The Child Minder

The term special guardianship, with its connotations of guardian angels, has a certain fairytale ring to it that adoption has never had. It sounds just that little bit sweeter and seems to have a win-win appeal for all of the parties involved.

A report out this week from charity 4Children and ex-Labour MP Oona King tackles the thorny issue of young people's lack of engagement with mainstream politics.
Only 39% of those aged 18-25 voted in the 2001 general election, compared to 75% of those over 65; while 90% of pensioners see voting as a civic duty, just 56% of 18 to 24-year-olds feel the same way.
But while some of its solutions are admirable, one looks like a very familiar dead end: votes at 16.

A report by education charity the Sutton Trust has concluded that pupils from 100 "elite" schools make up a third of Oxbridge admissions.

Hayley Prew’s article about her experiences of children’s homes in our September 13 user-led issue made for distressing reading. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it also provoked a flood of responses from children’s homes’ providers wanting to tell their side of the story.

writes Hayley Prew

Working on the service user-led issue of Community Care for September 13 gave me some experience in the journalistic field as well as a chance to engineer change – or at least to direct thought as to what changes need to be made.

The family of the baby wrongly put on the ‘at risk’ register by Norfolk county council is not after blood. If they were, they would, like many others before them, have taken up the Daily Mail’s offer to tell all.

Fear of being seen as homophobic prevented social workers from acting on potential signs that two gay foster carers were abusing children in their care, an independent inquiry has found.

Since Community Care published an exclusive interview with a UK social worker who claimed he was sacked after blowing the whistle on “abusive” practice at a secure unit in Jersey, a row over child protection on the island has exploded.

A child has been taken into care in Tower Hamlets because his parents weren’t coping with his disability and social workers were worried about his weight.

The children's secretary, it turns out, is aptly named. His range of measures designed to tackle bad behaviour in schools are a load of balls. Hefty fines - as much as £1,000 - will be imposed on parents who fail to keep their children at home, and "off the streets", while they are excluded. Fines, fines and more fines. A D- for imagination, Ed Balls. You must try harder. There is no evidence that punishing people by hitting them in the pocket is effective.