Working with children in production brings plenty of questions and unique challenges. Where can you find child performance hours? What do you need to consider around licensing, education and safeguarding? And where can you find practical tools to help you prepare?
Overlooking these considerations can lead to last-minute changes, delays, and disruption to shooting schedules. It can also put unnecessary pressure on young performers and the people supporting them. Planning helps you build children’s needs into the production from the start.
Created by people with decades of experience in the industry, the CPSH Production Companion brings practical guidance and resources together in one place. Free to access, it’s designed to help production teams, chaperones and tutors prepare, plan and support young performers, from casting brief to wrap.
Practical information and tools in one place
The Companion is a “padlet” that brings together reference tables, guidance, forms and checklists, organised by topic so you can explore the areas relevant to your production.
Inside, you’ll find:
- Child performance tables: information on children’s working hours, including resources for England and Northern Ireland.
- Child licensing: guidance on the application process and considerations when planning.
- Safeguarding and policies: information to help you consider safeguarding arrangements, designated safeguarding leads and production policies.
- The CPSH Safeguarding Toolkit: practical production resources, including useful forms and checklists.
- Education: guidance to help you plan, track and support children’s learning alongside their production commitments.
- Chaperones and tutors: information about their roles and considerations when arranging support for young performers.
- PART training: information about City & Guilds accredited training for those looking to develop their knowledge.
- Supportive links: further industry resources, including information from the BFI.
Helping you prepare and plan
Whether you’re working with young performers for the first time or bringing years of experience to a new production, it helps to have a reliable starting point for your questions.
You might be checking performance hours while preparing a schedule, considering how education will fit into the working day, or looking for a safeguarding checklist to support your preparations. The Companion brings these resources together so they’re easier to find and refer back to.
At CPSH, we believe supporting children in the creative industries is everyone’s responsibility. Sharing practical knowledge is one way we can help production teams, chaperones and tutors work together to put children’s needs at the centre of their planning.
The Production Companion Padlet
Take a look, bookmark the page and share it with any colleagues involved in supporting children in TV and film. They will thank you!
Keep the link handy. You never know when you’ll need it.
Explore the CPSH Production Companion (Link takes you off-site to the Padlet resource)