Cade Bethea, Elizabeth Bohn, Sarah Booth, Caroline Bowers, Lauren Branagh

Professor O’Neil

Public Relations

19 November 2015

Public Relations Proposal for Cook Children's Awareness Campaign

Situation Analysis

Corporal punishment is, “punishment administered by an adult to the body of a child ranging in severity from a slap to a spanking,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Over the span of 2014 in Tarrant County over 6,097 persons fell victim to corporal punishment; 11 died as a result. As reported by Dr. Dyann Daley--executive director of The Center for Prevention of Child Maltreatment at Cook Children’s Hospital--the earlier a child is exposed to corporal punishment, the more likely he or she will suffer from health issues, or become admitted in a federal prison Unfortunately, these aren’t the only harmful long-term outcomes caused by this type of punishment. Subjects are much more likely to suffer from alcoholism and smoking addiction, become obese or anorexic, become involved in violence and/or abuse their own children, inflict physical harm on oneself, or even end up homeless. Overall, according to Dr. Daley, those subjected to abusive punishment tactics have a shockingly lower life expectancy than those who were not. According to the Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, “Parents should never use corporal punishment because a growing body of research evidence shows that other disciplinary strategies are just as effective and do not involve the risk of escalation into physical abuse or subsequent psychological problems for children and adults.” (Straus and Stewart).

Due to the extreme consequences of corporal punishment, Cook Children's Hospital has taken a stand to stop this rising issue in Tarrant County. The Center for Prevention of Child Maltreatment is a center dedicated to addressing and preventing child abuse. The Center works to address the concern of child maltreatment in the North Texas community where Tarrant County is located. The Center battles child maltreatment through many different initiatives. Currently, The Center offers a program to help medical professionals detect maltreatment early. The Center also provides a safe family survey, risk terrain modeling (mapping of compared data) and evaluate, and recruit, possible foster/adoptive families using consumer analytics. Furthermore, other efforts and campaigns are being made to encourage and educate the public. However, this is not enough. More needs to be done to educate and raise awareness among the community and healthcare professionals regarding corporal punishment.

The problem that healthcare professionals currently face is how to identify victims before they come to the hospital for punishment-related injuries. Roughly 85 percent of parents currently use corporal punishment, and studies show that it does not improve behavior in children, but increases aggressive actions. This contradictory effect is part of the reason why Cook Children’s hospital is dedicated to putting an end to corporal punishment, and spreading awareness regarding the severe effects caused by this type of discipline.

Objectives

Decrease the amount of corporal punishment in Tarrant County by 5% by the end of 2016. Plan five tactics that can decrease corporal punishment in Tarrant county and execute three of them to raise awareness of the issue by May, 2016.

Target Audience

In our efforts to decrease the prevalence of corporal punishment on young people, we aim to target Tarrant County residents as a whole. Tarrant County has the highest rate of confirmed child abuse cases in the state of Texas. We aspire to target all residents, not just those inflicting or subjected to corporal punishment. Through Cook Children's Hospital, we intend to educate new parents and parents of toddlers in particular, because 0-3 year olds make up 80% of abused victims.

Strategies

Our main approach in lowering the amount of corporal punishment is to spread and encourage a healthy parent-child relationship, which we represent through our hash-tag #PositiveParenting. The campaign aims to lower the amount of corporal punishment in Tarrant County by 5% by the end of 2016. We have embedded this hash-tag into every element of our campaign with the aspiration to make it an active saying in the community, which will in turn raise awareness for positive parenting.

We will launch a social media campaign by November 2015, which will strongly encourage positive parenting technique and educate the public on corporal punishment and its many negative effects. Our second strategy is to collaborate with The Parenting Center on their Fight or Flight Event in Fort Worth; this event publicizes and supports Child Abuse Prevention Month. Our third strategy is to implement an education campaign through Cook Children’s Hospital, which will require confirmed abusers to learn about the lasting effects of corporal punishment on their victims. Another strategy is to create a brochure that outlines the focus of our campaign. The brochure will be distributed to all patrons of Cook Children’s Hospital. Attendees of the Fight or Flight Event will receive a wristband with the campaign slogan in addition to the brochure. Finally, we will create a billboard that will reach people of all demographics to spread the message of our campaign.

The rationale behind these program components is to spread the idea of positivity through a range of different avenues. Each tactic targets a different audience allowing #PositiveParenting to be spread sufficiently throughout Tarrant County. Our desired outcome through each strategy is to continuously remind people in the community to utilize positive parenting methods correlating with our message.

