The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is a charity campaigning and working in child protection in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands.

History[link]

On a trip to New York in 1881, Liverpool businessman Thomas Agnew (1834–1924) visited the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. He was so impressed by the charity, that he returned to England determined to provide similar help for the children of Liverpool. In 1883 he set up the Liverpool Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (LSPCC). Other towns and cities began to follow Liverpool’s example, leading in 1884 to the founding of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (London SPCC)^[2] by Lord Shaftesbury, Reverend Edward Rudolf and Reverend Benjamin Waugh. After five years of campaigning by the London SPCC, Parliament passed the first ever UK law to protect children from abuse and neglect in 1889. The London SPCC was renamed the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1889,^[2] because by then it had branches across Great Britain and Ireland.

The NSPCC was granted its Royal Charter in 1895, when Queen Victoria became its first Royal Patron. It did not change its title to "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" or similar, as the name NSPCC was already well established, and to avoid confusion with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), which had already existed for more than fifty years. Today, the NSPCC works in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Channel Islands. Children 1st – formerly the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children – is the NSPCC's equivalent in Scotland. The NSPCC's organisation in the Republic of Ireland was taken up by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC), founded in 1956 as a replacement for the NSPCC.^[3] The NSPCC is the only UK charity which has been granted statutory powers under the Children Act 1989, allowing it to apply for care and supervision orders for children at risk.

Activities[link]

NSPCC Head Office

The NSPCC lobbies the government on issues relating to child welfare, and creates campaigns for the general public, with the intention of raising awareness of child protection issues. It also operates both the NSPCC Helpline, offering support to anyone concerned about a child, and ChildLine offering support to children themselves. Childline became a part of the NSPCC in 2006. In addition to the telephone helplines, NSPCC runs a similar online service called there4me.com (which is no longer available because Childline.com took it's place).

The charity also runs local services.^[4] These offer general family support, as well as more specific services such as working with families with alcohol problems.

In 2009, as part of its new organisational strategy, the NSPCC launched its Child Protection Consultancy service. This provides training, consultancy and learning resources to organisations that have contact with children, ranging from schools to sporting bodies. Through the work of its Child Protection Consultancy, the NSPCC aims to make organisations safer for children and thereby prevent cruelty to children.

As well as its main web site, the NSPCC provides a specialist web site for professionals called NSPCC inform.

Campaigning and controversy[link]

The NSPCC's campaigning role has often been controversial. The Guardian reported New Philanthropy Capital recently concluded that its campaigning is "flawed and naïve" and that there is "zero evidence" that £250m the NSPCC has spent on its recent "Full Stop" campaign actually benefited any children.^[5] The NSPCC also received complaints, amongst other things, for "cold" mailing young mothers with a "babies' names" booklet containing instead a detailed list of the deaths of babies.^[6]

In recent years, the charity has faced criticism for its stance on contact visits to children following parents' separation. The NSPCC has consistently opposed an automatic right of contact for both parents, arguing that this is not necessarily in the best interests of the child. This stance has led to criticism both in Parliament^[7] and by the fathers' rights group Fathers4Justice. In 2004, the London headquarters of NSPCC were briefly invaded and occupied by Fathers4Justice supporters, claiming that the NSPCC "ignores the plight of 100 children a day who lose contact with their fathers" and that they promote a "portrayal of men as violent abusers."^[8]

The NSPCC also faced criticism for failing (along with other organisations) to do enough to help Victoria Climbié and prevent her death, and also for misleading the inquiry into her death.^[9]

The organisation has also faced criticism for its allegedly increasing obsession with publicity and advertising, for fear mongering^[10][11] and supposedly fabricating or exaggerating facts and figures in its research. In an article on Spiked, Frank Furedi professor of sociology at the University of Kent, branded it a "lobby group devoted to publicising its peculiar brand of anti-parent propaganda and promoting itself."^[12]

