This relatively new ministry under Secretary of State, Ed Balls, has responsibility for pretty much everything associated with the lives of children, so SKTV identified lobbying here as vital to gain government support for the Campaign. SKTV Executive member Katy Jones made the issues clear to senior civil servants and Floella Benjamin, who has been tirelessly working independently for the cause, met the Minister and his senior team, to impress on them what would be lost when all public service content outside the BBC disappears. Subsequently Save Kids’ TV drew together these two approaches and held a full briefing meeting with a key ministerial advisor. The issues were dissected in detail, and the key point SKTV made was that the Ministry is hugely concerned with the care we afford our children, and that is precisely the position we take on the demise of quality indigenous media for kids. It’s a failure of care. We are failing to give them the care which is their right. We are failing to engage them as citizens and failing to empower them as individuals if we distance their media from their experience.
We pointed out that the £35 million required to support a public service alternative for kids was a small sum compared to the overall education budget – but the money for new programmes, widely disseminated and powerfully engaging, would be extremely well spent as an educational resource. It could do more to re-connect kids to the society in which they live than a hundred government schemes and initiatives.
We have asked the DCSF to support public funding for new children’s content and to communicate this to the DCMS where the final decisions on the future of public service content will be taken.
