Rebecca Avery

Online Safety Lead, The Education People

With a background in education, child welfare and child protection for almost 18 years, Rebecca Avery is the Training and Development Manager and Online Safety Lead for our Education Safeguarding Service. Rebecca has worked in the field of online protection since 2008 and provides specialist advice, training and guidance for educational settings and coordinates our safeguarding services training and development programme. Rebecca has led on the development of a suite of policies and guidance documents for Kent which are used by agencies, authorities and educational settings throughout the UK and beyond. She is a nationally recognised online safety guidance and policy author and has contributed towards and coordinated the development of national guidance documents for educational settings, including the UK Council for Internet Safety (UKCIS) Education Working Group. Rebecca is a member of several panels which provide advice to educational settings, including the National Education Network (NEN) Safeguarding Group, Internet Matters ‘Expert Panel’ and Childnet Internationals Project DeShame Expert Group. Rebecca has received several local and national awards recognising her work, including CEOP's "Children's Champion of the Year” and a certificate of Merit from Kent Police. Rebecca believes in empowering professionals to support children to use the internet safely and responsibly through a practical and pragmatic approach. She works closely with local and national agencies to develop forward thinking about online child protection within education and is passionate about the importance of professionals working in partnership with children to shape and develop an effective and embedded approach to online safety.