News & Updates
CSE Awareness Day 2019
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Can you believe it is 5 years since we began the CSE Awareness Day? That’s definitely something to celebrate!
Once we had decided to launch a CSE Awareness Day, we were really taken aback with how much the network embraced the opportunity to inform young people, the general public and those in retail and trade industries of the need to ensure our society began developing a message to promote zero tolerance to abuse through exploitation. It might sound a natural given that everyone would want this, but of course we have to inform every one of the signs, the symptoms, the impact and most importantly what to do if you have concerns about anyone.
Over the years we have seen incredibly creative approaches to circulating the Awareness Day messages
We have seen: –
- Say Something if you See Something posters on billboard, the side of buses,
- Posters up in police, train and bus stations across the country, in hotels and GP surgeries and hospitals.
- Lighting up of a town hall.
- Event activities lasting from a day to a week and even the whole Month of March.
- Information stands in public areas and buildings.
- Schools receiving police visits on the 18th to talk about the signs and symptoms of CSE to pupils, staff and non-teaching staff.
- Premier and championship clubs showing the campaign hashtag at half time on electronic bill boards as well as key players supporting ‘Helping Hands’ with safeguarding messages on their hands.
We have traced huge numbers of publicity articles in local papers, on websites, seen and heard regional and national media interviews on TV and radio. These are some of the headlines: –
During our 2nd#CSEDay run up, Cheryl decided to try a social media Thunderclap, a sort of social media flash mob that turned out to be great fun too. The message for the Thunderclap was “Stop-CSE. Adopt a zero tolerance to the exploitation of our young people” We encouraged 910people to join the Thunderclap and during our National Conference (held on CSE Day) we encouraged everyone to write a message on their hands of their intention to raise awareness over the next year and other safeguarding messages. A live counter on the big screen recorded the number of people joining the Thunderclap throughout the morning and at 12 noon we encouraged all our attendees to turn their mobile phones on, the room rang with phones getting messages encouraging a zero tolerance to child abuse in our society – this message reached over five million people. All this was captured on BBC and ITV televised news and generated a huge amount of enthusiasm for the following year. Last year the Thunderclap reached more than 6 million people, all because so many of the network supported and engaged with the CSE Awareness day.
Unfortunately, this year we will not be able to use Thunderclap to reach people (Facebook evoked the Thunderclap permission in September last year) However, we are not beaten and are exploring alternatives. With your continued help and support we are hopefull that we can still reach as many, if not more, members of the general public as before.