Tactics

Our campaign implements five different tactics in order to accomplish our objective. The social media campaign will be carried out through three websites: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Tweets will include positive parenting advice, statistics, images and updates about upcoming programs or events. Twitter is a simple way to quickly engage in two-way conversation with our audience. This will motivate them to look deeper into this mission, and influence them to continue the spread of information. Facebook will be utilized to share rich information, additional links and other forms of shareable media. Instagram will harness the power of visual appeal when reaching into the hearts of our audience. Our main goal in implementing this social media campaign is to connect with the community. To connect our audience and make our message more shareable, we will use #PositiveParenting; this will be used across all social media platforms. Getting the word out is the first step in creating a better organization. Included are examples of the types of posts being made on our media platforms.

In April, Child Abuse Prevention Month, The Fort Worth Parenting Center holds a ’Fight or Flight’ event for all of Fort Worth and Tarrant County residents. This event mainly targets families with young children. It is our plan to collaborate with the Parenting Center permanently, and help particularly with this event. With our budget, Cook Children’s Hospital will provide The Parenting Center with financial support to waive the $10 entrance fee. By doing this, more families, particularly those with lower incomes, will be included and therefore feel more inclined to participate and learn. The Fight or Flight event takes place on West 7th Street in Fort Worth, a very central and popular commercial area. Local residents get together and fly paper airplanes to raise awareness for child abuse and neglect in Tarrant County, specifically to promote choosing the flight tactic in bad situations. The goal is to break the world record for flying the most paper airplanes at a single event, which should also help pull participants and gain public attention. Participants will be encouraged to fly an extra plane in honor of a loved one affected by corporal punishment. In addition to the main paper airplane activity, with any additional budget Cook Children’s should amplify the attraction of the event by including family attractions like a bounce house, snow cones and a cotton candy machine. These additional aspects would appeal to parents with young children, particularly between the ages of 0 and 5. This redesigned event will be more appealing to younger families and will therefore spread information to an even greater portion of the Fort Worth Community. We will provide wristbands that support our cause, and have our saying #PositiveParenting on them. Our intention behind doing this is to spread awareness around Tarrant County, and to constantly remind those who have the wristbands about positive discipline.

As another tactic, we want to set up an education and counseling program at Cook Children’s Hospital for families that are related to corporal punishment victims. Through this program, parents with child victims that have been admitted to the hospital for abuse will receive education on the matter, allowing them to gain a better understanding of the issues corporal punishment causes. The program would also focus on positive forms of parenting and other types of effective discipline. This program would share and highlight the alarming statistics, like the percentage of children that fall victim to corporal punishment in Tarrant County alone. Our goal for this education program is to educate the parents about alternative methods of discipline. We also aim to spread awareness and demonstrate all parents and family members how severe corporal punishment truly is. CTA “Apply now to experience this educational program!”

Following the program implemented into the hospital, we also want to create and administer a brochure. The brochure would contain much of the same information that the program shares, however it would reach a different audience. As we stated in our situation analysis, health care officials are trying to stop corporal punishment before it is even administered. The brochure would explain what corporal punishment is, the negative effects of it, the statistics regarding these effects and alternative methods of discipline. The brochure would be distributed to all patients and their parents at the hospital, no matter their reason for admittance; the more families we can educate, the better. CTA “Read more at

Our final tactic will be to create a billboard that would be seen throughout Tarrant County. The billboard will have a single picture of a child. The picture would not show the action of abuse, but it would show a child in a state of hopelessness or sadness caused by such abuse. At the top of the board we would place the phrase, “Put an End to Corporal Punishment” and at the bottom corner of the board we would place, in bold, our slogan, “#PositiveParenting.” Our reasoning behind the billboard would be to reach a larger audience than just those involved in corporal punishment. In reaching a larger audience, more people would become interested in what corporal punishment is, and motivate them to help with the movement of putting an end to it. The billboard would also promote our campaign slogan of #PositiveParenting, potentially making it a slogan that can be spread beyond Cook Children’s hospital and even Tarrant County. CTA “I invite you to spread the message of #PositiveParenting.”

Actual Execution

For this project, we will execute these three tactics: a constructive Instagram account, a billboard for distribution and a silicone wrist band to be given out to participants of the Fight or Flight event and to be passed out at other fundraising events. Our goal is that through these three main tactics, awareness and knowledge of The Center for Prevention of Child Maltreatment led by Cook Children’s goals and objectives will become better known in the community.

Bibliography

Berger, Lawrence M., and Sarah A. Font.“The Role of the Family and Family-centered Programs and Policies”.The Future of Children 25.1 (2015): 155–176. Web…

“Corporal Punishment.” Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2015. <

"Fort Worth Fight or Flight - The Parenting Center." The Parenting Center. N.p., 23 Mar. 2015. Web. 10 Nov. 2015. <

Straus, Murray A., and Julie H. Stewart. "Psychological Aggression by American Parents: National Data on Prevalence, Chronicity, and Severity." J Marriage and Family

Journal of Marriage and Family 65.4 (2003): 795-808. Web.