A joined up approach with the named person

How the public sector plans and delivers its responsibilities is now embodied in the new Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill passed by the Scottish Parliament on the 19 February 2014. The Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector explains the Joined up Approach.

This requires those delivering children's services to work together using a common framework to improve the wellbeing of children, identify any concerns and plan together to meet needs. A key aspect of GIRFEC requires this to be delivered through a named person role located with identified staff from statutory organisations at various times during a child’s and young adult’s life.

All of Scotland’s children will have named persons to support their development. It is recognised that most will not require any formal assistance beyond what their parents and wider family will provide. Most of the professional named person support will therefore be concentrated in helping those facing more serious problems in their lives and early intervention will seek to address these quickly and prevent those becoming worse.

Increasingly, the third sector supports vulnerable families alongside statutory organisations in provision of services and specialist support to parents and young people in many of the city’s most vulnerable communities

http://www.gcvs.org.uk/engagement/everyones_children/getting_it_right_for_every_child 

One health visitor who has been practising for 12 years believes that the Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) approach means that her role is more widely recognised by other professionals. As a named person she can work more closely together with them, and she is more aware of what is happening with families. Local police now tell her if there has been a domestic violence incident and hospitals inform her about visits to accident and emergency.

There is another way of looking at this: If the health visitor is learning more about families because of the imposition of GIRFEC does this not indicate that some families never saw her as a trusted person to begin with; only now it is a relationship which is forced on them? Can that really be for the best?
 
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0043/00435539.pdf

The net closing around families is truly suffocating and includes voluntary workers who have contact with the child as well as an army of different professionals. Ever ready to intervene at the earliest possible moment, they must consider what information to keep in confidence and what information to share; and be alert to the needs and risks of each child in the context of their relationships and wider world . But without information about their relationships and wider world how is a person to judge? This has got to involve the sharing of a whole lot of information - just incase.  Is this the true purpose of GIRFEC and the eCare framework which supports information sharing?  It would be naive to think not.

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/06/5565/5

Forced adoption of newborns

More than 900 newborn babies are now being taken from their mothers each year, a 300 per cent increase in little more than a decade. The number of children aged between a week and a month removed from their parents has risen to 1,300 annually, a rise of 141 per cent in the same time.

In the past two weeks alone, eight newborn babies have been taken from their mothers at hospitals in Newcastle and North Tyneside. The number is so high there are not enough foster parents in the area. One baby - thought to be the ninth taken from its parents - is being cared for in a special hospital unit because there is no foster home available.

Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming has demanded an explanation.

He said: "We are seeing a massive increase in the forced removal of newborns. Babies are being taken before they can even be breastfed. Social workers are seizing very young children on the flimsiest of excuses and giving them to other families.

"This smacks of social engineering on a grand scale. The offer of monetary rewards for meeting the targets has created a frenzy among social workers. There are council targets for recycling rubbish and now targets for recycling children."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-465563/Councils-making-millions-incentives-snatching-record-numbers-babies-adoption.html#ixzz2wJY6Lodh

"The Adoption and Children Act 2002 has been amended to give the Secretary of State the power to remove certain functions of the adoption agency from all Local Authorities and will take effect in March 2015. It had been expected that this might happen only for those Local Authorities who were not meeting their adoption targets."

"These functions include the recruitment, assessment and approval of adopters and matching of adopters to children. Once the amendments to the Act come into force any of these functions can be given over to private adoption agencies."

Good for the adoption industry perhaps but ominous for vulnerable families.

http://suesspiciousminds.com/2014/03/18/if-you-cant-do-what-youre-told-the-minister-will-take-your-role-away-from-you/

Misdiagnosis of child abuse

Studies have revealed that parents and caregivers worldwide are being falsely accused of child abuse when children develop the autoimmune disease, tissue scurvy, after vaccination. In a recent paper by Dr. Michael Innis, he stated that:

"Some doctors are unaware of the pathophysiological processes of autoimmunity, haemostasis and osteogenesis and are misdiagnosing vaccine induced tissue scurvy, absence of vitamin C within the cell, as non-accidental injury."

His paper, Autoimmune Tissue Scurvy Misdiagnosed as Child Abuse, outlined three cases of children suffering from symptoms mimicking those of shaken baby syndrome (SBS) whose parents were subsequently accused of child abuse.

