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Hello Everyone,
Last month I mentioned our Bye Buy Childhood campaign and that I
would be writing about it in my next letter.
If you click on the Bye Childhood symbol on the Homepage of this
website, you can learn what lies behind this campaign, with our
desire to curb the seemingly relentless commercialisation and
sexualisation of childhood in 21st century Britain.
You will read that our aims are
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To challenge consumer habits
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Empower families within the home t
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Engage with the commercial world
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Challenge inappropriate marketing
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Hold UK Government accountable & raise awareness with other
political representatives in UK and Ireland.
In order to keep up the momentum of this
campaign, the Mothers’ Union has set its members five challenges in
2012,suggesting we concentrate on one at a time, perhaps over a
couple of months.
1. Ensure on-street advertising
is not overtly sexual, particularly near schools.
The
Advertising Standards Authority (the ASA) has produced a ‘statement
on sexual imagery in outdoor advertising’, which advises
advertisers on what is and is not acceptable imagery on outdoor
adverts such as billboards. If you see some outdoor advertising that
you are unhappy with contact the ASA - they investigate every single
complaint. The ASA also wants to hear whether their guidance
reflects the expectations of parents, grandparents, other family
members and other carers of children.
2.
Keep your family’s internet safe.
Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have signed up to a code of
practice to offer all new customers an unavoidable “active choice‟
of whether or not to activate parental controls. These will help you
decide what content to allow or to block. If you or your family
havent set up parental controls on your computer and internet
enabled devices, you could ensure that you set them up; or contact
your internet service provider
3.
Lobby children’s clothing retailers to sign up to the British Retail
Consortium’s Childrenswear Guidelines.
The
BRC has produced guidelines offering good practice guidance to BRC
members on retailing clothes to under 12s. You could read the
guidelines and ask other retailers to sign up.
4.
Try out the ParentPort website.
(You can click onto this from the Homepage of our website)
The
ParentPort website is a one stop shop that directs people to the
relevant bodies to make complaints about advertising, marketing and
retailing to children. Try it out and tell everyone you know about
it.
5.
Contact your political representative.
Let
your political representative know about progress on the Bailey
Review and any other concerns you have.
Here in Sheffield Diocese, I have given members one more
challenge—to take the trouble to look occasionally at advertisements
shown on television before the 9 o’clock watershed. If you consider
the advertisement to be inappropriate, such as over sexualised
content, then send a postcard to OFCOM to bring it to this
regulator’s attention –Of COM does take notice and there is evidence
of advertisements being banned before the watershed after
complaints. This is a small but effective way to help our children
be children.
As
I wrote last month, in 2011, the Mothers’ Union raised concerns
surrounding the commercialisation of childhood so effectively, our
Chief Executive Reg Bailey was asked to lead the Review, Letting
Children be Children by the Prime Minister, David Cameron. The
picture below shows Reg meeting with the Prime Minister and Sarah
Teather, Minister of State for Children and Families to discuss the
review and its recommendations.
Reg
will be coming to Sheffield on October 27 this year, to take part in
a day we are having to celebrate the work and achievements of the
Mothers Union. He will bring us up to date with the progress of the
recommendations arising from the review and will help us to look at
what we can continue to do to support concerned parents over this
vital issue. Everyone is welcome to join us on the day – details
will be on this website next month.
If you want to know any
more about the work of the Mothers’ Union, how you can join etc,
please do not hesitate to contact me or our Secretary . Our e mail
addresses are on the website
Take care,
Sarah
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