JP’s cannabis fears

By Amy Taylor, Mithran Samuel and Derren Hayes

JPs’ cannabis fears
Magistrates in youth courts, who are concerned that young people are increasingly hooked on cannabis and turning to crime to fund their habits, are trying to pressure the government to re-instate it as a Class B drug for juveniles.
Source:- Daily Telegraph, Saturday 9 September 2006, page 2

Guidelines ban covert pupil selection
Schools will no longer be able to use covert selection methods to cherry-pick the brightest children and boost their results under draft guidelines published yesterday.
Source:- The Guardian, Saturday 9 September 2006, page 8

Minister plans to improve black pupils’ exam results
The government will unveil new measures today to tackle educational under-achievement among black and minority ethnic children in England’s schools.
Source:- The Guardian, Saturday 9 September 2006, page 16

Corruption and drug dealing are rife among staff at seven prisons
There are “sizeable corruption problems” in at least seven English jails named in a damning Prison Service report leaked to The Times that says wrongdoing by staff is endemic and “may well be growing”.
Source:- The Times, Saturday 9 September 2006, page 4

Asylum seeker amnesty
Up to 80,000 failed asylum seekers have been granted an ‘amnesty’ to live in Britain, it has emerged night.
Officials had lost track of up to 30,000 of the claimants, or did not even know they were here in the first place.
Source:- Daily Mail, Saturday 9 September 2006, page 8

Coroner alarmed by grandmother who starved to death
A coroner criticised welfare services after a grandmother starved to death with not a scrap of food in her house.
A review into the care of vulnerable people has now been launched.
Warrington Council spokesperson Bob Williams said: “This has been a very sad, tragic and complicated case.”
Source:- Daily Mail, Saturday 9 September 2006, page 33

Older staff sacked in race to beat age discrimination law
Employers are trying to get rid of middle-aged and elderly workers before anti-age discrimination comes in on October 1, lawyers and lobby groups have claimed.
Older People’s charity Age Concern and the Citizen’s Advice Bureau have said that they have received a number of complaints from older staff claiming to have been sacked without prior warning in recent weeks.
Source:- The Sunday Times, September 10 Wednesday 2006, page 9

Council pays Poles to quit UK
Westminster Council is paying Polish migrants unable to find jobs and sleeping rough to return to their homeland.
Source:- The Observer Sunday 10 September 2006 page 24
 
Behind bars: 24 hours in the life of our biggest jail
Around 15 per cent of prisoners at Britain’s biggest jail have severe mental illnesses, a recent audit found, while an ageing prison population means more inmates are acquiring “elderly” diseases such as diabetes.
The Observer spent 24 hours in Wandsworth prison, speaking to the governor, inmates and the head of its health service for an investigation.
Source:- The Observer Sunday 10 September 2006 pages 26-7
 
Teens die after logging into ‘suicide chat rooms’
Pro-suicide websites have been implicated in the deaths of at least 16 young people in the UK in the past few years, but the government has ruled out banning such sites, despite the calls of grieving parents.
Source:- The Independent on Sunday Sunday 10 September 2006 page 5
 
 
UK children the unhappiest in Europe, says study
Research has found that the UK’s children are the unhappiest and unhealthiest of any wealth European country.
The York University study compared wealth, housing, health, education, well-being and relationships across the European Union and ranked the UK 21st out of 25, only head of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia.
Source:- The Independent on Sunday Sunday 10 September 2006 page 5
 

Street prices of cannabis, ecastasy and cocaine at an all-time low
The price of several illegal drugs are at an all-time low, charity Drugsope’s annual pricing survey will show this week.
The causes include the decreasing purity of some drugs and an increase of supply to the UK by traffickers given increased demand.
Source:- The Independent on Sunday Sunday 10 September 2006 page 6
 
 
Asbos ‘badly used’
Crime reduction charity Nacro will call this week for councils and the police to show “realistic understanding” when dealing with anti-social behaviour by people with mental health problems.
The call will come at a conference in Nottingham, which will look at the use of anti-social behaviour orders for people with mental health problems.
Source:- Sunday Telegraph Sunday 10 September 2006 page 14 
 
 
Scottish digest

‘Part of a normal family, then suddenly we were shattered’
A woman at the centre of Scotland’s most notorious child sex abuse scandal is to sue Orkney Islands Council for £100,000, claiming her childhood was destroyed when she was placed in care.
The landmark case is being brought by May Willsher who was only eight years old when social workers removed her from the family home in November 1990.
The following year, a further nine children were removed from their South Ronaldsay homes and taken into local authority care over fears they had been the victims of ritual abuse. A sheriff ruled later that the evidence was seriously flawed and the children were returned home.
Source: The Scotsman, Monday 11 September

Social work chiefs lashed over poor service
Serious shortcomings in the monitoring of violent offenders in the community have been highlighted by Scotland’s social work watchdog, which blamed poor leadership for a catalogue of failures.
The Social Work Inspection Agency (SWIA) said staff in Dumfries and Galloway must also make better use of risk assessments to analyse the risk of criminals re-offending.
In its first full report on social work performance in Scotland, inspectors also described strategic leadership as “unsatisfactory” and raised questions about quality of services provided to the public.
Source: The Scotsman, Saturday 9 September

Care homes failing to meet basic standards
Hundreds of elderly people in Scotland are living in nursing homes which are failing to meet basic standards of care.
A Sunday Herald investigation has found dozens of homes have been warned by the Care Commission over faults in the past 18 months, including restraint of residents and failure to meet nutritional needs and provide adequate fluids to drink.
Other problems highlighted in official inspections included hygiene and infection control procedures, staff shortages and a lack of staff training.
Source: The Sunday Herald, 10th September

Welsh news

Pupil was ‘living in a soap opera’
A teacher accused of having a text and email relationship with a pupil in order to have sex with her has accused her of living in a ‘soap opera’ and craving attention.
Martin Hosken, 32, from Aberystwyth, denies five incidents where he is alleged to have touched the girl.
Source:- Western Mail, Saturday 9 September 2006

Concern at staff-vetting at children’s home
Local residents have raised concerns about a children’s home near Caerphilly and are forming a petition against it.
The T Chwarae home in Machen, was supposed to house children with learning difficulties for short periods, but inspection reports found that its was breaking the conditions imposed on it by keeping them longer than the three weeks allowed. The company that runs the home now wants the restriction lifted.
Inspectors also found that the home was failing to carry out criminal records bureau checks on its staff.
Source:- Western Mail, Saturday 9 September 2006