| Code | BPS/GB/148 |
| Name | The British Psychological Society; Standing Committee on Communications; 1984-1990; (SCComms) |
| Corporate Name | The British Psychological Society |
| Subordinate | Standing Committee on Communications |
| Dates | 1984-1990 |
| Epithet | (SCComms) |
| Parallel Name | SCComms |
| Other Names | Information Committee |
| DatesAndPlaces | London
Leicester |
| Address | Leicester |
| Activity | The Standing Committee on Communications was founded in 1984 to:
Advise the Council on the Development of the Society's Internal and External Relations;
Serve as a Forum for Liaison between the Standing Press Committee, the Standing Committee on Publications, the Bulletin Editors;
Act as a Stimulus to Raise the Awareness of Other Society Committees and Psychologists in General to the Need to Consider the Mechanisms to be Adopted in the Promotion of a Policy;
Act as a Co-ordinating Body of Behalf of Council for Determining Prioriries When Dealing With Initiatves from the Boards, Divisions, Sections and Branches and other Subsystems of the Society;
Co-ordinate the work of the staff concered with internal and external relations;
Advise subsystems of the Society on the mounting of such Initiatives to Promote Psychology ;
It was chaired by the Honorary General Secretary of the Society - the first chair was Peter Morris, he was succeeded in May 1986 by J Graham Beaumont and then Ann Colley in 1989.
The Committee developed a travelling exhibition on psychology which was used as a hire/loan item; another project which arose out of university cuts was a database of the 'benefits of psychology' which it was hoped could be used as an argument if cuts were proposed in psychological services but the committee failed to get interest from BPS journals and subsystems in promoting the project; they also promoted badged BPS products; sponsored a Alcohol briefing to parliament which let to the creation of a subcommittee the Parliamentary Group; BPS recruitment leaflets were produced aimed at students. The Committee also managed the process of revamping the Bulletin which led to the creation of The Psychologist magazine (Editorial Subcommittee). Another project was the Charter promotion group; guide to non-sexist language; committee skills workshop (which led to a Training and Support Group) and TV training..
The Standing Committee on Communications was reviewed 1989-1990 during which some subsystems felt that it was not fulfilling its aims particularly in internal communication and in 1991 an Information Committee was formed which had a more coordinating role of individual tasks with representation from the Boards. The Information Committee also took on responsibility for the Press Committee which had previously been a Standing committee of Council.
The Standing Committee on Communications was superseded by the Information Committee in 1991 which also took on responsibility for the Press Committee.
The Information Committee was agreed by Council in October 1990 to replace the Standing Committee on Communications and the Standing Press Committee with aim of being the managing and co-ordinating body for the Society's public relations and communications activities. Individual activities were to be undertaken by a network of responsibility holders - Honorary Officers who presented their action plans to the committee. The aim was to have a flexible structure for short and long term projects as well as reactive to external events or subsystems needs. It was not envisaged that this network would be responsible for all communications activity but provide training, advice, support and action plans. Initially there were four responsiblity holders:
Mike Burton (Press and Media)
John Sheppard (Parliament)
James Thompson (TV)
Ann Colley (Chart Promotion - taking over from the Charter Promotion Group.
Members of the Committee included the responsibility holders, the President, Honorary Treasurer, Honorary General Secretary, representatives from the Boards, The Psychologist Editorial Committee and the Books and Special Projects Group.
The initial Chair was Ray Bull. |
| Source | BPS Annual reports |
| Conventions | International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families - ISAAR(CPF) - Ottawa 1996 ISBN ISBN 0-9696035-3-3
National Council on Archives, Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997 |