‘Love Island’ Class of 2022 to Receive Extended Duty of Care Protocols, Inclusion Training
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The 2022 cast of “Love Island” will be given extended duty of care protocols and offered inclusion training, ITV and Lifted Entertainment confirmed today.
The eighth season of ‘Love Island’ is set to air this summer (pictured above: season 7 contestants).
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The inclusion training, which will be delivered by Black Collective of Media in Sport’s Leon Mann, diversity, equity and inclusion consultant Hayley Bennett, disability specialist Shani Dhanda and broadcaster Sean Fletcher, will cover language around “disability, sexuality, race and ethnicity, behaviours and microaggressions,” according to ITV.
It will be offered to participants before they enter the villa.
Meanwhile welfare measures will be in place “before, during and after filming,” ITV confirmed. These include psychological support, social media training (including how to handle abuse on social media) and financial management training.
ITV’s extended duty of care protocols come after the show was rocked by three deaths in three years: former contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis died by suicide in 2018 and 2019 respectively, while the show’s host, Caroline Flack, died by suicide in 2020.
(A spokesperson for “Love Island” previously stressed to Variety that neither Gradon nor Thalassitis’ inquests mentioned “Love Island” as having contributed to their deaths and in both cases some time had elapsed between their appearances on the show and their deaths.)
ITV implemented new duty of care processes for the show ahead of season 5, in 2019. These are regularly reviewed and updated.
Despite this, the show continues to have brushes with controversy. Last year the dating show was the subject of a record 25,000 complaints to broadcasting regulator Ofcom when two of the contestants had a blazing row after they were shown clips of each other flirting with and in some cases kissing other contestants.
“Love Island” continues to be a cash cow for ITV, however, with the season 7 finale bringing in a record number of viewers for the show.
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