COMPUTERS are a part of every child's education but parents worry about dangers online, now Dorset Police and partners have developed a safety education programme for parents.

Dorset's Safe Schools and Communities Team (SSCT), a partnership between Dorset Police and Dorset Youth Offending Team (YOT), has embarked upon an innovative programme to warn and educate parents, teachers and young people about the dangers of the World Wide Web.

Kicking the programme off is a series of parents' evenings at schools across the Dorset County Council area, run by the Safe Schools and Communities Team (SSCT) and the South West Grid for Learning (SWGfL) Yvonne Surman, head of the SSCT which covers Christchurch, North Dorset, East Dorset, West Dorset, Purbeck and Weymouth & Portland, said: "While the Internet is a wonderful tool and has become part of our everyday life, without appropriate safeguards it can and does put our young people at risk of abuse and harm.

"Do parents know, for example, what their child does online? Are they comfortable discussing new Internet technologies such as social networking sites and instant messengers? If the answer is no to either of those questions, then our programme of parents evenings will give them the opportunity to learn more and talk to the professionals.

"At the first of these evenings, held at The Grange in Christchurch, feedback from parents was fantastic - we received real heartfelt thanks from parents who felt that what they had learned would help protect their children."

The programme is the result of a year's work by the multi-agency Cybersafe Strategic Group, set up following concerns about Internet safety from the Dorset Police Command Team in Eastern Dorset.