Reality TV – ‘ban children under three’

19 November 2007 09:00

A Norfolk child welfare expert on Friday joined calls for a ban on children under three being used in reality TV - a year after a controversial show put babies and toddlers from the county in the care of inexperienced teenage couples.

BBC3's The Baby Borrowers, shot

on a Norwich housing estate, was

one of the programmes cited this

week as the NSPCC and the

Family and Parenting Institute lobbied TV watchdog Ofcom to press for a ban.

They said tiny children used in

the show, and others like Supernanny and Bringing Up Baby, could suffer long-term harm from being "manhandled, ignored" or put in "acute distress".

When The Baby Borrowers was filmed last year, then shown in January this year, it provoked anger locally, with Norfolk child protection chiefs calling for it to be cancelled and demanding to have social workers on set at all times.

On Friday Dr Caroline Ball, independent chairman of Norfolk local safeguarding children board, who led the opposition to The Baby Borrowers, offered her support to the two charities.

She said: "Children are potentially put at considerable risk. I can't see any justification for using very young children."

She added that the ban on using under-threes was a "perfectly sensible idea", and said: "There's a difficulty in a cut-off age, but there needs to be one somewhere. Additionally, there needs to be a stiff code of practice in relation to the use of older children in reality TV shows."

The charities' campaign includes a call for better protection for children to be compulsory under the broadcasting code.

Eileen Hayes, parenting adviser for the NSPCC, said: "Until there is reassurance broadcasters take issues of safeguarding the welfare of babies and children more seriously, we should call a halt to any more programmes involving the under-threes and probably under-fives."

In The Baby Borrowers, five teenage couples were given other people's children to look after. They cared for a total of 25 children, from babies through to 14-year-olds.

Mary McLeod, chief executive of the Family and Parenting Institute, a government-funded advisory body, said: "In programmes like these we see babies in acute distress, ignored or manhandled. If this masquerades as public service broadcasting it is

time to call a halt and make sure neither the children nor their relationships with their parents are harmed in the short or longer term."

She warned that children taking part may be bullied afterwards, and said: "Tiny babies are not commodities to be shunted around."

Tanya Shaw, executive producer for Bringing Up Baby, said: "I think it is very extreme to ban children on television under the age of five."

A BBC spokesman said the criticisms about The Baby Borrowers were "completely unfounded".

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