Got in from swimming tonight and in the 10 minutes I had while the oven was heating up did a quick email check.
One through from the blog – they are getting a little more common, although possibly the contact form should be a little easier to find, maybe even have a button or something? Whatever, that’s not the point here.
The email was from Harry at HotCherry, with a full set off information about Parent Channel’s newest video on teens in abusive relationships. As I don’t have a teen I just sort of skim read through thinking yeah yeah, right until I got to the mention of research done by the NSPCC.
Red flag to a bull. As regular readers here are all too aware, last year the NSPCC excelled itself with its fake charity status by allying with the labour government in their harassment and vilification of home educators, reaching a peak when an article in the Independent had them commenting on Victoria Climbie as having been home educated. (She wasn’t. And the NSPCC was probably trying to distract from their own part in the case.) So I dashed off a quick email with the pertinent facts saying that I couldn’t possibly blog about anything related to the NSPCC and went off to put the baking potatoes into the oven.
And then the phone rang. And it was Harry, absolutely horrified by the details in my email and wanting to find out more. We chatted for quarter of an hour or so about the NSPCC, home education, the Badman review, and yes, Parent Channel. Turns out they are not related to the NSPCC, and were merely quoting research.
Now, I haven’t had time to look through the Parent Channel stuff properly, so I won’t do a full run down on that until I’ve had time to explore further. But I will say that anything promoted by a PR agency that takes the time to follow up on individual contacts in that way is something that I will follow up on. So I’ll be taking a further look at their offerings – the idea, as I understand it, is that parents have collaborated on a number of issues as well as there being expert input to build a resource on a number of areas. I don’t subscribe to the idea that we need experts in all areas of our lives – I actually think that very often having experts around very often stunts our own abilities to deal with situations and leaves ppl feeling unempowered. But collaborations between individuals are precisely the kind of thing I think we should all be working towards.
*As a footnote, I went and explored HotCherry’s website and have discovered that they have done work with the NSPCC in the past. Setting aside the question of why a charity needs PR anyway (surely their work should speak for themselves?) I’m a little disappointed that this didn’t come out in the conversation. However, I think what I’ve said about parentchannel and PR in this specific case still stands.
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