THIS year’s John Lewis Christmas advert heralds a long-term commitment by the company to raise awareness for children in care, director Pippa Wicks has said.
In the hotly anticipated advert a man is shown learning to ride a skateboard so he has a mutual interest with a child his family is about to foster.
She told GB News: “It’s a very special day for us. We’re thrilled to be partnering with Action for Children and Who Cares? Scotland, and using our l platform with the Christmas ad which reaches over 20 million viewers to raise awareness of the issues around care, social care, and what it’s like to be a care-experienced young adult.
“So, obviously, it’s more than an ad. This is a really long term commitment. John Lewis’ history is a long one of tackling societal inequality and we just felt this was the time to speak out about what it’s like to be in care and to get the Government to respond quickly.
“There’s been an independent review and we’re really wanting them to take some action on the back of that. We need to use the unspent apprentice levy to help people from care get into work. We need to stop unregulated homes and this care cliff where people no longer have support as young adults, get much more stability so that they’ve got steady environments and can maintain relationships and connections.
“So we’re just hoping that the timeliness of the ad relative to the government response to the inquiry, the opportunity to raise awareness across a big platform makes a big difference.”
But in an Interview with Isabel Webster and Andrew Pierce on GB News, she insisted it wasn’t politically motivated.
She explained : “It’s not that political really. We’ve had two Christmases recently which have been really impacted by Covid. And it’s about what you do that matters, not about gifts and products and too much stuff. It’s about what you do. It’s not political at all.
“We, John Lewis, have launched the Happier Futures programme. This is a long term commitment to supporting care-experienced young adults with work opportunities and apprenticeships, if they’d like that, with John Lewis, but we also welcome other businesses to join in partnership with us if they’d like to on this because the more of us that get involved in supporting these young people, the more difference we can make.”
She added: “Yeah, people are buying products and they do buy stuff and that’s that’s important. And in fact, 25% of the sales of those products will go towards our Happier Futures programme fund, which we will be doing over many more years now and building so it’s of course buying things, people are buying much more thoughtfully this year.
“They’re really, you know, people are very hard up. You’ve just talked about food banks, which we also support through FairShare. But life is really tough for most families at the moment. They buy more thoughtfully but it’s not just about stuff. It’s about what you do that matters.”