DRAGON-Shield
DRAGON-Shield is a suite of interactive, multimedia training courses that facilitates understanding of online grooming conversations and can aid in prevention and support efforts. DRAGON-Shield equips safeguarding practitioners, parents/caregivers, and law enforcement with the knowledge they need to respond effectively.
About DRAGON-Shield
Grounded in ethical, ground-breaking academic research and shaped by consultation with 500+ child safeguarding practitioners, children and lived experience experts across more than 30 countries, DRAGON-Shield offers practical insights into how online grooming occurs through language.
To learn more about how the course was developed, tested, and independently evaluated, you can read our report:
What does DRAGON-Shield include?
- A suite of modules that introduce you to how online grooming occurs through language, and the tactics groomers use to build trust, manipulate, and exploit children.
- Interactive assessments at the end of each module to help you test and apply your knowledge.
- A downloadable certificate on completion as evidence of your continued professional development.
- A conversation simulator that lets you experience, in a safe and controlled way, how online grooming conversations unfold from a child’s perspective.
- A downloadable resource pack that can be used with children and young people to educate them about online grooming and how to safeguard themselves against it.
- A wellbeing library filled with helpful, supportive resources to look after your mental health while working with sensitive and challenging content.
- A clear and user-friendly guide to help you navigate the platform and get the most from your training.
DRAGON-Shield
A Focus on Children’s Language
We have developed training content focused on children’s language in online grooming interactions. This recognises children as blameless, communicative agents and works to deconstruct damaging binaries in thinking that see children either as victims or active participants making risky ‘choices’. We explore the complex and intersecting constraints that impact children’s communication in online grooming interactions. This helps to bridge gaps in understanding between adults tasked with protecting children and children’s own lived experience.
Why use DRAGON-Shield
DRAGON-Shield is here to support you in safeguarding children from online grooming. Our training course empowers you by:
- Helping you recognise the language and tactics groomers use to build trust and manipulate children online.
- Offering a fresh perspective on how children participate in online grooming conversations – one that respects their agency without placing blame.
- Equipping you with tools to educate children about the risks, helping them recognise harmful behaviour.
- Strengthening your ability to support children who are at risk or have been affected by grooming through practical, research-led training.
- Promoting best practice by sharing guidance on how to protect your own mental health and wellbeing when working on cases involving online child sexual abuse.
What DRAGON-Shield is right for me?
As DRAGON has evolved, so too has our commitment to tailoring our tools and training to meet the needs of diverse audiences. From practitioners and law enforcement to parents and educators, each version of DRAGON-Shield is co-designed with its intended users to ensure relevance, accessibility, and impact.
Please see the different progammes available below:
DRAGON-Shield for Practitioners
DRAGON-Shield for Practitioners is suitable for anyone working in child-facing roles.
Previous trainees have included those from the following sectors:
- Child safeguarding (e.g., designated safeguarding leads, pastoral leads, multi-agency safeguarding hub practitioners).
- Social work (e.g., youth family support workers, family support workers, post-adoption support social workers).
- Care (e.g., practice managers, review managers, team managers for looked after children, senior fostering practitioners).
- Family support (e.g., early help managers, workforce development managers, family partners, independent family meeting coordinators).
- Education (e.g., headteachers, designated safeguarding leads, teaching assistants).
- Healthcare (e.g., emotional health and wellbeing practitioners).
- Local council (e.g., locality managers, community partners).
DRAGON-Shield for Parents
Coming 2026.
DRAGON-Shield for Law Enforcement Agencies
Coming 2026.
How do I register?
1. Check to see which version of DRAGON-Shield is right for you.
2. Complete the expression of interest form:
3. Our team will then be in touch with the upcoming available courses and instructions on how to book your place.
4. Once your place has been booked, you will be invited to create an account on DRAGON-Shield.
5. You will have 3 months from the date you start your training to complete the DRAGON-Shield training.
What have trainees said about DRAGON-Shield for Practitioners?
Having the opportunity to closely examine the communicative style between groomer and child target was a real eye-opener
The design is excellent. I think it’s really engaging. It feels like I’m inhabiting a child’s world and that is really important. So, when a practitioner goes into it, they can feel that they are part of this space too.
Very relevant and interesting. Makes you sit up and see the way perpetrators are in reality and the lengths they will go to.
Knowledge will enable us to train a workforce who can be professionally curious and ask the appropriate questions in order to recognize online grooming effectively.
Individually unpacking groomer tactics is extremely useful in gaining insight into the level of skill and manipulation used to ensnare the child target and keep them engaged.
The use of the conversation simulator is a novel way to almost gain first-hand experience of how a groomer engages with a child.
I will definitely be using this to create an intervention with young people – one that can highlight to young people the language used by groomers to exploit them, and one that I can use with children who have been groomed online, to support their understanding of how this happened, and how this was not their fault.
I feel this has given me additional understanding of [online grooming] that will enable me to explain how groomers use manipulation and various tactics to exploit children, and that this is not the fault of the child.
[The] training made me much more aware of the tactics groomers use to manipulate children and could be helpful in spotting grooming language in future.