Kidscape
British child safety organization
Kidscape is a London-based charity established in 1985, by child psychologist Michele Elliott. Its focus is on children's safety, with an emphasis on the prevention of harm by equipping children with techniques and mindsets that help them stay safe.
After a 1984-1986 survey of 4,000 children, their parents and teachers, it was apparent that the main threat to children came from people known to them, bullies, friends, or family members. Kidscape's Child Protection programmes are now taught UK-wide in thousands of schools and community groups.
01Activities
Kidscape's work falls into four main categories:
- Providing children, families and professionals with advice and information to keep children safe.
- Providing a range of training opportunities for professionals working with children and young people to support the provision of safe and nurturing environments.
- Delivering high impact programmes of support for children, parents, care-givers and professionals to prevent bullying and keep children safe.
- Working through a variety of communication channels, partners, campaigns and events to raise awareness of bullying and how to stop it.
02Work with external organisations
Kidscape is a member of the Anti-bullying Alliance and the National Suicide Prevention Alliance.
03Awards
- In 1998, Smith Kline Beecham awarded Kidscape an Impact Award recognising Kidscape's work in improving community health.
- In September 2000, Kidscape was named UK Charity of the Year in the first Charity Times awards.
- In 2007, Kidscape was Highly Commended in the 2007 Charity Awards Children and Youth category and Michele Elliott was Highly Commended in the Charity Principal of the Year category.
- In the New Year Honours 2008, Michele Elliott was awarded an Order of the British Empire by The Queen in recognition of her services to children.
04Patrons and trustees
Kidscape's patrons are children's author and journalist Anthony Horowitz and Dame Mary Perkins, co-founder of Specsavers.
Northampton mental health campaigner, Joe Plumb, is a trustee.
05Controversy
The effectiveness of Kidscape's methods for handling bullying behaviour were criticised in 1997 for not being benchmarked against other methods for preventing bullying. In some cases other education experts felt that Kidscape's methods might encourage further bullying. However, a 2018 independent evaluation of Kidscape's approach found that 98% of children felt more able to deal with bullying and three-quarters experienced a significant and sustained drop in bullying.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Kidscape”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Amelle Kidscape 2007.jpg by https://www.flickr.com/photos/s44yes/, CC BY 2.0
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