Premier League football team, Cardiff City has announced its support for the NSPCC’s Underwear Rule campaign with the help of Welsh actor and CBeebies star Alex Winters.
In its continuing bid to help protect children from sexual abuse before it starts, the NSPCC is re-running its ‘Underwear Rule’ campaign with the support of Cardiff City Football Club and their ‘Face of the Family Stand’ Alex.
As part of the campaign, the NSPCC has developed an easy-to-remember guide – Talk PANTS – that helps children understand the key points of the Rule. (www.nspcc.org.uk/underwear)
- Privates are private.
- Always remember your body belongs to you
- No means no
- Talk about secrets that upset you
- Speak up, someone can help
Alex went along to Saturday’s game to talk PANTS with supporters and their families at the stadium’s award winning family stand. After the match Alex tweeted:
Truly PANTS day today at @CardiffCityFC with @NSPCC The footy was awful but the introducing ppl to PANTS was great.Thanks to the organisers.
The Underwear Rule campaign, which originally launched last summer, has been hugely successful in giving parents the confidence to have an easy conversation about what many originally saw as a difficult area for discussion. Although an impressive 38% of all parents of children aged 5-11 now recognise the Underwear Rule and talk PANTS, there are a significant number of parents that we still need to reach.
Alex said:
“The PANTS campaign is a fantastic child friendly way to introduce an important topic that can often be tricky for parents to talk about.
“Because of events in the media it’s particularly topical, but it should always be topical and at the forefront of everyone’s minds. I think it’s great that the NSPCC have approached the subject in a way young children can understand.
“I think some parents may avoid some subjects because they don’t know how to talk about them. As a parent I can understand this fear, but I would say to other parents there is no need to be apprehensive about this subject.
“Kids love the words PANTS – it makes them laugh. You need some humour to grab children’s attention – it’s really catchy.
“I have used it and had a chat with my own young son and it worked brilliantly.
“For a premiership team to support a campaign like this is a wonderful thing. We have such fantastic family support here at the club, it’s great for us to be able to lend a hand and reach our fans with this important message.
Cardiff defender Kevin McNaughton is also a huge supporter of the campaign, Kevin said:
“This is brilliant. Obviously having kids myself I have read all about the campaign and will be talking PANTS with my kids when they get a bit older. It is important for kids to understand these issues in a non-scary way which this does really well.”
Cardiff City takes safeguarding seriously and is backing this urgent bid to get parents locally to talk PANTS. Safeguarding manager, Helen Kay, said: “We’re proud to be supporting this fantastic campaign which I know has already reached so many parents out there. We want to do what we can to spread the message even further by introducing it to our fans. We’re a very family orientated club and have the ability to reach a wide audience to help deliver the message so we’re doing all we can to lend a hand.”
Des Mannion, NSPCC head of service for Wales said:
“We’re absolutely thrilled Cardiff City has come on board to boost parent’s knowledge about our PANTS campaign. Sexual abuse continues to be a terrible scar on our society which won’t heal by itself. Our campaign has started to make inroads in giving children the protection they need but there is obviously still a long way to go.
“Parents play the most important role in keeping their children safe, but many find sexual abuse a difficult subject to talk to their children about. As there was little freely available guidance to support them, we wanted to help make the conversations a lot easier and so devised the Underwear Rule campaign.”
Supportive materials for parents are available now online at www.nspcc.org.uk/underwear
