Dr Rebecca W.

❗ A.I. can be a force for good and ill when it comes to child sexual exploitation and abuse online, as in so many areas. It can be used to help curb abuse, to identify perpetrators and help safeguard victims. But it also poses a massive threat. 📲 As Childlight - Global Child Safety Institute's Deborah Fry told Channel 4 News last night, we're seeing a growing proportion of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) that is A.I. generated, and on platforms used by millions of people daily. ⚠ She warned: "The viewing, and increase in viewing, of CSAM material, including A.I. generated CSAM, increases the demand for abuse of children and the capturing of this abuse in images and videos." 💡 As Debi argues, the exponential increase in technology-facilitated abuse and the avoidance of responsibility by those who should be creating safe environments, is contributing to a perfect storm that enables child sexual abuse to proliferate in the UK and across the globe. We need a more responsible approach urgently because children can't wait. https://lnkd.in/eQ3a7qZu

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What’s on your Learning at Work Week agenda? After a great CIPR Inside webinar last week I plan to make a start on Rachel Miller’s new book and off to London for more learning with Martin Fewell and other HE leads about comms and cybersecurity. I’ve stacked up ten years of Chartered Institute of Public Relations CPD and already well under way for this year. #CIPRLearn

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Increasing diversity and accessibility within democracy is something I’ve been passionate about since writing my undergrad dissertation on electoral systems 🤓. A huge culture shift is needed within the UK to improve involvement, access and engagement in our democratic processes and that’s not going to be resolve in the next six weeks. However each of the parties (and Independents) should do what they can to ensure the #GeneralElection information they’re sharing is as accessible as possible. If they’re unsure how, VODG (Voluntary Organisations Disability Group) members can help! #Accessibility #Democracy

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Too often the Committees, in divergence from counterparts in Holyrood & San Steffan, issue fudge & waffle. Not so this week: "On 26th June the Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee issued a report that addressed the governance of Amgueddfa Cymru/ Museum Wales. The report opened: “The Committee was extremely concerned by the evidence heard about the governance arrangements that were in place at Amgueddfa Cymru. “...We have grave concerns about the processes that have been adopted...not least in the interactions between Amgueddfa Cymru and the Welsh Government. More work needs to be done to ensure that this situation is not repeated at Amgueddfa Cymru, or any other public body. “In the context of these major issues, it is hugely concerning that the Welsh Government’s Tailored Review programme is in the process of being adapted to a self-assessment style of review. The Committee is concerned that this approach will prove to be inadequate in identifying and resolving potentially serious governance issues, such as those exposed by the situation at Amgueddfa Cymru.” The report of 75 pages is deserving of scrutiny and explication." Plus a gallop through past days- https://lnkd.in/egxN3kwQ

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The value of communications Last week I shared guidance on setting up a Community of Practice (CoP) for communications professionals. I believe CoPs can help in organisations where professionals don’t feel that communications is valued, as the community can have a real impact by working together to showcase their value. How does a communications professional showcase their value: 1. By demonstrating their impact: using metrics like engagement rates, collecting feedback and testimonials, and developing case studies highlighting success 2. By showcasing their skills: being confident referencing experience, resources and theories, creating a portfolio of work samples, and by offering effective communication advice 3. By leading on best practice and innovation: you can’t underestimate the value of being a connected and curious professional, adopting new communication technologies, and showcasing creative solutions to challenges 4. By showing up consistently: (it matters) you build trust by consistently meeting deadlines and delivering quality work, and maintaining proactive and transparent communication with stakeholders And picture how you can move the dial if this is done at scale in an organisation! What would you add to this list? #communications Image description: White quote on a beige background which says “How does a communications professional showcase their value?” 🙋🏻‍♀️ I’m Georgia, I’m a strategic comms specialist with over 13 years' experience 👩🏻‍💻 I post about comms - from neuroinclusive comms to leadership in comms - and the importance of flexible working as a tool to tackle the motherhood penalty 👩🏻‍💼 All opinions are my own, not my employer’s

