£3bn scheme to help pre-school children learn has had no effect

Jail staff assaults up 500%

Assaults on jail staff have risen five-fold since Labour came to power, with almost 3,000 last year compared to 550 in the last days of Tory rule.

Source:- The Sun, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 2

Soaring cost of child database ‘will put £50 on council tax’

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services has raised warnings over the cost and safety of ContactPoint, the new database of all children in England.

The ADCS said councils would face responsibility for managing data from many other sources, raising safety issues, and would not have extra resources to implement the system.

Source:- The Daily Mail, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 22

More prisons are not the answer to punishing criminals, says poll

A slight majority of the public believe that the government should concentrate on non-custodial responses to crime as opposed to building more prisons.

In a poll that counters received wisdom on the subject, 49% of people said that prison does not work and led to offenders committing more crimes, against 42% who took the opposite view.

Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 4

Planned control orders raise judges’ fears for civil liberties

Judges have hit out at plans to impose orders restricting the movement and behaviour of violent offenders, including teeangers as young as 16, saying they would breach civil liberties.

Police would be able to apply to magistrates’ courts to impose violent offender orders on people convicted of violent offences who are believed to remain a danger to the public.

Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 4

Mandela urges Britain’s black leaders to help empower community

Former South African president Nelson Mandela will tonight urge an audience of black business people, celebrities, sports people and politicians not to cut themselves off from deprived communities.

His speech will feed into the debate around the idea that young black teenagers need role models to help them overcome deprivation and gang membership.

Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 5

Anger grows over London Marathon places

Small charities are warning that they are being squeezed out of fundraising opportunities linked to the London Marathon because all the guaranteed charity places have been allocated for next year and beyond.

Frustration is growing that organisers have already allocated 15,000 charity places for 2008, many of which are sold in bulk to large charities such as Oxfam and Macmillan Cancer Support.

Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 6

£3bn scheme to help pre-school children learn has had no effect

A £3 billion series of policies designed to boost the achievements of pre-school children has had no effect on the development levels of those entering primary school, a study suggests.

Source:- The Times, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 4

Drink blights families

Teenage drug and alcohol abuse was a major cause of family breakdown, said the charity Addaction.

Source:- The Times, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 4

Heart attack drug may ward off Alzheimer’s

Taking statins may help to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, a study has directly suggested for the first time.

Source:- The Times, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 20

Mental health services ‘not doing enough’ to prevent railway suicides

The number of people who died on the railways rose last year, amid claims that the processes in place for preventing suicides are not working.

Source:- The Times, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 22

CBI tackles town halls over education

Local authorities are continuing to monopolise provision of education services in state schools, despite government attempts to open up the market to private providers.

Source:- The Financial Times, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 2

Earnings gap adds to welfare state’s hard task

The welfare state is having to work much harder merely to ensure that inequality stands still, let alone decreases, according to a study from the London School of Economics.

Source:- The Financial Times, Tuesday 28 August 2007, page 3

Welsh news

Council’s worry over asylum backlog

Forthcoming Home Office plans to allow a large number of asylum seeker families to stay in the UK will have serious ramifications for councils, according to the largest local authority in Wales.

The asylum seekers currently live in Home Office funded accommodation across the UK but around 80 per cent of them are set to be given indefinite leave to remain which will mean councils will have to fund and provide them with housing. The group have been waiting for decisions on their claims for years.

Cardiff Council said it expected to have to provide housing for around 120 families and didn’t have the resources to do so.

Source:- Western Mail, Tuesday, August 28 2007