Inadequate care putting young children at risk

Inadequate care putting young children at risk
Young children have been put at risk in “inadequate” nurseries, childminders’ homes and creches, the education watchdog Ofsted said yesterday. A total of 1,000 failed to look after children properly.
Source:- The Guardian, Saturday 19 August 2006, page 4

Private finance initiative deals on six hospitals reignite row
Six hospitals will be built under the private finance initiative scheme, the government said yesterday. Although the government argued that the £1.5bn cost of the building programme followed a thorough review of the scheme’s affordability, the plans led to accusations from trade union and health experts that PFI schemes did not represent value for money.
Source:- Financial Times, Saturday 19 August 2006, page 3

Teacher jailed
A senior art teacher who began a sexual relationship with a pupil when she was 15 was jailed for four years by Hull crown court.
Source:- The Times, Saturday 19 August 2006, page 9

Search for bodies
Police digging up the garden of a convicted paedophile said that no human remains had been found.
Source:- The Times, Saturday 19 August 2006, page 9

War on youth crime is ‘demonising teens’
An outgoing Youth Justice Board member has slammed the government’s youth crime policy for and demonising young people and failing to tackle the causes of criminality.
In a report, which will be published by King’s College London’s centre for crime and justice studies, Rob Allen calls for the youth justice portfolio to be passed from the Home Office to the Department for Education and Skills as part of a “fundamental shift” in policy.
Source:- The Observer, Sunday 20 August 2006, page 4

Asian wives lured abroad and dumped
Asian women are being abandoned to the Indian sub-continent by their British husbands to cut them off from their children and avoid costly divorce settlements, lawyers and charities have claimed.
The cases involve women who have come over to Britain to marry and then been duped by their husbands and their families into returning to their home countries.
Source:- Sunday Times, Sunday 20 August 2006 page 12

Tourette’s sufferers praise TV’s Pete
Tourette syndrome campaigners have given a guarded welcome to sufferer Pete Bennett’s triumph in the latest Big Brother series.
Tourette Syndrome association chief executive Judith Kidd said Bennett’s win may increase understanding of the condition, but warned that he represented the small minority of sufferers who swear involuntarily.
Source:- The Observer, Sunday 20 August 2006, page 5

Open city academies or else, councils told
The government is forcing councils to open academy schools, which are independent of local authorities, or risk losing millions of pounds to refurbish schools.
The Department for Education and Skills has linked cash from its Building Schools for the Future programme to academy status, documents obtained by the Sunday Telegraph reveal.
Source:- Sunday Telegraph, Sunday 20 August 2006, page 1

Social workers rank 124th on list of highest earning occupations
Social workers rank 124th in a list of the highest earning occupations below further education teachers, nursery teachers and prison officers.
Office of National Statistics figures show that social workers earned an average of £26,220 in 2005, while social services managers took home £33,273, putting them 68th on the list, behind police officers, health service managers and psychologists.
Source:- The Independent, Monday 21 August 2006, page 8

Labour hints at curbs on workers from Romania and Bulgaria
Britain will not offer an “open door” to migrant workers from Romania and Bulgaria when they join the European Union, Alistair Darling, the trade secretary, said yesterday.
Source:- Daily Telegraph, Monday 21 August 2006, page 10

Teachers ‘have lost courage to tackle bad behaviour’
Thousands of children are ending up in court because teachers and care home workers are afraid to discipline them for bad behaviour, the head of the government’s youth justice quango says.
Source:- The Times, Monday 21 August 2006, page 4

Lost volunteers
Former offenders, including those with minor convictions committed years ago, are put off seeking voluntary work by record checks, a report says.
Source:- The Times, Monday 21 August 2006, page 22

Tories call for detention centre inquiry
The Conservatives are demanding an independent inquiry into conditions at a controversial detention centre for immigrants after it emerged that 49 detainees had received medical treatment for self-harm in the first half of this year alone at Colnbrook immigration removal centre
Source:- The Guardian, Monday 21 August 2006, page 10

Scottish news

Action plan to cut Scots alcohol abuse ‘has failed’
An action plan to tackle alcohol abuse in Scotland has failed, according to one of the country’s leading addiction experts.
Professor Neil McKeganey, from the centre for drugs misuse research at Glasgow University, said some problems were now worse than when a 2002 Scottish executive document set out plans to reduce the harm caused by alcohol.
Alcohol-related deaths and hospital admissions had gone up and under-age drinking had risen, he said.
Source:- The Scotsman, Saturday 19 August 2006

Repeat orders show Asbos ‘aren’t working’
The Scottish executive has been criticised over the number of   repeat antisocial behaviour orders given to offenders, more than half of which have been issued in the First Minister’s own constituency.
The first survey of multiple Asbos has revealed at least 22 people in eight councils have received repeat orders for refusing to stop their disruptive behaviour.
Source:- The Sunday Herald, 20 August 2006

Polish immigrants warned of dangers of overcrowding
Glasgow’s mushrooming Polish community has been warned of the dangers of overcrowding.
Council and housing officials are worried that too many new arrivals from Eastern Europe are living in city centre flats not big enough for them. Some are living in dangerous and unhealthy conditions, especially as they try to get established.
A brochure has been produced by Glasgow Council in Polish and Slovak to make sure migrants know their rights and responsibilities.
Source:- The Herald, Monday 21 August 2006

Show-off children: the link to crime and violence
Teenagers who are sexually promiscuous are far more likely to become serious and violent offenders than other young people, new research has found.
An analysis of 700 children in the west of Scotland aged between 12 and 15 discovered that the most significant factor in persistent and violent offending by both girls and boys was promiscuity and a propensity to show off to members of the opposite gender, along with hostility to members of their own sex.
The study by Dr Kathy Charles, a forensic psychologist at Glasgow Caledonian University, undermines traditional assumptions about why young people get involved in shoplifting, violence, and antisocial behaviour.
Source:- The Herald, Monday 21 August

At-risk children sent back to danger
Vulnerable children are being sent home to parents suspected of neglect and abuse because of a chronic lack of foster carers and other accommodation.
At least seven local authorities have failed to immediately act on place of safety warrants – orders intended to force councils to remove young people from their homes for 21 days if they are considered to be in the most high-risk situations – issued by children’s panels during the past year.
However, dozens of children have been returned to their parents instead of being taken into care because councils have nowhere to put them.
Source:- The Scotsman, Monday 21 August 2006

Welsh news

Child neglect case set for crown court
A 48-year-old man who was arrested for child cruelty for allegedly put a girl into his car boot has had his case adjourned until next month.
Keith Jelfs, of Berkshire, will appear before Swansea magistrates court on 8 September. He was questioned by police after shoppers reported a young girl in a car boot in Saimsbury’s in Swansea.
Source:- Western Mail, Saturday 19 August 2006