March 2012 - A NEW CATEGORY OF CHILD ABUSE? Two critically important events

A NEW CATEGORY OF CHILD ABUSE? Two critically important events

22nd March: New and Emerging Challenges in Child Protection

23rd March: PORNOGRAPHY AND CSA  
Is Corporate and Commercial Exploitation of Children & Young People a Form of Significant Harm?  

Speakers include:  

Susie Orbach  

Oliver James  

and from the USA Professor Gail Dines  

Has western society has reached a critical point in the way it targets children and young people which now leads them towards addictive hybrid consumer orientated lives. We have 24 hour bombardment of their minds to eat, purchase, imitate, possess or conform. Child protection and child care professionals should examine the evidence - the excessive imagery, junk food, extreme body images, access to pornography and allure of celebrity. There is now so much corporate targeting of children and young people that they consume without objective consent or informed knowledge - do we face a new diagnosis of 'significant harm'?  

 These two events are supported by:  

KIDS COMPANY
OBJECT
BASW
BASPCAN
The Safeguarding Children e-Academy  
and are ‘not-for-profit’ conferences  

 For information and to book a place: www.ncofca.org.uk   

 Any clarifications email: ncofca@phonecoop.coop  

 PLEASE NOTE: Places are limited and demand will be high so you are advised to book early.   

 TITLE: NEW AND EMERGING CHALLENGES IN CHILD PROTECTION  

 DATE: 22nd March, 2012  

 Venue: Central London   

 Times: 10.30-3.30  

 COST: £55.00  

 CHAIR FOR THE DAY: Faye Macrory MBE  

Camila Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company support this conference and have provided the venue. Camila will open the event. Camila has become an advocate for vulnerable children, speaking regularly at conferences and has contributed to numerous publications. Her book, Shattered Lives: Children living with Courage and Dignity was published in May 2006.  

Jim Wild has worked in child protection for over 25 years as a practitioner, frontline manager, trainer and activist. He has organised the event and will suggest that the definition of 'significant harm' we use to identify child abuse is now in need of review and a wider interpretation of this concept is required to include a new category of child abuse - the corporate and consumer exploitation of children and young people in all its forms. Jim is writing a paper based on his presentation which will be available to all delegates prior to the conference.  

Dr Agnes Nairn is Professor of Marketing at world-leading EM-Lyon Business School in France and divides her time between there and Bath, UK. She researches, writes and consults on areas related to ethics, children and marketing. Agnes has served on a number of UK government expert panels for the Department of Education and the Department of Health including a recent major review of the impact of the commercial world on children's wellbeing for UNICEF. Her co-authored book, Consumer Kids, appeared in 2009  

Susie Orbach is a psychoanalyst and writer whose interests have centred around feminism and psychoanalysis, the construction of femininity and gender, globalization and body image, emotional literacy and psychoanalysis and the public sphere. Susie will explore the impact that the growing commercial exploitation of the body by the style, fashion, beauty, diet and pharmaceutical industries has on the development of a girl's sense of self and her relationship to her body.  

Charlie Powell directs the Children's Food Campaign which campaigns to improve children's health and well-being through promoting better food and food teaching in schools, and to protect children from junk food marketing. Charlie's presentation will discuss the food industry's activities promoting the over-consumption of nutrient-poor foods, the inadequacy of companys' pledges to regulate themselves and the need for international marketing standards to protect child health.  

Oliver James: The Transmission of Poisonous Values: Oliver James is best known for his frequent broadcasting appearances and his bestselling books, They F*** You Up – How to survive family life (2002) and Affluenza – How to be successful and stay sane (2007). Oliver will explore issues of hyper-consumerism and the psychological impact of constant targeting of children and young people. For more information about Oliver's work go to: oliver-james-books.com.  

Gail Dines is Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at Wheelock College, USA. Her presentation will explore how the media bombards children and young adults with hypersexualized images of women and men, and conveys powerful messages that shape sexuality, identity and relationships. Dr. Gail Dines will use examples from pornography and pop culture to explore how images mould the way girls and boys and women and men, construct their individual and collective notions of reality. Her publication P0RNLAND, H0W P0RN HIJACKED  (2010) is available from Beacon Press.  

TITLE: PORNOGRAPHY AND CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE  

DATE: 23rd March, 2012  

VENUE: CENTRAL LONDON  

COST: £40  

10.30-1.00: Professor Gail Dines: This presentation will focus on the ways in which media theorists, feminists, and sociologists have conceptualised how images construct social reality. Using examples from pop culture and well travelled pornography websites, she will provide a map of our present day visual landscape and present an analysis of how images work in both complex and subtle ways. Arguing that images are key producers of social norms and values she will examine how we can begin to understand the role that sexual images play in framing our cultural perceptions, sexual behaviors and the dangers adults, children and young people face. Professor Dines will explore how our understanding of how to develop media literacy skills in young people and adults, arguing that the best form of defense against images is education and why we need to lay out a framework for curriculum that educates about the harms of pornographic images.  

1.45 - 3.00: The afternoon session will include presentations from Malcolm Cowburn who is Professor of Applied Social Science and Principal Lecturer in Criminology at Sheffield Hallam University. His research interests and publications originate from his work as a probation officer in the 1980s and early 1990s, where he was (amongst other things) involved in developing cognitive-behavioural programmes for adult male sex offenders. He has extensive experience both as researcher, a trainer and a consultant in issues related to sex offending. His research incorporates psychological and sociological understandings of sexual violence, and he is interested in finding ways to incorporate both of these approaches to sexual violence into different ways of thinking about men, male behaviours, male sex offenders and community safety. Professor Cowburn will consider how p0rnography may play a part in grooming and coercing children into sexually abusive activity.  

The final presentation will be from Dr Julia Long who is a campaigner and activist with the London Feminist Network and OBJECT. She recently completed her PhD on feminist anti-pornography activism at London South Bank University, and her book on this topic will be published by Zed Books in 2012. She has degrees in English Literature and Women's Studies, and her professional background is in teaching, the voluntary sector and equalities policy. Julia will discuss the range of activism in the UK  

Jim Wild is an academic, trainer and activist in the context of child protection and safeguarding work, masculinities and values. Jim worked on the frontline in child protection for 15 years. In 2006 & 2008 Jim organised two of the largest ‘gatherings’ of social care workers on values with over 4000 individuals attending these events. He was a social work lecturer at Nottingham Trent University for 7 years and convenor of the first unit on critical studies in men and masculinities and course leader for the diploma in applied studies in working with men at Nottingham Trent University. Jim is also a trainer working around he UK on child protection (essential and advanced), working with men and working with challenging service-users. Jim is editor of ‘Working with Men for Change’ (Routledge: 2002), ‘Fit for Practice in Child Protection’ (Reconstruct: 2005) and ‘The Value-Base of Social Work and Social Care’ (Open University Press: 2008). He is presently writing a ‘pocket book’  for frontline workers on difficult, dangerous and evasive service-users in child protection to be published by Kirwin Maclean Associates Ltd  (enquiries@kirwinmaclean.com) and evaluating a post-graduate training programme on communication artistry in child protection with Professor Chris Goddard and Professor Brian Littlechild.