Insufficient help for pupils with mental health problems

Insufficient help for pupils with mental health problems
Pupils with mental health problems do not get enough help, according to the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers.
Source:- The Times, Saturday 7 October 2006, page 30

Immigrant workers taking jobs from disabled people, say charities
The Royal National Institute for the Blind and the Papworth Trust, which finds work and housing for 5,000 disabled people every year, yesterday called for the government to act.
Steve Winyard, RNIB head of policy, said, “If you are blind you are already seen by employers as someone who is hard to employ and you’re right at the back of the queue.”
Source:- Daily Mail, Saturday 7 October 2006, page 2

World’s largest banks join forces to stamp out child internet porn
The world’s biggest banks are joining an international effort to crack down on child pornography on the internet by taking action to cut off its sources of financing.
Source:- Guardian, Saturday 7 October 2006, page 3

Benefit cheats prosper as 250,000 records are lost
A government clampdown on benefit cheats is in disarray because the records of nearly 250,000 claimants who are receiving a total of ££730 million a year have been lost, The Times has learnt.
The Department for Work and Pensions has mislaid the case details of 222,120 people awarded disability living allowance, a benefit that ministers suspect is open to abuse.
Source:- The Times, Saturday 7 October 2006, page 38

Pensioners missing millions in benefits
Pensioners, disabled people and lone parents missed out on £430 million of benefit payments last year. According to official figures obtained by the Conservatives, £165 million of the underpayments were down to errors at the Department for Work and Pensions.
Source:- Daily Telegraph, Saturday 7 October 2006, page 6

Gay rights laws postponed as protests grow
Sweeping new gay rights laws have been all but abandoned because of protests. Whitehall officials have been shocked by the scale and depth of opposition to the legislation, which was meant to punish businesses which refuse to serve homosexuals.
Source:- Daily Mail, Saturday 7 October 2006, page 57

Celebrity adopters are a symptom of a crisis at home
The adoption of children who are no longer babies still fail very often. Their problems are often too overwhelmingly daunting.
Source:- Independent, Saturday 7 October 2006, page 14

Children taught to play drug dealing
Primary school pupils are being told to pretend they are smoking joints at a party and dealing Ecstasy in controversial new drugs education classes.
Source:- Daily Mail, Saturday 7 October 2006, page 25

Sex offender’s address kept secret
A paedophile banned from contacting under 16s had his new address kept secret by magistrates be cause of his human rights.They cited the Human Rights Act and a Home Office circular for the ruling.
Source:- Daily Mirror, Saturday 7 October, page 31

Madness of dustbin jails, by Lord Chief Justice
England’s most senior judge has launched an unprecedented attack on the country’s creaking prison system which he says is now so overcrowded that it is “difficult or impossible” to rehabilitate prisoners.
Source:- Observer, Sunday 8 October 2006, page 1

Sex traffic: how we have failed rescued women
Tony Blair is to be criticised by a powerful parliamentary committee for failing to allow trafficked women rescued from the sex trade to stay in Britain long enough to recover from their ordeal.
Source:- Independent on Sunday, 8 October 2006, page 30

Police and social services may be exempt from death-in-custody bill
The police and other official bodies could escape prosecution for the death of people in police custody, army barracks or prison or local authority care, if exemptions to a new bill are agreed this week.
The Corporate Manslaughter Bill will make companies liable for prosecution if they fail to ensure the safety of workers or the public.
But civil liberties campaigners warn that the list of exemptions, if agreed, will allow many government bodies to escape prosecution for gross negligence.
They fear that under the Bill there would have been no redress for the family of eight-year-old Victoria Climbie.
Source:- Independent on Sunday, 8 October 2006

Reid: we’ll risk jail breaks to beat crisis
A confidential memo reveals that John Reid is prepared to “take the risk” that more violent criminals will escape from prison as the price of an emergency measure to tackle the overcrowding crisis.
Source:- Sunday Times, 8 October 2006, page 1

Female students turn to prostitution to pay fees
More and more students are resorting to prostitution or other jobs in the sex industry to pay rising university tuition fees, a study has found.
Source:- Sunday Times, 8 October, page 7

Revealed: 50 per cent of alcoholics and drug addicts are mentally ill
Half of all alcoholics and drug addicts are suffering from mental health problems, including depression, and are self-medicating to mask the symptoms.
Turning Point, a social care charity, is warning that people are failing to get proper treatment because they are not being correctly diagnosed
Source:- Independent on Sunday, 8 October 2006, page 2

