News round up: Are retired social workers willing to go back?

By Mithran Samuel on March 11, 2009 in Child safeguarding, Workforce, Youth justice

Are retired social workers willing to go back after Baby P tragedy?

Retired social workers are being targeted in an effort to fill shortages in the wake of the Baby P tragedy, but will they be tempted back to the frontline?

Social workers’ blunders led to death of baby

A baby died aged just eight weeks old after ‘over optimistic’ social workers left him with his crack addict mother and her violent sex offender boyfriend.
Rhys Biggs suffered severe injuries during his short life – including 13 broken ribs, a broken shoulder and a broken wrist.
Read more on this story in The Daily Mail

Teaching assistant jailed for having sex with teenage pupils

A teaching assistant who groomed girls to have sex with him after ‘ flattering’ them on social networking websites was jailed yesterday.

Ryan Stewart, 26, had sexual relationships with up to four teenage pupils and was suspended after propositioning a fifth – inviting her to scrub his back in the shower.

Scotland’s female young offenders living in ‘offensive’ conditions

Female young offenders in Scotland are living in dismal and damaging conditions, often having to urinate in their cell sinks, because of major overcrowding at the country’s sole women-only jail, the Scottish prisons inspector warned today.

Dr Andrew McLellan said conditions for several dozen women under 21 jailed at Cornton Vale, near Stirling, were “unacceptable”, and in stark contrast to the often excellent conditions for young male offenders at other jails.

Mother jailed for eight years after horrific cruelty to baby

A mother was jailed for eight years yesterday for a “horrific” campaign of cruelty against her infant son, who endured broken limbs and 17 fractured ribs before he died in London at the age of two months.

In a case with disturbing echoes of the tragedy of Baby P, Inner London crown court heard how the child’s mother, 27-year-old Claire Biggs, bamboozled health workers into believing he was not in danger. They knew her as a former crack addict, who had already had an “at risk” child taken into care.