Duty of care around television shows requires the right skills - Dr Charlotte Armitage

Thirteen years ago, YAFTA began with a simple conviction: talented people in Yorkshire and the North should not have to leave the region to receive serious, industry-led screen-acting training. At that point, the pathway into professional acting felt heavily London-centric.

We set out to fill a clear gap, led by tutors with drama-school and industry experience and with integrity at the heart of the organisation. Our aim was never simply to teach performance, it was to create credible routes into a demanding profession, rooted in opportunity rather than postcode.

Our Acting for Screen Diploma still attracts learners from across the UK and overseas, and our 13th anniversary shows how dramatically the industry has changed. Film and television have become faster, more visible and more complex. New formats, streaming, social media and the constant online afterlife of a programme have transformed what it means to take part - particularly for ordinary people who become contributors rather than professional performers.

As a psychologist and psychotherapist with more than a decade in television duty of care working across reality, factual entertainment, true crime and programmes including Big Brother, Celebrity Big Brother, Celebs Go Dating, The Only Way Is Essex, Made in Chelsea and Naked Attraction, I have seen that change first hand. Television can be ambitious, inventive and immensely positive. But it can also ask people to disclose intimate parts of their lives, relive distressing experiences, compete in emotionally charged environments and face public scrutiny at a speed few are prepared for.

Thirteen years ago, contributor welfare was far less formalised. Support might be brought in when difficulties were already emerging, sometimes with unclear boundaries around responsibility, confidentiality and clinical decision-making. High-profile tragedies and growing public concern made it impossible for the industry to regard welfare as peripheral. In April 2021, Ofcom's strengthened participant protections required broadcasters to take due care over the welfare of contributors at risk of significant harm, alongside clearer expectations on informed consent and risk assessment. That was a vital step.

Yet this policy change did account for the increased demand of a qualified and experienced workforce or a working system. This remains a core industry challenge. A welfare producer may be highly skilled at navigating a production but have no psychological training. A registered clinician may have excellent clinical credentials, yet little understanding of the pace, hierarchy, editorial pressures and decision-making realities of a production environment. Both of these roles are critical to delivering effective duty of care but neither alone can guarantee the kind of psychologically informed, accountable care that contributors deserve.

Good duty of care should ideally begin before casting is complete and continue beyond transmission. It considers the actual format: whether people will be isolated, competing, confronting one another, discussing trauma or living under intense media and social-media attention. It considers how this particular person in front of us will respond in the particular production environment they are entering and it creates a plan that is active under pressure: assessment pathways, informed consent, safeguarding arrangements, clear information-sharing boundaries, escalation routes, decision logs, medical or psychiatric input where needed, and genuine aftercare.

My own theory and process of assessment, The Armitage Dual Ecology Framework recognises that risk does not sit solely within an individual. It emerges in the relationship between a contributor's circumstances and the production ecology around them - casting, filming, editorial, publicity, transmission and the digital afterlife. The same person may be well placed to take part in one programme but not another, or may need different safeguards at a different point in their life.

I created YAFTA's Duty of Care in TV Production Diploma because the skills gap was obvious. Launched in November 2025, it is the UK's first diploma for registered mental-health professionals adapting their expertise to film and television. The first cohort completes its training next month, and a new cohort begins in October 2026. The course is practical by design: working through production scenarios, risk formulation, safeguarding, ethics, clinical boundaries, decision-making and the realities of working alongside editorial and production teams.

YAFTA is also developing psychological training for welfare producers, because practical welfare experience and psychological literacy need to meet.

YAFTA was founded to meet an industry skills gap in the North, 13 years ago. Today, that same instinct guides our work in contributor care and formal training.

Dr Charlotte Armitage is a psychologist and psychotherapist and YAFTA Media & Duty of Care Psychology Lead.