Sarah Lynch Speaker | Technology & Primary & PHSCE & Careers & Well-being & Online Safety

Sarah Lynch

Former Police Detective, passionate about ensuring children are safeguarded to use Social Media, the internet and online games safely, productively, and effectively

Sarah spent the last 13 years of her police career as a Detective in Serious Crime/CID. Sarah feels compassionate about keeping children safe online and is using her experience of supporting victims and prosecuting defendants who possessed and distributed indecent images of children by speaking to students, parents and teaching professionals about travelling a digital world safely.

Sarah is a mum myself to 3 boys, 2 are in Secondary Education and her youngest is in Primary education.

In presentations Sarah describes what she has encountered during Grooming, Sexting and bullying offences to help the children fully understand the risks and ideas for parents on how to parent in a digital world.

Sarah recognises young people’s demand of the internet for their digital life. She understands the effects of social media safety from a victim and defendant perspective and reflects there is a balance of the need to be on social media and encourages the students to protect their digital footprint.

Sarah supports parents by demonstrating parental apps, support and the need to understand their children’s digital world is building their digital footprint for their future foundations in life, education and employment. She ensures the parents recognise the positives of social media and their children’s digital world needs to be every day chat.

The subjects Sarah delivers are to help reduce the risks of grooming, cyber bullying and sexting. Sarah has the students compare with them online and offline friendships. She then summaries with multi agency support available.

Sarah engages the children in KS1 with characters who are needing help do complete homework online, making friends and playing games online. With KS2, Sarah adapts to concentrate on strangers online and cyber bullying. Moving along with KS3 and KS4 Sarah concentrates on inappropriate images, sexting and ensuring they have an employable digital footprint.

Sarah is supporting schools educating children with Disabilities and Special Education Needs.

Following a role in the response unit Sarah joined CID investigating a wide variety of serious crime, including Murder, Burglary, Sexual offences, Violence and prosecuting defendants who possessed and distributed indecent images of children. Sarah specialised in interviewing children and vulnerable victims of all areas of crime including sexual offences and safeguarding investigations.

Sarah is passionate about ensuring children of all ages are enabled to use the internet and social media safely, productively, and effectively.

Testimonials from Teachers

"Sarah worked very well with the full range of secondary students 11-18 through a series of assemblies. The assemblies were pitched appropriately for each age group and covered a vast array of online topics. The sessions were informative in terms of the information given but also what could happen if…… students were fully engaged and feedback from them has been incredibly positive. The session for parents was approached from a different angle and again was full of excellent information. As one parents said, 'this was excellent, all parents should hear it'"

– Andrew Rickard, Head of Upper School, Thirsk School and Sixth College

"I originally rang Sarah and asked if she’d consider delivering an assembly to our school, which is a special school, and whether she was able to adapt her material to meet our needs. Sarah was fantastic with her correspondence and arranged a time prior to the assembly to come and visit the school so she had an understanding of the children she’d be delivering to. When it came to the assembly she delivered at a level which was appropriate to our children and she was able to engage the children throughout. The content of her assembly was current and child friendly which enabled our children to be involved.

Sarah also delivered a small workshop to a selected group of children. This was more personal and Sarah was able to provide a safe environment for our children to discuss further issues relating to internet safety. They felt extremely comfortable with her which allowed the children to be open and honest.

Both the teaching staff and head teacher were extremely impressed with Sarah’s work and as a result have asked for her to return and speak with parents at parents evening and be part of future events at school to raise awareness of internet safety. I’d highly recommend her to any school and really appreciate her ability to adapt to meet our needs as a school."

– Amy Foulerton, Head of PSHE, Mowbray School

"Thank you for delivering an eye-opening parent session, great staff training and an informative workshop for the children. It has been great to work with you and we will certainly touch base again in the future. I only wish more parents could hear what you have to say. I thought I was quite ‘savvy’ having teenage boys myself, but not so!"

– Mrs Lamara Taylor, Head Teacher, Sharow CE Primary School

“I had not seen any of this before. It was very informative, helpful and really well put together. Thank you”

– Parent of children aged 12 and 15 who attended a Go Wise Online Parent Presentation at Easingwold School

“Thank you so very much. I have been to a few school events (Primary) and tonight’s information was more informative than any other presentation I have seen. Well done”

– Parent of child aged 13 who attended a Go Wise Online Parent Presentation at Ripon RAF Cadets