News round up: Care applications leap after Baby P case

By Mithran Samuel on November 25, 2008 in Asylum and refugees, Child safeguarding, Children, Social care leaders, Substance misuse

Care applications leap after Baby P case

Dozens more applications to take children into care have been made since the outcry over the case of Baby P, official figures show.

Cafcass, the Children and Family Courts Advisory Support Service, said that the case of the 17-month-old child has had an “unprecedented” impact on council care applications, with social workers becoming far more cautious about leaving at-risk children in the family home.

Read more on this story in The Times

Missing mother on run from social services is arrested in Germany

A mother who went on the run with her five daughters was yesterday arrested in Germany. Natalie Bracht, 35, vanished six months ago after learning that her children were about to be taken into care.
Dressed in Muslim robes and headscarves, she took the girls from their home in Sunderland and arrived in London on May 17 before going into hiding.

Government experts could back plans to downgrade Ecstasy

A move to soften the law on Ecstasy could be backed by Government experts today.
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is understood to favour reclassifying the dance drug from Class A to B.
The committee’s new chairman, Professor David Nutt, has been an enthusiastic supporter of regrading, and even raised the prospect of moving MDMA – the chemical name for Ecstasy – down to Class C.

Domestic violence ‘costs £5.8bn’

Domestic violence costs the British economy £5.8bn a year and significantly depresses women’s ability to contribute to economic growth, the attorney general told French ministers and former victims in Paris yesterday.

Asylum-seeker ‘was assaulted by security man during deportation’

Allegations that a Cameroonian man who came to Britain to escape torture in his own country was twice beaten by British security guards after he lost his claim for asylum and was being forcibly sent home are being investigated by the Government.

Darling’s £21bn tax gamble

Alistair Darling yesterday gambled the government’s political future on a “spend now, pay later” £21bn package of tax cuts and spending increases designed to lift the economy out of recession by next summer.

Insisting that he was not prepared to ignore the suffering of families in “exceptional circumstances”, the chancellor said in his pre-budget report that he would borrow £78bn this year and £118bn next to fund a 13-month VAT holiday, cuts in income tax, more generous payments to pensioners and parents, and a £3bn boost to infrastructure.

Read more on this story in The Guardian