Your viewing articles about; Dawn Primarolo

Ofsted’s Annual Report says signs of child abuse still missed

Ofsted, the UK’s child care regulator, issued its Annual Report today which revealed that the number of abuse and neglect cases remain comparable to last year.

Following on the heels of strong criticism by the Local Government Association, Ofsted released its Annual Report today, citing that 414 children were killed or injured in abuse or neglect cases between September 2008 and August 2009. Ofsted indicated that the number of reported cases was about the same when compared to the previous 12-month period.

Additionally, the report highlighted the quality of case reviews, stating that nearly a third of all such reviews didn’t adequately “identify and report signs of abuse.” The report stated that factors such as abuse of alcohol and drugs by parents or mental impairments in either parents or children “were often not properly taken into account.”

“Whilst most local authorities are providing good services to protect vulnerable children, there are still too many that are inadequate in this vital respect,” said Christine Gilbert, Ofsted’s chief inspector.

“If practice for protecting children is poor, the consequences can be devastating.”

Dawn Primarolo, the U.K.’s Children’s Minister, agreed with Ofsted, suggesting that expectations should be higher.

“Ofsted has rightly raised the bar on what they expect of children’s services,” Primarolo told the Telegraph.

“The Government has intervened in five authorities expected to be judged to be ‘performing poorly’ this year — including using statutory powers where it was right to do so — and we are working robustly with each council to challenge and support them in turning around their children’s services quickly,” she added.

Christine Gilbert followed up the Ofsted report with an article published in the Guardian today, emphasizing both the positive and negative aspects of Ofsted’s findings. The Local Government Association strongly condemned Ofsted before the report was issued.

“The LGA believes Ofsted has become too concerned about protecting its own reputation and places a disproportionate emphasis on publicly highlighting weaknesses in child protection without adequately reflecting the huge amount of good work being done by councils across the country,” said the LGA statement.

“These increases are putting the systems which protect children under extra pressure and making it harder to identify the children at the greatest risk of harm,” the LGA report added.

However, Gilbert fired back in the Guardian, stating that while the report “has some really positive findings”, there are equally concerning issues that must to be addressed. “Ofsted must not pull its punches,” said Gilbert, “and there should be no hiding place for poor practice.”

“I understand that child protection is a sensitive and emotive area, and I know that the pressure on individual directors of children’s services and their local authorities is intense,” she wrote.

“But Ofsted must not shy away from expressing our findings when we see shortcomings, even if this is uncomfortable for the professionals delivering services and the bodies that represent their interests. We would be failing in our duty if we did not highlight both what works and where improvements are needed.”

         

Welcome back! If you love Baby Chums, please subscribe to our RSS feed.
Thanks for dropping by and enjoy!

---

Britain climbs to top of Europe’s abortion list

Britain has taken the top spot with the highest number of reported abortions in Europe in 2007.

Sifting through data provided by Eurostat, Norway-based Institute for Family Policies has found that Britain ranked at the top of the European abortion list for 2007, overtaking France, a country with nearly six million more people.

As teenage pregnancy rates have increased more than 30 percent over the last 10 years, abortion rates for girls under 18 have also increased. In fact, teen abortion rates were highest in Britain in 2007 with 48,150 among girls under 20. France reported 31,779 for the same age group.

The information comes on the heels of an announcement by Labour last week that all children aged five and older would receive compulsory sex education in school. Yet anti-abortion groups state that more sex education isn’t the answer when existing pregnancy prevention policies focused on sex education and contraception don’t work.

Phyllis Bowman, of the anti-abortion group Right to Life, told The Daily Mail: “These are not surprising figures. The government is not so much running a Teenage Pregnancy Strategy as a Teenage Abortion Strategy. Conceptions are not going down and abortion is going up, exactly the reverse of what was supposed to happen.”

Bowman added that the problems with abortion rates in Britain will continue “until ministers recognize the idiocy of these policies.”

Yesterday, ministers stated that rates were likely to decrease for 2008. Ministers said yesterday they believe abortions and conceptions among teenagers are set to fall.

“The trends in the data for 2008 and under-18 conception data for the first two quarters of 2008 give me confidence that we will see a return to the downward trend established between 1998 and 2006,” said Children’s Minister Dawn Primarolo.