CHILD ACTORS AND ABUSE: THE NEED FOR CHANGE - Young Performer Support Specialist
Children in storytelling is a potent tool in the elevation of emotion and authenticity. It is often through the perspective of children that the state of the world is revealed. As viewers we easily connect to the innocent and our heartstrings weave with the vulnerable, allowing for riveting and emotion bound entertainment. There is something endearing about the mischief in Home Alone and The Parent Trap or the magic in August Rush that would never be possible with adult performers.
But (and we know "but" removes the power of the previous statement and emphasises the next) - child actors should never be collateral damage for our entertainment. I would like to highlight, bolden, italicise and underline the word "child". We so often focus on the "actor" bit, that we forget who the child is; and that the child is a developing, vulnerable and growing human being with limitations to their sense of self, their decision making processes, their understanding of consequence, a need to belong, and to put the cherry on top, a particular susceptibility to power dynamics.
A wide variety of big names have stepped forward, speaking about how the industry abused this exact childhood vulnerability for profit. The heavy veil has started to be opened on the misuse of power in the film industry, from the #MeToo movement that initiated the need for intimacy coordinators, to documentaries like Quiet on Set working to illuminate the "dark side of kids TV". Amongst others the United Nations have stated that "sexual abuse and exploitation of children in the entertainment industry must stop immediately", the Collumbia Journal of Law and the Arts lobbies for "the need for legal reform" in children's TV in accordance with others demanding "better laws, better enforcement".
Since the birth of intimacy coordination, the onus for child on-set safety often falls on the intimacy coordinator, although this is not necessarily part of their training or tool-kit. Flagging content for possible risk of abuse then also became the responsibility of the intimacy coordinator to mitigate, due to a lack of strategies or crew portfolios.
Safe Sets recognised this gap and have purposefully moved towards practical solutions to stifle child actor abuse. Not just for the child star, but also the regular child (the ones who go straight back to school or soccer practice the next day), employed daily across the world in film, television, theatre, advertisements, and other media. Through widening the scope of on-set intimacy coordination, Safe Sets have been practically developing and sculpting child strategies since 2020 to minimise abuse, maximise safety and enable compelling child performances.
In response to this growing need, Safe Sets partnered with accomplished child-acting coach Tamryn Speirs to develop the role of the Young Performer Support Specialist (YPS). This role is nested in the foundation of intimacy coordination, seasoned with the pillars of performance play, and developed with care to facilitate a respectful, consensual and enriching experience for the child actor. The strategies weaved into the young performer support specialist role places specific focus on purposeful play, nourishing and drawing on the child's innate understanding and need for play.
For Safe Sets, the golden standard is to cradle the child actor's innocence and meet them at their specific point of development. We avoid hastening their understanding of life, and believe that each child, as a seasoned performer or first-timer on set, should be able to experience and explore the adventures of life at their own pace (that first kiss belongs to the butterflies in our stomachs, not a fake spin-the-bottle scene on set). The child's well-being should not be sacrificed in service of the storyline and trauma should never be collateral damage for art. We aim for a safe, consensual, playful and uplifting creative experience that simultaneously aims to achieve the directorial vision for the scene.
We want to keep the minor safe while delivering the required performance.
The official launch of the young performer support specialist role started in 2024, and after careful design, the first global training for young performer support specialists will start in February 2026 in London. Applications are currently open HERE.
We firmly believe that support is not only about the abuse we quote, but the practical steps we put in place to make sure we have no abuse to mention in the future. And our answer is practical and tested: Young Performer Support Specialist.