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Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) Outlines Key Priorities for the next West Midlands   As we approach the West Midlands Mayoral election on 2nd May 2024, FSB has put together a Mayoral Manifesto to help the candidates understand the challenges faced by our members across the West Midlands Combined Authority catchment area, namely; #Birmingham, #Solihull, #Coventry, #Wolverhampton, #Walsall, #Dudley and #Sandwell. This Manifesto outlines areas the Mayor could tackle to help aid small businesses and bolster inclusive growth. This year marks FSB’s 50th anniversary, having been established in 1974 to help our members succeed in business - we are a non-profit making and non-party political organisation that’s led by our members, for our members. In the #WestMidlands we are a trusted voice for small business with more than 10,000 members across the region. We aim to represent anyone and everyone running a business or with aspirations to start a business. With SMEs making up over 99.6% of the indigenous 254,640 enterprises in the West Midlands, 253,575 (99.6 per cent) are small and medium-sized enterprises and, of these, more than 84.2 per cent are sole traders and micro businesses (employing 0-9 employees), it’s easy to see that the West Midlands economy will not be able to boost productivity, tackle the climate emergency or have inclusive growth without small businesses. Small businesses are not only at the heart of the West Midlands economy, they are also at the heart of West Midlands communities. They create local jobs, grow and keep wealth within a local economy and provide vital local services. Our small businesses support communities in the good times and, as we have seen, stick around when the going is not so good. Our manifesto suggests ways that small businesses can help the Mayor create a thriving West Midlands, a successful economy and vibrant communities.   https://lnkd.in/e8ERHqh3 Linsey MIED Mike Goodall Lee Osborne Sue...Sue Tonks Hollie Whittles Rob Harrison Hemant Kalidas Ray Hickinbottom- Supporting Small Businesses Lianne Phillips FSB- Helping Small Businesses Grow Roger Poynton

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Essential reading for anyone working with, or for, public sector organisations in the run-up to the #GeneralElection. The pre-election period officially begins at 1am tomorrow, so thoughts and prayers with all public sector communicators having to rip up their plans and figure out when to launch key initiatives (we’re helping several of our clients navigate this tricky conundrum). As a survivor of the triple election year of 2019 (locals, Euros, General), I totally feel your pain! #publicsectorcomms #preelectionperiod #GE2024

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Government risks sleepwalking into another IT scandal as it pushes ahead with plans to monitor bank accounts of disabled people Mikey Erhardt, campaigner at Disability Rights UK on the impact government plans to monitor the bank accounts of benefit claimants will have on disabled people. It looks like we’re sleepwalking into another Horizon scandal. Disabled people up and down the country are sounding the alarm ahead, with 6.3 million of us potentially affected by the government’s latest dalliance with untested, unscrutinised, and potentially unlimited powers for new “bank scanning” algorithms, which are being proposed to tackle “fraud”. An issue that is seemingly so out of control that the fraud rate for disability benefits is only 0.2%; the government’s latest plans are essentially a digital sledgehammer to crack the tiniest nut. #DisabilityRightsUK #benefits #surveillance #dataprotection #DPID #algorithms

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🗳️ As the UK heads towards the general election this week, families with disabled children are keenly observing party manifestos to understand what the future might hold. Supporting a child with disabilities requires robust and reliable government support. Over on the CPG website we’ve reviewed the main parties’ manifestos to highlight their commitments to children with special educational needs and families with disabled children. It’s crucial for families to evaluate these proposals and choose the policies that best align with their needs and aspirations. 🔗 Read more about what each party promises in their manifestos in the link below. #UKElection2024 #DisabledChildren #FamilySupport #SpecialEducationalNeeds #ElectionManifestos #Vote2024 

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Telling the story of policy through people is everything. And, as we head toward this week’s UK general election, I’m proud for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism to be focussing on those often at the centre of a story, but whose voices are rarely heard. The importance of migrant narratives is a topic that came up recently at Unbound Philanthropy and this, by Emiliano Mellino, is an exact example of how we can enrich both storytelling and understanding through fact-based journalism. Inclusive journalism matters more than ever. #democracy #transparency #investigativejournalism #migrantvoices #inclusive #storytelling https://lnkd.in/eubxAUSb

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CIPR Volunteer Awards - it takes a village! It was terrific to be nominated for two Chartered Institute of Public Relations Volunteer Awards for 'Outstanding Contribution' and 'Strategic Comms Experts of the Year'. However, without getting too "I'd like to thank my parents" about things, any individual awards are a function of the amazing collective achievement of the CIPR Crisis Communications Network, to which I'm honoured to serve as Special Advisor. For proof of that, you just need to look at the fact that every member of our steering committee picked up an award this year. Our fearless co-chair Katherine Sykes FCIPR Chart.PR was one of the Outstanding Leaders of the year, while her fellow co-chair Chris Tucker also landed that honour, as well as receiving a gong for Developing Best Practice. Sara Naylor was one of the three Strategic Comms Experts of the Year, Adelaide Arthur Chart.PR was rightly recognised for her Outstanding Contribution and the brilliant Felix Östman was among the Events and Social Media Champions of the Year. In just two short years, the Network has attracted over 800 members, with a LinkedIn following approaching 2,000 - from across the UK to Nairobi, New York, Mumbai, Joburg, Sao Paolo, Jakarta, Brussels, Melbourne and Beyond. We run a brilliant events programme - combining panel-based webinars and our member-led Open House sessions - that attracts among the highest numbers of attendees of any group. This year, we've also introduced our turbo 'In Conversation With' sessions - the first featured the incredible Professor Lucy Easthope and I'll be talking to Timothy Coombs on 1st July. We have a terrific monthly newsletter (all hail Sara Naylor), a blog averaging 2-3 posts a month and last September produced our first ever Skills Guide (step up Chris Tucker) on writing a crisis communications plan. In short, while it's always lovely to receive individual recognition, it's even nicer when it's alongside other members of the Network family. And if you're not a member or follower, you don't know what you're missing! Great things are yet to come and I can't wait. #cipr #crisiscommunications #pr #publicrelations #risk #reputation #resilience #riskmanagement #leadership #marketing #business #management

