Online harm, peers, places and extra-familial risk

Working Together 2026 expects assessments to consider how friends, peer groups, places and online interactions combine with harm outside the home. Children can be groomed, threatened, blackmailed, recruited or tracked via phones, gaming platforms, live streams, messaging apps and social media.

Online and offline harm often overlap. A child may be contacted online, then collected by car, sent to a house, pressured to share images, or asked to meet peers at a park, shopping centre, takeaway or transport hub.

What staff should think about

• Who is contacting the child: frequency, timing and pressure.
• Which digital spaces matter: apps, games, group chats, live streams and image-sharing.
• Which places repeat: retail parks, stations, hotels, takeaways, abandoned buildings or particular streets.
• Who else may be affected: exploiters targeting one child can also target peers in the same home.
• What is being used for control: images, threats, debt, substances, romance, fear or belonging.
• How online links become offline risk: phones often organise the next real-world move.

Children do not always separate online and offline life as adults do. Staff should not treat online concerns as less real than physical absence, travel or face-to-face contact.

If the same app, place or peer group keeps appearing, the pattern may be the clearest evidence you have.