A long overdue alternative to ‘stranger danger’

One of the biggest challenges facing any parent is how to give your child enough freedom to learn for themselves – sometimes from their mistakes – whist fulfilling that most basic parental duty to keep your kids safe.

There’s no escaping that worrying things do sometimes happen. Whether it’s something suspicious in your local community or a huge national media story, there are times when we need to be able to pick up a conversation with our kids, re-assure them, and remind them how to stay safe.

For 50 years we’ve been warning our children about ‘stranger danger’. Yet most strangers won’t harm children, and many people that do pose a risk to children are not strangers. Today’s children live in an increasingly shielded world. They spend less time playing outdoors and moving about independently (for example walking to school) fuelling a rise in childhood obesity and mental health problems. Safety which simply curtails children’s independence becomes toxic, depriving them of the emotional intelligence, creativity and problem-solving skills that are vital to their development and, ironically, will actually keep them safe.

We’ve created Clever Never Goes to give parents, teachers and other professionals an effective alternative to ‘stranger danger’ based on the simple message that children shouldn’t go with anyone unless it has been arranged beforehand. Rather than fearing the worst in everyone they don’t know, Clever Never Goes helps children to recognise specific situations that are unsafe and gives them the tools to respond. It’s designed to be positive, practical, playful and – above all else – to keep things in perspective.

Clever Never Goes aims to keep children safe. But it’s also about building children’s abilities to engage with the outside and online worlds, and giving parents the confidence to let them.

For more information about the background to Clever Never Goes and reports of our pilot work with schools and police, please see our Key Reports.