The Child Minder

Local government unions may have settled for 2.5% this time around but they are already on collision course for a clash with employers on coming years.

Check out Mithran Samuel's article from this weeks issue

At the Daycare Trust's annual conference today I met a lady who recently learned that her job as sector lead for childcare for London will cease to be come March. She was flanked by NHS childcare co-ordinators from various London NHS trusts who all told me the same story: without this post there would be no sharing of good practice between NHS childcare co-ordinators, no way of feeding back to or influencing policy makers, and no-one with a strategic overview. They also reported a gradual culling of NHS childcare co-ordinator posts across the country as primary care trusts grapple with budgets.

The irony of stumbling across this story at a childcare conference entitled 'Putting the passion into policy' was not lost on any of us. The education secretary Alan Johnson wanted us to believe it was "incomprehensible" that any political party would put the campaign for better childcare "into reverse". Yet his government's decision to merge strategic health authorities has resulted in the loss of at least one key strategic childcare post, while PCT deficits have resulted in the loss or adaptation of frontline NHS childcare co-ordinator roles. Both these developments are undermining the NHS childcare strategy.

More than 3,350 children are being held in custody. This shocking figure was published today by the Youth Justice Board, which has just confirmed that the number of secure beds for young people vacant tonight "could well be in the single figures".

But how did we end up here? Today there are around 730 more under-18s in custody than there were when the Youth Justice Board was established in 1999, despite part of the YJB's mission being "to prevent offending and reoffending by children and young people under the age of 18".

Over the years, the YJB has introduced a range of both alternatives to custody and early intervention and diversionary schemes to tackle the underlying problems that can lead children to commit crime in the first place. Yet still the child prison population grows.

The children's commissioner for England, Al Aynsley-Green, has warned again today of the "enormous damage" custody does to children, many of whom who are already vulnerable. An inquiry into the suicide of Joseph Scholes, who was sent to Stoke Health Young Offender Institution aged 16 despite a history of vulnerability and suicide attempts, might be a good way for Aynsley-Green to highlight how the secure system is failing vulnerable children. However, his limited powers means he is effectively unable to launch such an inquiry without the education secretary's prior agreement and funding. Perhaps that is why he was complaining to the Joint Committee on Human Rights earlier this week that being accountable to the education secretary was compromising his independence.

A truly independent champion for children, as envisaged in the Every Child Matters green paper, would surely be in a position to do more to prevent children being placed in custody inappropriately.

My hopes that Estelle Morris might be more informative at the national children's and adults' social services conference than the current education secretary yesterday were immediately dashed with the words "this session is very much a consultation exercise". She also seemed to have forgotten where she was, reverting back to the role of teacher at one point and instructing her audience to "stop chatting and pay attention".

However, the session was still worthwhile. Asked to respond to a series of multiple choice questions about the skill sets and training needs of the future children's workforce, the delegates revealed the scale of change required....
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