To disagree with Children in need

[BrokenBrit]

Perhaps I should preface this and say I do give to charity and I recognise we don’t live in a fair and decent society where services are properly funded.

However, I think it’s pretty shameful having children plastered all over the tv revealing their private medical diagnosis so as to get some money for essential funding.

I also hate the narrative of disabled people needing pity and charity with the sad music and dimmed lights (I’ve not watched it this year but that has been previous years experience!). Either that or as some sort of inspiration! I just hate this narrative!

Then there are the jolly celebs making themselves feels good singing a song and raising a few £ when what really needs is change to policy and practice, a properly funded NHS, proper provision for children with SEND and much, much more. But let’s donate a quid and feel good about ourselves hey.

AIBU?

Where is Captain Tom when we need him 😝

I very much agree with you; however, CIN don't actually do any charity work, so there are loads and loads of normal reasonable charitable costs that they would never incur anyway.

Basically, CIN is an agency that fundraises on behalf of (some) smaller, lesser-known charities, which effectively costs them 5% of the total given that is assigned to them, the 5% being the admin costs incurred by CIN in getting it to them in the first place.

I'm sure they'd still much rather have 95% of a share of whatever a huge, well-known organisation like CIN can raise rather than 100% of zero raised under their own steam, because nobody has heard of them; but I do think that a lot of people have the idea that CIN is very hands-on in doing the actual charitable work, when it doesn't at all in reality.

I have a slightly complicated relationship with Children in Need.
I have personally benefited from it - a provision near me was built by the DIY SOS CIN thingy, and is open to disabled children and adults. It's great. But as a multiply disabled adult, I really wouldn't want to share my private medical information on national television. I find it hard enough to deal with that many staff at uni have those details when arguably they don't really need it to make things accessible. I don't like that the private medical information of young children is shared, as they are not able to give consent. Imagine growing up to find that your birth story and history of all your hardest moments was public knowledge. We can raise money for charity without the side order of pity. (Yes I agree the gov should be funding a lot of this stuff, but fact is they're not). I've seen it argued by other disabled people that the audience are gawping at the modern day "freak show", and while that sounds inflammatory, they're not far wrong.

I loathe it, always have. I give to various charities on an ad hoc basis, donate all the stuff from my regular clearouts to charity rather than sell them, basically I do what I can when I can. So I hate this annual guilt tripping fest and never watch. I feel the same about Comic Relief, guess this makes me a mean spirited creature!

I agree and disagree. You are absolutely right that it's a shameful state of affairs BUT you are wrong because these children aren't getting their needs met by the state, and with CIN some of them are.

Totally agree. It makes me feel weird cos I know he's doing/done something amazing....BUT the crying and the 'legend/hero' talk is cringe.

Feel like I need to say that I do donate to charity, cos it feels so wrong to say that about him...but they do a similar thing every year on Radio 1 or 2 and follow the same gushing pattern so it feels really fake and forced.

This . In an ideal world there shouldn’t be a need for fundraising but the children do benefit..so what is the answer?

Start with subsidized nurseries then we'll talk @kate

There really shouldn't be a need for any charities if the world was fair

If we taxed wealth properly we wouldn’t have to raise income tax. Those with the most, hoover up all the resources and then make tons of money doing nothing so they can then Hoover up even more and it becomes a never ending cycle of wealth creation. This leaves ordinary working folk priced out of the housing market and paying through the noise to pay rent, unable to save.

There is some serious money in this country but somehow we have come to accept greed as an acceptable human trait and we don’t get the very wealthy to pay what’s fair. We are not addressing the grotesque inequality.

Well since we're being honest; I don't watch or donate because

1. I don't watch terrestrial TV.
2. When I did, I thought CIN was a vomit-inducing pile of shite.
3. I don't like children.

I think the answer could be to fundraise, show the kids using the resources, but without so much probing about "what happened", and without the pity/ inspiration porn narrative being used so much. That program, A Special School, managed to show disabled kids much like non-disabled kids might be shown on telly, i.e. without invading their privacy and publishing their medical details. As a viewer you could still very much appreciate what the school did for them.

Think our attention spans being alot shorter has something to do with that.

Look at cricket, they've sped up a game (created in the slow paced Victorian era) by creating shorter formats of it inorder to stem the tide of falling viewer numbers.

We have so many options now that we want things much quicker than before, so less waiting around (for example, watching marathon telethons) is tolerated.

I always loved the old format though when Terry would come on around 12:30am and announce the total.

Nice 👍 I hate kids too 🤣🤣

I agree with you and for other reasons too. I am surprised year after year that these events continue and shops like Asda continue to sell the crappy merchandise. Lots of schools don't seem to bother much and I thought hardly anyone watched terrestrial TV anymore (especially children).

They turned up at dsis special school once with no communication to the parents. The first we knew was when dsis was being held up as some poor victim to extract money from viewers.

Dm is still furious about her being used in this way, particularly as she has never received anything back in payment.

They are using vulnerable people to extort money by pulling on people's heartstrings. I wonder how many people were able to give proper, understood consent.

That's awful, I'm sorry that happened to your sister.
There's an account called disabledeliza on instagram who talks about being in a children's choir for the program, and how they were kept for hours in a hot cramped room which ended up making their symptoms worse.

If you’ve ever had the misfortune to watch any day time TV, you’ll be astonished by the number of so called charities asking for funds, from all over the world allegedly.
They make me so cross.

I once followed employees of one through companies house, and then companies listed abroad for one such charity. All these men were getting million pound payments in divisions in Africa and other countries
I should have made a note of it all to be honest, it looks so bad.
I wouldn’t give them a penny.

I have a relative who worked for a bank and said it was heartbreaking to see the number of charity payments coming out of some of the older customers accounts each month, to these blasted TV advertising charities.

I was never a huge fan of the format, but in the last decade my DD has benefitted so much from CIN, it funds a charity that provides supported activity weekends through the Calvert Trust, and family support days for those affected by her serious illness. We have to fill out detailed forms afterwards to be submitted back to CIN to prove that the funds are having a real impact. For disabled kids these type of activities would be completely inaccessible to most, so I'm really grateful for all it has done for us. If they don't fund this stuff then who will? Thank you so much to all those who kindly donated. Please don't put people off donating OP.

This...

I think you'll find CIN has been going a lot longer than the last Tory govt have been in power

Good on them raising £33million

It's entertainment - I'm pretty sure they'd raise more money by shutting down BBC1 for the evening and donating the saved money to charity.

Yes totally agree with you thats the reality ,but that's like a fantasy of realms of peefect society, the idea of Government ensuring society essential services are financed properly ect,

I think what I find sightly quesy , 🧀 cheesy is the ridiculous lengths people are socially encouraged to seem like they are being up for it, having a laugh,
for this prominent uk event,
such as daft things for example sitting in a bath of cold beans,
how long can someone can stay in Bath tub or eat them whithout farting ?,

David Williams comedian and Author of children's stories that are very poor imitations of Roald Dhal well known children's stories,
Rember when he swam the Bristol English channel in the past?

Obviously it was amazing achievement,..but why put yourself something that's as extreme as that then?

Why run a 10k marathon for God's sake ect the list goes on?

I am susprised there hasn't been yet as far as I am aware?
a Children's in Need telethon, for "
I am Celebrity get me out of the Aussie style Jungle"

In 1990 and 1992 ITV's telethon was disrupted by disability rights activists demanding inclusion. These were important moments in the social history of disability,