Children

More than 20 ex-football players have come forward with reports they were sexually abused as children by coaches. The revelations have sparked an investigation by five police forces, as well as an internal investigation by the Football Association. An NSPCC hotline has already received over 100 calls. The scandal unfolded after former Sheffield United player Andy Woodward waived his anonymity and told the Guardian that he had been abused by coach Barry Bennell while a youth player at Crewe Alexandra. Woodward’s testimony prompted other former players to come forward with allegations against...

"Crikey, had a great 'win' last week which sent some parents into a storm", boasted Mark Small on Twitter in mid-June. His firm is a contractor which is paid by local councils to fight parents' claims to get Special Educational Needs provision for their children. As the Guardian puts it, "its success rests on its ability to help cash-strapped local authorities cut the costs of SEN provision". It also sells training to council officials to help them minimise SEN provision. In the storm which erupted after Small's tweet, several councils felt obliged to end their contracts with him, and a...

On Wednesday 4 May the government sacked Natasha Devon from her unpaid post as mental health champion for schools. Evidently it concluded that the parents protest the day before against excessive testing, when thousands kept Year 2 children off school, showed that Devon was having too much effect. Devon describes herself as a bleeding heart liberal leftie, but the government appointed her in August 2015 to show it was doing something about mental health. Devon continued to speak out. This government and the coalition before them have engineered a social climate where it's really difficult for...

Waiting lists in the NHS are increasing for physical illnesses. But at least they are monitored, and the government feels pressure to reduce them. According to a new report from the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children), one child in five of those referred to child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) is denied service. For those who get it, the wait for an assessment appointment averages two months across the country, more than 26 weeks in some areas, and “years not months” in others. In other words, an unmanageably long time for the child or adolescent...

Capitalism has created life-enhancing possibilities. It has even realised some of them. My older daughter has epilepsy. In pre-capitalist times, if she’d had medication at all, it would have had no, or harmful, effects, and the seizures would probably have become more severe until they disabled and killed her. Today, she has been able to end the seizures with just a few pills, without side-effects. Not only in Britain, but in many poorer countries too, almost everyone learns to read and write, almost everyone has easy access to music and visual arts, a sizeable proportion can study at...

Parents of children who are absent from school will have child benefit docked by £120 if they do not pay a fine within 28 days. Local authorities can already take parents to court if their children are “truanting”; courts can fine parents £60, rising to £120 if the fine is not paid within 21 days. Larger fines, community or jail sentences are also handed down to “persistent offenders”. These punishments already disproportionately affect poorer families. In April the National Union of Teachers’ conference passed policy against parental fines, including the demand that poorer families should not...

Kids Company — a charity that provided practical, emotional and educational support to deprived and vulnerable inner-city children and young people, in London, Liverpool and Bristol — closed its doors on 5 August due to a lack of funding. Founded in 1996 by Camila Batmanghelidjh, Kids Company attracted significant “celebrity” and governmental support — in 2013 23% of its income came from central and local government and much of the rest from high-profile supporters, including Prince Charles, Coldplay, Richard Branson, J.K. Rowling and others. Why did it fail? The simple answer seems to be a...

The Conservative Minister for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, recently declared that the latest figures on poverty in the UK (the DWP’s Households Below Average Income report for 2013/14) show the government is succeeding in tackling poverty and that inequality is falling. Both claims are based on a wilful misinterpretation of that report. There are several measures of poverty used in the report, the most useful being one of relative poverty (set at 60 per cent of median net household income including benefits). After housing costs, this is currently £232 a week. Using this measure, the...

The government is threatening to cut child tax credits, a move which the Institute for Fiscal Studies says would take £1,400 per year from 3.7 million of the poorest families. The Resolution Foundation point out that this is a piece of regressive taxation. It would mostly affect the poorest 30% of households and leave the richest 40% almost entirely untouched. But the Conservatives are selling this move — surreally — as a means of raising wages. In a speech on Monday 22 June Cameron green lighted the move, saying he promised to end “complacency in how we approach the issue of low pay”. Like a...

A report by the Oxford Safeguarding Children Board has said over 300 children and young people in the city may have been sexually exploited between 1999 and 2014. The report, a serious case review, condemns police and social services for not doing enough to stop abuse and even deliberate and systemic lack of belief of girls who reported abuse. Similar to police and social services in Rotherham, Thames Valley police repeatedly treated girls as if they had chosen to adopt a “lifestyle”. The report says in 2006 alone the police received four complaints from some of the victims about some of the...