Communicating concern or making claims? The 2012 press releases of UK child welfare and protection agencies

Abstract

Child welfare and protection agencies play an important role in bringing concerns about children and young people to public attention. The press release is a key tool within this. This article reports on findings from an analysis of press releases from selected UK child welfare and protection agencies in 2012. It demonstrates that the information contained in press releases is neither neutral nor dispassionate. Instead, press releases are found to be political artefacts, whose purpose is to galvanise and shape opinion and garner support for a particular standpoint, campaign or the agency itself. In this respect, they must be understood as 'claims-making' activities. Because of this, they should, it will be argued, be subject to the same critical scrutiny that we would expect to bring to the presentation of all 'evidence'.

Child Protection Anxieties and the Formation of UK Child Welfare and Protection Practices

“…Clapton et al point to the emergence of these agencies in a combination of zeal and child rescue and argue that, in the case of the NSPCC, its establishment came about as a result of moral panic (2012). Clapton et al (2012; and Clapton and Cree (2017) have gone onto suggest that social work, in particular child protection, has continued with a propensity to either fuel moral panics or, indeed as in the case of the NSPCC, be involved in the inception of them and this discussion will return to a variety of cases in which child protection and moral panics have been in close association. For now it is important to briefly set out what a moral panic is and is not.…”

“…Child abuse calls in Scotland soar against rest of UK after Jimmy Savile inquiry 13.10.16 Not every worry directly relates to social work, however alarms such as these are a contributory factor to the generalised heightened sense of anxiety that exists (Clapton and Cree, 2017) and 'a toxic climate of suspicion and fear of blame in children's services' (Jowett, 2016). These are the conditions that have led to the return of child rescue as an intervention.…”

The origins of the Jimmy Savile scandal

“…In delving into social work history we do so against a backdrop tendency in the discipline to rely on “received” histories and the reiteration of familiar arguments and themes (Taylor, 2008). In the field of child welfare, received histories have tended to reflect the agendas of children’s charities and this colonisation of the field has continued to the present day (Clapton and Cree, 2016). The NSPCC has played a particularly prominent role historically and specifically in the Savile case, co-authoring (with the Metropolitan Police) the document, “Giving Victims a Voice” (Gray and Watt, 2013).…”