difficulties and former Governor of the Holbrook Centre for Autism - a flagship centre of excellence for teaching of children with ASD. He has written several guides to explain to parents of children with autism how communication is learned and progresses, so they will be in a good place to help their children with the big transition to using a mobile phone. Talking on the phone is something that many children find uncomfortable, and in many cases, this is something that carries on into adulthood. Even those who have mastered some of the finer points of initiating conversation and turn taking may regress when it comes to talking to people who are not in the same room.
The guide discusses Autistic Communication and can be found on the company's website https://parentshield.co.uk/mobile-phones-for-children-with-autism/.
Putting children’s safety at the heart of the service
ParentShield also has special arrangements when multiple people may need to be involved in administering the features of the phone such as parents and a care service, foster carers and a social worker, parents and respite caregivers, or separated parents, Only ParentShield is designed with all these scenarios in mind.
Equally, they are on the ball when it comes to protecting children. Sometimes when a child is removed from their birth parents, the courts may specify that one or both should have no contact. In practice, this can be hard to monitor and enforce with most mobile phones but easy to do with ParentShield.
Young people see mobile phones as a necessity and, while they know the risks in theory, they can overlook them in the heat of the moment. Kayleigh's murder is a stark warning to parents who think it could not happen to their child. Beadman was sentenced in July 2016 to a minimum of 35 years in prison for Kayleigh’s murder. Harlow was given 12 years for grooming and false imprisonment. The full story can be found at: https://www.leics.police.uk/kayleighslovestory.
‘We were working on a monitored SMS service at the time for another use, and realised we could potentially make something that would, in this instance at least, have made a huge difference,’ said Graham. ‘We set about building a network with all the controls needed to keep children safe and nearly 4 years later we launched ParentShield.’
Further information
ParentShield https://parentshield.co.uk/
Safety advice for primary schools https://www.town-farm-surrey.uk/e-safety-advice-leaflets-for-parentscarers/