Communicating Concern or Making Claims? The 2012 Press Releases of UK Child Welfare and Protection Agencies

Child welfare and protection agencies play an important role in bringing concerns about children and young people to public attention. The press release is a key tool within this. This paper reports on findings from an analysis of press releases from selected UK child welfare and protection agencies in 2012. It demonstrates that the information contained in press releases is neither neutral nor dispassionate. Instead, press releases are found to be political artefacts, whose purpose is to galvanise and shape opinion and garner support for a particular standpoint, campaign or the agency itself. In this respect, they must be understood as ‘claims-making’ activities. Because of this, they should, it will be argued, be subject to the same critical scrutiny that we would expect to bring to the presentation of all ‘evidence’.