The Child Minder

Homelessness charity Centrepoint expects to provide beds and support for 800 young people over the Christmas period. Over half of these young people have slept rough, and most have fled family homes because of violence and abuse and have nowhere to go.

Yet many young people who find themselves in this situation do not get accepted as homeless by local authorities. This makes official figures artifically low - and keeps the pressure off local authorities to provide sufficient services.

Centrepoint estimates that it needs to raise £252,900 to support its work with young people this Christmas. That gives us some indication of the level of support needed the rest of the year too.

In 2007, local authorities must not be allowed to continue to put favourable statistical returns over any young homeless person's cry for help.

Click here to make a donation to Centrepoint, or call 0800 232320 or text SAFE to 84862

With the government still a long way off meeting its target to halve child poverty by 2010, the pressure is on for the Chancellor to remember low-income households in tomorrow's pre-budget report.

Please don't let us down Gordon.

The news that the education secretary has lost his chief adviser on children's services to the Cabinet Office has its up side and its down side.

Making Naomi Eisenstadt director of the social exclusion task force should help ensure that children's needs are central to the group's efforts, and help raise awareness outside the DfES of the whole Every Child Matters agenda.

But, for the DfES, the future is less encouraging. As yet, there are no concrete plans to appoint a new chief adviser on children's services. The department would commit only to "considering further future professional adviser arrangements in the directorate". However, there are no signs of the department's chief adviser on school standards going anywhere fast.

Given the relatively recently widened remit of the DfES to cover children's social care as well as education, it is essential that those with knowledge of non-education matters are given an equal voice. Eisenstadt's expertise, particularly around Sure Start and the Every Child Matters agenda, must be replaced to ensure the education secretary and his department stay on top of the wider issues affecting children and families, not just those around educational attainment.

Jamail Newton was excluded from school at 11, dealing drugs at 14, and shot dead at 19, the Observer reported yesterday.

He was supported by London charity Kids Company after being excluded from his special school aged 11, where he was sent when his mainstream school couldn’t cope. His disabled mother was unable to look after him.

The debate on parental responsibility in relation to their children's exclusion from school rumbles on. In the House of Lords earlier this week, education minister Lord Adonis refused to force schools to offer alternative provision for excluded children from day one, despite warnings from campaign groups that requiring a parent to take time off from work to supervise a child for the first five days of any exclusion would pose considerable difficulties for some families.

Adonis stuck to his guns, though, insisting that everything would be fine: parents could simply call on relatives and friends to supervise their children if they couldn't get the time off work themselves.

Wrong. As the report on the provision of services for families with disabled children published by MPs today reveals, such help is not so easy to come by for this group of parents. They are exactly the ones who struggle most to find people to care for their children. Yet many of their children also have special educational needs and make up a large chunk of the excluded population. These parents will have no choice but to miss work everytime their child is excluded - and face the financial consequences that that brings.

Welcome to Community Care’s children’s services weblog, a daily commentary targeted at anyone who cares about children and what is being done – or not – to improve their lot in today’s society.

My name is Lauren Revans and I am a qualified journalist who joined Community Care’s news desk in 2000. After writing and editing social care news there for over five years, I became editor of 0-19, Community Care’s then sister magazine for people working with children, teenagers and families at risk of social exclusion.

Now I am back at Community Care, using my journalism skills to get behind the stories, events and decisions that affect the lives of the UK’s most vulnerable children so I can bring you this weblog.

While there are still thousands of children living at the margins of our society – whether they be in care, in poverty, in custody, seeking asylum, or living with a disability, learning difficulty or mental illness (or a parent with one of these problems) – there will always be a need to scrutinise the actions of those in a position to help.

And while the Daily Mail is still allowed to publish stories like “Struggling schools swamped with asylum seekers”, “Plans to lock up young thugs”, “How handouts tempt single mothers” and “Dictators tore happy family apart”, there will always be a need for balanced, rational debate!

I hope you find my entries of interest. Please feel free to add your comments at any time.

Lauren Revans
Children’s services editor, Community Care