The Child Minder

What is it about any positive story about academies that makes me immediately doubt the validity of whatever is being claimed? I guess it probably has something to do with the fact that, more often than not, my doubts are well-founded. And last week was no exception.

Ed Balls has announced a £396 million extension to the Children's Fund for the next three years. It will be sweet music to all children's workers previously concerned about the existing Fund's end in 2008. Brownie points (no pun intended) for Balls then.

The sight of an Old Etonian pitying poor kids may seem a throwback to the Victorian age but it happened just days ago. That was the sight of Tory leader David "call me Dave" Cameron wandering through a backdrop of "deprived" youngsters in south London on the day his party published their social justice report, Breakthrough Britain. The report promoted marriage as the solution to a lot of social ills, but it merely skirted around the edges of what is one of the most blatant factors in keeping poor kids poor: education.

Shortly after his move into number 10 Gordon Brown announced, unexpectedly, the creation of the Department for Children, Schools and Families.This will take up the children's functions of the now defunct Department for Education and Skills and also, crucially, have joint responsibility for young offenders with the Ministry of Justice.

Social workers dealing with unaccompanied asylum seeking children are facing an increasingly hard job as a result of age disputes – but imagine how it feels for the child.

So, the controversial mental health bill has finally completed its difficult journey. Although it has emerged in a better state than it began, it is still being described by mental health campaigners as a "missed opportunity" thanks to the government's failure to heed the warnings about the risks of significant over-use of community treatment orders and of giving excessive powers to clinicians.

Two weeks ago the government announced plans to place a duty on the immigration service to safeguard asylum seeking children. At first glance you could be forgiven for whole heartedly endorsing this policy and assuming asylum seeking children wre being given, finally, the same level of protection as other youngsters. But on closer inspection this is not the case.