David Hinchliffe, Labour MP, supported expenditure on campaigning, stating that the NSPCC's role should be about raising awareness,^[13] whilst Conservative MP Gerald Howarth described it as "completely incompetent" although he cited the charity's support for reducing the homosexual age of consent to 16 as the reason for him withdrawing his support for the Full Stop campaign.^[13]

The NSPCC also helps to fund, and is aided with funds raised by, the national will-making scheme Will aid, in which participating solicitors waive their usual fee to write a basic will and in exchange invite the client to donate to charity.^[14]

Satanic ritual abuse scandal[link]

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, a moral panic emerged over alleged ritual satanic abuse. The NSPCC provided a publication known as 'Satanic Indicators' to social services around the country that has been blamed for some social workers panicking and making false accusations. The most prominent of these cases was in Rochdale in 1990 when up to 20^[15] children were taken from their homes and parents after social services believed them to be involved in satanic or occult ritual abuse. The allegations were later found out to be false. The case was the subject of a BBC documentary which featured recordings of the interviews made by NSPCC social workers, revealing that flawed techniques and leading questions were used to gain evidence of abuse from the children. The documentary claimed that the social services were wrongly convinced, by organisations such as the NSPCC, that abuse was occurring and so rife that they made allegations before any evidence was considered.^[16][17]

Values[link]

The NSPCC's stated core values are based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

They are:

• Children must be protected from all forms of violence and exploitation
• Everyone has a responsibility to support the care and protection of children
• We listen to children and young people, respect their views and respond to them directly
• Children should be encouraged and enabled to fulfil their potential
• We challenge inequalities for children and young people
• Every child must have someone to turn to

VHS/DVDs[link]

Here's a list of NSPCC VHS/DVDS. Some are involved with NCH.

See also[link]

United Kingdom portal

• Internet Watch Foundation
• Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
• Kidscape
• The Children's Society
• Timeline of young people's rights in the United Kingdom

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Susan J. Creighton, "Organized Abuse: The NSPCC Experience", Child Abuse Review; Volume 2, Issue 4 (1993), p. 232–242.
• Jean La Fontaine, The Extent and Nature of Organised and Ritual Sexual Abuse of Children, HMSO, 1994.
• Jean La Fontaine, Speak of the Devil: Tales of Satanic Abuse in Contemporary England, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• Department of Health and Social Services Inspectorate. North West Region, Inspection of child protection services in Rochdale, Greater Manchester: Social Services Inspectorate. North West Region, 1990, viii, 33pp.
• Clyde, James J., The report of the inquiry into the removal of children from Orkney in February 1991, Edinburgh: HMSO, 1992, xiv, 363pp. ISBN 0-10-219593-5.
• Department of Health and Social Security and Welsh Office, Working Together: a guide to arrangements for inter-agency co-operation for the protection of children from abuse, London: HMSO, 1988, 72pp. ISBN 0-11-321154-6.
• Eleanor Stobart, Child abuse linked to accusations of "possession" and "witchcraft", Nottingham: Department for Education and Skills, 2006.

External links[link]

• NSPCC Homepage
• National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Registered Charity no. 216401 at the Charity Commission
• National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Registered Charity no. SC037717 at the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator

Frank Budgen (1882 – 1971) was an English painter acquainted with the author James Joyce. Born in Surrey, Budgen spent six years at sea before working in London as a postal worker. He changed jobs a number of times before travelling to Paris in 1910 to study painting, moving to Switzerland in time for World War I. Here he was employed by the British government at the Ministry of Information, an institution established in Zürich for "the spread of British propaganda in neutral countries." He returned to London in 1920, where he remained until his death.

Joyce and Budgen spent much of the war in the same city and similar social circles. According to Budgen's 1934 memoir James Joyce and the making of Ulysses, Joyce discussed aesthetic matters with Budgen a number of times, often referring to the content of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The last of these three, Budgen stated, Joyce referred to at the time as Work in Progress; indeed a number of the conversations he reports as having had with Joyce imply that the author was working out the form and content of this work in part by arguing with Budgen.

External links[link]

• Digital copy of James Joyce and the making of 'Ulysses', and other writings

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