One million pupils receive substandard schooling, say MPs
The education of almost one million children is suffering because they attend schools that perform badly, an influential committee of MPs will warn this week in a hard-hitting report by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.
The warning comes after one of the government’s key advisers on education, Sir Cyril Taylor, claimed yesterday that some secondary schools were doing so badly that they should be ‘shut down quickly’.
Source:- Observer, Sunday 8 October 2006, page 9

Fat cats of the public sector take top pay
Soaring salaries for top civil servants and bosses of state companies have created a new breed of public sector “fat cat”, new research has indicated.
Source:- Sunday Times, 8 October 2006, page 10

Campbell unspun
Blair’s spin doctor reveals his battle with depression while at No 10.
Source:- Independent on Sunday, 8 October 2006, page 1

Celebrity on the couch
Famous people on suffering mental illness.
Source:- Independent on Sunday, 8 October 2006, page 8

One million teens suffer from mental illness
The number of children suffering from mental health problems has doubled in the past 30 years. One million boys and girls under the age of 16 are afflicted, according to the British Medical Association. That is one in 10.
Source:- Independent on Sunday, 8 October 2006, page 11

We are in the grip of an epidemic. But are drugs the only answer?
A view from clinical psychologist Dr Rufus May who argues that, rather than trying to cure our sadness with pills, we must accept it as part of life. Only then can we start to change it.
Source:- Independent on Sunday, 8 October 2006, page 12

Father’s £62,000 CSA demand – for son he supports
A father has been sent a bill for more than 60,000 from the Child Support Agency even though he has always supported his son.
Source:- Mail on Sunday, 8 October 2006, page 18

NSPCC plea
The NSPCC has called on the government to introduce a broader range of measures to prevent the sexual abuse of children.
Source:- The Times, Monday 9 October 2006, page 2

Emergency measures on prisons
Home secretary John Reid is to announce emergency measures to tackle overcrowding in prisons.
Source:- The Times, Monday 9 October 2006, page 4

Asylum seeker found dead
Two men, one dead and one seriously injured, were found on a road near Folkestone yesterday.
Source:- Daily Telegraph, Monday 9 October 2006, page 2

Scottish news

Police: we can’t track Scots sex offenders
Scotland’s police have admitted they cannot keep track of the nation’s most serious sex offenders, and warn that extra funds is needed to do so.
Police chiefs say that in some parts of the country they have just one officer to track every 100 sex criminals. At least 150 full-time police should be monitoring the register, one senior officer claimed last night.
It emerged earlier this week that police had lost track of 24 known sex offenders in Scotland, but Scotland on Sunday has been told that, at any one time, the “real” number on the run could be between 150 and 300.
Source:- Scotland on Sunday, 8 October 2006

Fast track asylum system coming to Scotland
A new system for fast-tracking asylum claims is to be introduced in Scotland in an effort to cut lengthy delays in processing cases.
It includes measures to reduce the time taken to reject fraudulent claims, with the creation of a category for “late and opportunistic asylum claims” aimed at processing cases in two weeks rather than two months.
The New Asylum Model, is due to be extended north of the border by March next year after two pilot schemes in England. It would cut the time taken to reach an initial decision from six months to 21 days.
Source:- The Herald, Monday 9 October 2006
 
It pays to tackle the long-term care taboo
We’re all living longer while pensions are getting smaller, so budgeting for long-term care should be part of everyone’s financial planning.
Recent research from Help the Aged warned that “care-free” baby boomers would hit a care crisis. It revealed that 62 per cent of 45 to 65-year-olds have made no plans for their care, with one in five saying “life is too short” to worry about it.
Elderly people in Scotland are in a slightly better financial position than those in the rest of the UK, but contrary to a popular misconception, long term care is not free north of the border.
Source:- The Scotsman, Monday 9 October 2006

Welsh news

£3m ‘learning disabilities’ cuts condemned
Cardiff Council has been heavily criticised by parents and carers after announcing a £3m cut in its learning disabilities services.
The cuts are set to be made in services which help people with learning difficulties live in the community.
Source:- Western Mail, Saturday 7 October 2006

Accused mum’s a liar, says dead baby’s dad
The mother of a baby who had fifty separate injuries when he died was called a “liar” by the child’s father yesterday.
Andrew Lloyd, 23, has been charged with killing 13-month-old Aaron Gilbert. The baby’s mother Rebecca Lewis, 21, has been charged with allowing it to happen – a charge known as familial homicide.
Source:- Western Mail, Saturday 7 October 2006

Council hits back at health chiefs’ bed-blocking claims
Cardiff Council has slammed health bosses for their claims that it refused to deal with ever increasing levels of bed-blocking.
Simon Jones, chairman of Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust, had previously criticised Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan councils arguing that they were not doing enough to tackle the problem.
Source:- Western Mail, Monday 9 October 2006