The £70,000 social worker at Baby P council

The £70,000 social worker: Baby P council offers huge salaries to applicants ‘with a sense of humour’

Social workers’ jobs in the area where Baby P died are being advertised at vastly inflated salaries.

Haringey Council – which tells applicants they will need ‘a sense of humour’ – has offered nearly £68,000 for a team manager in its children’s services department.

That is £38,000 higher than the UK average, and £20,000 more than it was offering three years ago.

Read more on this story in The Daily Mail

Trust ‘sorry’ for murders of patients in its care

A mental health trust has apologised to the family of a pregnant woman who was killed by a paranoid schizophrenic man, and to the relatives of an 82-year-old woman who died at the hands of her mentally ill son.

New reports into both cases have criticised Humber mental health teaching NHS trust for failing to provide better care for the two men.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Public get child protection role

Ed Balls announced tonight that members of the public would be appointed to child protection boards to improve safeguarding after the death of Baby P, the toddler who died from horrific abuse despite being seen 78 times by the authorities.

The children’s secretary told the Commons that Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCB) would in future be required to appoint two lay members from the local community and to publish an annual “effectiveness” report.
Read more on this story in The Guardian

Damned by despair

We demonise women at the centre of horrific child abuse cases, but psychotherapist Claudia Jones has seen how little we understand what turns mothers into ‘monsters’.

Read more on this story in Society Guardian

Trafficked children lost by care home

Organised criminal gangs have exploited a children’s home beside Heathrow airport for the systematic trafficking of Chinese children to work in prostitution and the drugs trade across Britain, a secret immigration document reveals.

The intelligence report from the Border and Immigration Agency, obtained by the Guardian, shows how a 59-bed local authority block has been used as a clearing house for a trade in children that stretches across four continents
Read more on this story in The Guardian

No room at the homeless hostels

A new survey reveals that with the credit crunch creating a new wave of homeless people, more than one in four local authorities (28%) in England do not provide any emergency accommodation to those most likely to end up sleeping on the streets.

Read more on this story in Society Guardian

Doctors told to detain children in hospital if they suspect abuse

Doctors should detain a child in hospital if they suspect abuse and alert key agencies, such as social services and police, according to guidance published today.

Recommendations on child protection issued by the British Medical Association — the first to focus specifically on the role of doctors — say that GPs and consultants should take immediate action when dealing with children who may be at risk.

Read more on this story in The Times

Lawyer can sue for £5m over Catholic school abuse

The Roman Catholic Church in Britain could face a surge of US-style compensation claims over child abuse after a former City lawyer yesterday won the right to claim £5 million in damages.

Patrick Raggett, 50, claims that his life was ruined because of years of insidious abuse by Father Michael Spencer, a teacher at the Jesuit-run Preston Catholic College in Lancashire. Child abuse has cost the Roman Catholic Church in the US more than $2.6 billion, with $436 million paid out last year alone.

Read more on this story in The Times