However, it was later discovered that all three parents were innocent and far from being abused, their children had been suffering from the autoimmune disease known as tissue scurvy.

http://vactruth.com/2014/03/19/tissue-scurvy-not-child-abuse/?utm_source=The+Vaccine+Truth+Newsletter&utm_campaign=577da3e82b-03_18_2014_vis&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ce7860ee83-577da3e82b-408192312

Youth Select Committee launch inquiry into lowering voting age to 16

19 March 2014

The Youth Select Committee today announces a new inquiry into lowering the voting age to 16, where it will explore the issues and arguments around votes-at-16.

The Youth Select Committee (YSC) - a British Youth Council initiative supported by the House of Commons and now in its third year - will look at the following issues as part of its inquiry:

• Should the age at which people are allowed to vote be lowered? Why/why not? If yes, to what age?
• For what reasons is the voting age currently set at 18? What qualities mean that a person is ready to vote? Do 16 and 17-year-olds possess these qualities?
• Should the age at which people are able to vote vary between types of election? For example, should the voting age be different for local and General elections?
• What short term and long term effect would lowering the voting age have on voter turnout? Should the likely turnout of 16 and 17-year-old voters affect the decision on whether to lower the voting age?
• What can be learned from countries where the voting age is lower than 18 or where lowering the voting age has been proposed?
• What was the motivation for allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in the referendum on independence for Scotland? What can be learned from this example?
• What would the practical implications of lowering the voting age be?
• How effectively does citizenship education prepare young people to vote? How could it be used to prepare young people to vote?
• What is the best way to engage young people with the political process?

In addition, the Committee would like to hear the views of people under 18 on the following questions:

• Would you vote if the voting age was lowered to 16? Why/why not?
• Do you feel ready to make an informed decision about who to vote for? What would help you feel prepared to vote?

Michael Hope, aged 17, Chair of the Youth Select Committee, from Dunbartonshire, said:

"With 16-year-olds in Scotland able to vote in this year’s Scottish Independence referendum, the issue of whether the voting age should be lowered in all UK elections has become a live political issue.
"What would be the practical impact of lowering the voting age? Would citizenship education need to be beefed up to prepare young people to vote? It’s important that politics engages with young people and as a Committee we look forward to hearing what people have to say about votes at 16."

The Committee call for evidence closes on 2 May 2014. The YSC will hold oral evidence sessions in the House of Commons in June and July 2014.  HERE

Common core maths

An article in the NaturalNews website illustrates some of the problems with Common Core mathematics, part of the new curriculum being pushed out in many parts of the USA.

Case in point: See this homework assignment from an elementary school in New York. The "mathematics" exercise instructs children to "Draw the cubes you colored in the number bond" and then "Show the hidden partners on your fingers to an adult."

The final instruction asks students to "Color the fingers you showed."

I do PhD-level work in analytical chemistry and code complex relational databases, yes despite my best efforts to grasp this Common Core exercise, I have no idea what on Earth this lesson is attempting to teach.

Examining these lessons, I feel a genuine sense of alarm for the future of America. If even the people writing mathematics lessons can't communicate clearly, then we are rapidly descending into Idiocracy. The real aim seems to be about making schoolchildren mentally ill so that they cannot possibly understand the federal budget deficit, national debt, or the coming collapse of the U.S. dollar (which will destroy their paychecks and life savings when it ultimately happens).

http://www.naturalnews.com/044338_Common_Core_math_education_Americas_children.html

See Common core: education without representation

Police strip searches

"LONDON (INTELLIHUB) — Information relating to police searches in the UK were recently revealed through a Freedom of Information Act document dump published by the London Guardian."

"The documents show that 4,638 children between the ages of 10 and 16 were strip searched by police between April 2008 and the end of last year. It is important to mention that these figures are likely only scratching the surface because it is possible that thousands of searches were conducted off the record."

"It is disturbing that the Met strip search children as young as 10 years old on a routine basis. Strip searching is an inhuman and degrading experience and children should not be subjected to such treatment unless there is no other feasible method to detect crime available to the police," said Sophie Khan, legal director of Police Action Centre, a charity that raises awareness about police abuse."

