News round up: Reports of child abuse soar since Baby P case

August 3, 2009 in Child safeguarding, Substance misuse

Reports of child abuse soar since Baby P case

The NSPCC has seen a dramatic increase in calls about suspected cases of child abuse since the death of Baby P, with the number deemed serious enough to warrant referral to social services or the police rising by more than a third in two years.

Between April 2008 and March 2009, the NSPCC passed on 11,243 suspected child protection cases to police or social services – 3,063 more than in 2006-07. The authorities took action to investigate and protect the children in 98% of cases referred in the past year.

NHS offering alcoholics ‘potentially lethal’ treatment, say campaigners

NHS authorities that offer alcoholics controlled drinking treatments relying on medication rather than total abstinence could face legal action from a patients’ organisation.

UK Advocates, a pressure group campaigning for the wider availability of rehabilitation courses for addicts, is preparing to file claims against the Department of Health and local health services.
Read more on this story in The Guardian

Claim benefits on single form, says think-tank

The complex system of benefits and tax credits should be radically simplified, so that all of them are administered by a single agency and applicants can claim them by filling in a single form, a thinktank report recommends today.

Hundreds of innocent people blighted by Criminal Records Bureau

Hundreds of innocent people have been branded criminals after errors by the Criminal Records Bureau more than doubled in a year.

A total of 1,570 people, in the 12 months to March 31, had a criminal record wrongly attributed to them, were accused of offences more serious than those they had committed or were wrongly given a clean record.