Brown’s plans to tackle anti-social behaviour

November 2, 2009 in Adults, Asylum and refugees, Child safeguarding, Mental Health, Older people, Youth justice

How Gordon Brown plans to tackle Britain’s anti-social behaviour problem

A few weeks before he became prime minister, Gordon Brown made a low-key visit to a block of flats in a deprived suburb of Dundee. Unencumbered by minders and press photographers, he spent the morning hearing from a young mother with drug problems about a residential programme that saved her family from collapse.

Rather than whipping children away into the hands of the social services, the Dundee Families project sweeps the whole family into its care. Drug-addicted mothers are monitored as they receive treatment, parents with wildly out of control children are taught how to handle them, families who have been repeatedly evicted because of their antisocial behaviour learn how to control their lifestyles.

Read more on this story in the Guardian

Child numbers at immigration centres revealed

More than 1,300 children were detained at three immigration removal centres in the UK during a 15-month period, figures revealed today.

A total of 884 children were held at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire between July 2008 and July 2009, 328 children at the Tinsley House centre near Gatwick Airport between September 1 2008 and August 31 2009, and 103 children at the Dungavel centre in Scotland between October 2008 and September 18 2009.

Read more on this story in the Independent

Daughter of Alzheimer’s patient defies NHS gagging order to speak out

Pauline Hardinges was given the payout after she fought a year-long battle with Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Primary Care Trust for them to pay for her mother’s 24-hour care.

But when she went to collect the money she was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement, which she was told was routine in such cases.

Sister: Vile truth about ‘no risk’ Baby P monster

Sadistic Jason Owen, 37, may walk free in just 21 months after the Appeal Court ruled he poses little risk to the public.

But a statement by his sister Susan Barker contradicts the judges who said last week that Owen had “no history of violence”.