"However, an unnamed spokeswoman from the police said that the strip search procedures were "proportionate and appropriate".

http://intellihub.com/uk-police-strip-searched-4500-children-five-years/

Teenager and baby are found

A baby said to have been taken by her mother during a supervised visit was found safe and well today, as four people were arrested in connection with her alleged kidnap.

Lola Page, 13 months, was found by detectives. The child’s mother Stacey Ball, 18, and a man were arrested. Ball is accused of kidnap, whilst the man is accused of assisting an offender. A short time later, officers visited an address in Walsall Wood where two men were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to kidnap. All four were taken into custody and were being questioned today.

Police launched a major probe on Friday after Lola was put into a car during a supervised family visit at an address on Stroud Avenue, Willenhall. At the time of the disappearance, Lola was being cared for by a foster family in Walsall.

DCI Matt Markham from Force CID, said: "We are pleased to say that Lola is now returned to a place of safety and she is doing well. 

http://www.expressandstar.com/news/crime/2014/03/17/missing-mother-arrested-for-kidnap-as-baby-found-safe/

How did the Express and Star get the right to display the photographs of the child all over the newspapers?

Teenage mother absconds with baby

The family of a teenage mother who snatched her baby daughter from a foster family during a supervised visit have said her actions were an 'act of desperation'.

Police are searching for Stacey Ball, 18, after she bundled 13-month-old Lola Page into a car in Walsall, West Midlands.

But yesterday Miss Ball's father, Ryan Price, 46, said his daughter is simply 'screaming out for help' because she had been informed her daughter would be put up for adoption.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2582026/She-mother-screaming-help-Family-defend-teenager-Stacey-Ball-snatched-toddler-daughter-foster-family-vanished.html

Confidential material sent to the wrong address

"A council has apologised after a couple were mistakenly sent disturbing confidential details about a child welfare case. Cumbria County Council says it has taken action following the blunder in which the man and his partner, from Carlisle, received private minutes from a Children’s Services meeting about a child who was nothing to do with them."

"The man explained how he and his partner were involved with Children’s Services and the first page of the letter referred to their case. But the second page went on to reveal personal and disturbing information about another child, including his name and the history of his case."

"The blunder is believed to be due to the similarity between the name of the man’s partner and the mother of the child referred to in the documents."

"Former Children’s Services boss Julia Morrison, who presided over a period when child protection services in the county were repeatedly criticised by Ofsted inspectors for failing to adequately protect the most vulnerable youngsters, announced last Thursday she was leaving the role due to health reasons."

　
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/cumbria-council-apologises-after-child-welfare-case-blunder-1.1123190#

Sustainable development in the Curriculum for Excellence

The new Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland has the ambition of offering a broad general education with the opportunity for interdisciplinary work. Global topics such as climate change and sustainable development require such treatment:

The goal of sustainable development is to enable all people throughout the world to satisfy their basic needs and improve the quality of their lives without compromising the quality of life for future generations　

Developing our children and young people as global citizens through sustainable development education is a key context for learning within Curriculum for Excellence. Sustainability issues feature prominently in the experiences and outcomes and offer learners an opportunity to engage with complex ethical issues relating to climate change, social justice, interdependence, health and wellbeing and biodiversity.

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/learningteachingandassessment/learningacrossthecurriculum/themesacrosslearning/globalcitizenship/sustainabledevelopment/introduction.asp

The PhD thesis `An exploratory study of the sustainable development education provided by the Curriculum for Excellence` is a small scale qualitative study based in one school in Stirlingshire. Its main findings were that although pupils received a solid foundation of knowledge on sustainable development issues in order to live more sustainable lives, they were not provided with enough knowledge with which to advance that education.

http://etheses.qmu.ac.uk/1148/

It is possible that there is too much breadth and not enough depth with which to build a sustainable education. It should be noted that since the Climategate scandal the term `global warming` has fallen out of favour to be replaced with `climate change`which illustrates how politicised this topic has become. It refuses to go away no matter what the evidence. Are our schoolchildren being equipped with enough information to be able to reflect on the politics and science as well as the ethics of global citizenship and sustainable development?  I don`t think so.

 

See also the Green agenda