News round-up: Single parents targeted in welfare crackdown

October 26, 2009 in Child safeguarding

Single parents targeted in welfare crackdown

Welfare reforms coming into effect today will force 68,000 single parents with children aged 10 or more to look for work or risk losing benefits.

Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper said that she was changing regulations to enable them to find work which fits around school times.

But single parents’ campaign group Gingerbread accused the Government of failing to provide the necessary support to help them find work.

Adviser vows ‘simpler’ child safety rules

Controversial rules on vetting parents and volunteers for activities involving children should be “simpler”, the Government’s chief adviser on child safety said today.

Children’s Secretary Ed Balls announced a review last month of the Vetting and Barring scheme after it emerged that some parents who regularly took children to football matches faced fines of £5,000 if they failed to sign on to a new register.

The review, by the chairman of the Independent Safeguarding Authority, Sir Roger Singleton, is due to report by the beginning of December.

Read more on this story in The Independent

Thousands of NHS patients opt for private care through ‘choice’ agenda

Since the option to go private with NHS funding was introduced in April last year, almost 10,000 patients have sought diagnoses and waiting list operations in private hospitals – the majority of them in the past year.

While it is up to individual hospitals whether to take patients at NHS prices, almost all have now opted to do so given the drop in people willing to pay themselves for private healthcare in the recession, and in private healthcare insurance takeup.

Single parents ‘must seek work to keep benefits’

Single parents with children aged 10 or more will have to look for work or risk losing benefits, under Government welfare rules.
Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper said that she was changing regulations to enable them to find work which fits around school times.

But single parents’ campaign group Gingerbread accused the Government of failing to provide the necessary support to help them find work.

Girls accept gun running and rape as price of joining violent male gangs

Teenage girls wanting to join violent male gangs are being forced into having sex and ferrying guns, knives and drugs, police and charities have found.

The girls, some as young as 13, want to join gangs to raise their own profile or to seek protection. Often they are swayed by the status given to the senior members of the gang.