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Some useful tips in producing #Content for #MultiLingual #services in this post from Essex County Council's James Green. https://lnkd.in/ecWffHeG 🔹 Keep sentences as short as possible. 🔹 Avoid acronyms. 🔹 Avoid metaphors. 🔹 Avoid phrases that may be translated literally. 🔹 Establish how you can protect terms like project or people names. 🔹 Avoid negatives. 🔹 Be careful with phrasal verbs.

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I'm often asked what my job consists of... My response: I engage with businesses/trade associations to tell their story and bring our Free Trade Agreements to life through communications. Their response: What is a Free Trade Agreement? My response: It looks like I've got more work to do... Joking aside, the world of trade can be a complex one, with alien words and strange concepts, but it really doesn't have to be - as the below video goes to show. A massive thanks and well done to our production team at the Department for Business and Trade for putting together this helpful explainer video!

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🖥 Single Trade Window (STW) ‼️ NEW ‼️ features now available We’ve added new features to the existing Single Trade Window (STW) private beta service, which was first released in February 2024. In this latest release, we’ve introduced the ability: ✅ to make Safety & Security declarations (entry summary declarations) ✅ for agents will be able to use the STW service for the first time ✅ for users to create Goods Movement References (GMR) The user experience has also been enhanced through improved registration, email notifications, improvements to the user dashboard, and the ability to ‘clone’ declarations As well as these changes, the STW retains the features we introduced in the first private beta release including the ability to submit customs import declarations via our free user interface. We’ll introduce more new features for traders to test soon, including Simplified Declaration Procedures (SDP). Businesses who are interested in signing up to take part can contact HM Revenue & Customs via 📧 STWbcrteam@hmrc.gov.uk to register their interest and try the STW for themselves. We’d like to hear from agents, hauliers and carriers in particular.

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🌟 Short summaries and detailed analyses 🌟 Closing the door on that other department* in the news this week, I wanted to stroll down the corridor to the Department of Redundancy Department. This month, I've seen a hundred variations of the following sentences: "This section provides you with a brief summary of Topic X." "We'll analyse Topic Y in more detail in the next chapter." 🤔 Now, my friends, I applaud the signposting and the pronouns. I love a good transitional sentence. What I love less is the redundancy built into "a brief summary" and "analyse ... in more detail". It doesn't take much to remove it for a noticeable impact: "This section summarises Topic X." "We'll analyse Topic Y [more] in the next chapter." 💥 #editing #WritingTips #PlainEnglish * Yes, I'm riding on the glittering coat-tails of Taylor Swift with this post. I'm the mother of a young Swiftie so I make no apologies.

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So, it’s not #MIPIM (of course), but what IS it – and how can organisations get the most out of UKREiiF from a communications and advocacy perspective? Tali Robinson and I, drawing on insights from other #UKREiiF-going colleagues including Phil Briscoe, have set out where we see the opportunities heading for #UKREiiF2025. Long story short, some of the big opportunities are in: > owned thought leadership content (ideally with a written or video take-away-able form) > convening conversations and positioning your brand at the heart of the event > much more clever use of digital communications to cut through the noise and make an impact in a market that is going to become more saturated > political engagement, particularly in the aftermath of the next election Full thoughts in our debREiiF (a core contribution from Henry Columbine, obvs) here > https://lnkd.in/eZ68ZG_G SEC Newgate UK | #StrategicCommunications | #PurposeCommunications

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A little video about our Publishing Campaign. Every Cornwall Beneath and Beyond pre-order helps us to get our books into libraries and bookshops. The campaign ends at 8pm Thursday 2nd May, after which pre-orders will be at full price. https://lnkd.in/eHYZSsfP To see how the Campaign is progressing, check out https://lnkd.in/ec-aTmGY #booklaunch #publishingourbook #businessmodel

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📚That’s today’s reading sorted 🤓 If you’re in #internalcomms download the latest IC index 2024 report from Institute of Internal Communication and Ipsos UK. Some fascinating insights on trust in senior leaders, what people really think about returning to the office and employers taking a stance on big issues in society.

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