Independent care review will publish findings ‘early in summer’
The independent review of children’s social care will publish its findings this summer as expected, the chair of the review has announced.
Josh MacAlister said real progress had been made in the first three months of the review following intense reading, endless zoom meetings and drafting and redrafting and the findings would be shared “early [...]
Care leavers experience mouldy housing and poor quality accommodation
Children leaving the care system experience mouldy housing, shared accommodation where there is anti-social behaviour and substance abuse issues, a report by Barnardo’s has found.
The ‘No Place like Home’ report highlighted that around 10,000 young people in England aged 16-18 leave local authority care every year. Yet their experience is often frightening, with some [...]
NHS trusts raise concerns over wellbeing of children and young people’s mental health services staff
More than 80% of NHS mental health trust leaders are either moderately or extremely concerned about staff wellbeing and current levels of stress and burnout across their children and young people’s services workforce.
Only 3% said that they were not at all concerned about their workforce’s wellbeing following a surge in cases of children and [...]
Agencies urged to improve information sharing and risk assessments in child protection practice
Weak information sharing and risk assessment is hindering child protection practice, the annual report of The Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel has found.
The Panel was notified of 482 serious incidents between 1 January and 31 December 2020, relating to 514 children. Of those 482 notifications, 206 were in relation to child deaths and 267 [...]
DfE under fire for being resistant to learning lessons from pandemic
The Department for Education has come under fire for failing to set standards for in-school or remote learning during 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and has been accused of being “surprisingly resistant” to lessons-learned exercise amid concerns over catchup offer.
The Public Accounts Committee states that when schools were closed to most pupils in early [...]
Quarter of social workers say CPD is ‘box ticking exercise’ while 60% don’t have time
More than a quarter of social workers in England see Continued Professional Development as a box ticking exercise, research has found.
CPD is a requirement of registration with Social Work England and all social workers must record a minimum of one piece of CPD per registration period, although the regulator recommends that CPD should be [...]
