Category Archives: Children

Alex Batty back in UK six years after vanishing on holiday in Spain

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Teenager whose disappearance, aged 11, sparked an international police hunt, flies home after being found in France

Teenager Alex Batty has returned to the UK six years after disappearing while on holiday in Spain with his mother and grandfather, police said on Saturday.

Detectives told a press conference at Greater Manchester police HQ that the teenager, who was 11 when he went missing, met his step-grandfather at Toulouse airport earlier on Saturday before flying back to the UK.

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Number of Australian children skipping fruit and vegetables on the rise, survey finds

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Marketing of processed foods and sugary drinks plays significant role in influencing children’s diets, expert says

Public health advocates are calling for action to curb obesity after fewer Australian children were found to be eating fruit and vegetables.

The number of children eating the recommended amount of fruit has dropped substantially, according to the results of the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ National Health Survey, down by 9% (73% to 64%) in the five years to 2022.

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Closure of primary school in Hackney highlights struggle of London families

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Residents ‘absolutely fuming’ about council’s decision to shut Colvestone primary and transfer its pupils

Helen Davis could not believe her children’s luck when Hackney council announced the borough’s first “21st-century street” was going to be built on the doorstep of their local school.

“It still makes me tingle just to think about it,” she said. “Colvestone primary school was going to be at the heart of this new, pedestrianised, green space. Pupils were going to be able to grow their own vegetables, run conservation projects and have outside play activities. They were even planning an outdoor classroom.”

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British boy missing since 2017 Spanish holiday found in France

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Alex Batty was 11 when allegedly abducted by mother and grandfather to give him ‘alternative lifestyle’

A British boy who has not been seen by his legal guardian since he went missing on a family holiday to Spain in 2017 has been found in France.

Alex Batty, from Oldham, was 11 and under the guardianship of his grandmother Susan Caruana when he was allegedly abducted by his mother, Melanie Batty, and grandfather, David Batty.

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Rishi Sunak considers curbing social media use for under-16s

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Reports suggest a ban is among potential options to protect young people from online harm

Rishi Sunak is considering limiting social media access for teenagers under the age of 16 to try to protect them from online harm, with reports suggesting a potential ban is on the cards.

The government is considering further action despite bringing in the Online Safety Act, which requires social media platforms to shield children from harmful content or face fines of up to 10% of a company’s global revenue.

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Protocols protecting young people’s right to silence ‘forgotten’ by NSW police, watchdog finds

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Officers interviewed people who wished to remain silent despite court judgments finding practice was improper, law enforcement commission says

New South Wales police officers have been interviewing young people in custody in a way that compromises their right to silence, with a report by the state’s law enforcement watchdog finding it is a “systemic problem”.

The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (Lecc) found that NSW police had also failed to act with any urgency to prevent officers interviewing vulnerable people, including Aboriginal people and young people, after they had received legal advice and said that they did not wish to be interviewed.

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Meta platforms are marketplaces for child predators claims lawsuit

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Facebook and Instagram ‘enabled adults to find, message and groom minors’ for sexual exploitation, alleges state of New Mexico legal filing

Meta has allowed its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to become marketplaces for child predators, the state of New Mexico alleges in a lawsuit filed against the company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

The lawsuit claims that Meta “proactively served and directed [children] to egregious, sexually explicit images through recommended users and posts – even where the child has expressed no interest in this content”. It claims Meta “enabled adults to find, message and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos”. The company is also accused of fostering unmoderated user groups devoted to facilitating and selling child sexual exploitation content.

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Thousands of new foster carers urgently needed in England, experts say

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Social workers scrambling to find places for children after net loss of 1,000 foster families in past year

Child protection experts have called for an urgent nationwide hunt for thousands of new foster carers after a net loss of 1,000 families in the past year and a record number of children being placed far from home.

Social workers have described scrambling to find friends and family to take children in urgent need of safety, and reported that children are sometimes placed in hotels.

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Meta designed platforms to get children addicted, court documents allege

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Instagram and Facebook parent company also knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, unsealed legal complaint says

Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta purposefully engineered its platforms to addict children and knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint.

The complaint is a key part of a lawsuit filed against Meta by the attorneys general of 33 states in late October and was originally redacted. It alleges the social media company knew – but never disclosed – it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts. The large number of underage users was an “open secret” at the company, the suit alleges, citing internal company documents.

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UK school pupils ‘using AI to create indecent imagery of other children’

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Protection groups call for urgent action to help pupils understand risks of making images that legally constitute child sexual abuse

Children in British schools are using artificial intelligence (AI) to make indecent images of other children, a group of experts on child abuse and technology has warned.

They said that a number of schools were reporting for the first time that pupils were using AI-generating technology to create images of children that legally constituted child sexual abuse material.

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Peter Dutton backs age verification for viewing online pornography

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Opposition leader says graphic videos are ‘playing into the minds’ of young Australians, particularly boys

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has backed calls to implement age verification for viewing pornographic material online.

Dutton says graphic pornographic videos are playing into the minds of young Australians.

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China supplies data to WHO about clusters of respiratory illness

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Epidemiologists say wave in north, particularly among children, may be partly caused by ‘immunity debt’

Chinese health authorities have provided the requested data on an increase in respiratory illnesses and reported clusters of pneumonia in children, and have not detected any unusual or novel pathogens, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

The WHO had asked China for more information on Wednesday after groups including the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases reported clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children in north China.

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School leaders in England feel lockdown ‘broke spell’ of bond with parents

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Education experts agree with Ofsted chief that many parents now disregard rules previously taken for granted

Lockdown “broke the spell” that bound parents and schools together, according to school leaders and experts who have endorsed the Ofsted chief’s view that many parents now disregard rules on behaviour and attendance they once took for granted.

Delivering her last annual report as chief inspector of schools in England, Amanda Spielman said: “The social contract between parents and schools has been fractured by lockdowns and closures.” And she warned: “That social contract took years to build and consolidate and it will take time to restore.”

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Soaring special needs school transport costs ‘unsustainable’, say councils

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Local authorities fear service cuts or even bankruptcy as costs jump from £400m to £700m in five years

Soaring costs of school transport for children with special educational needs is causing councils in England to warn of service cuts and potential insolvency, according to local authority leaders.

The County Council Network (CCN), which represents mainly rural local authorities in England, says its 37 members are spending more than £700m a year on school transport for 85,000 children with special education needs and disabilities (Send), compared with less than £400m five years ago.

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‘Nobody cared’: Victim’s ‘betrayal’ over revelations at Victoria’s school child sexual abuse inquiry

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Victim-survivor shocked by education department’s admission it moved accused paedophile teachers to other state schools

When the dark history of Victoria’s education department was laid bare this week in public hearings, Glen Fearnett sat metres away from bureaucrats as they divulged the state’s failings to protect children.

Fearnett is a victim-survivor of abuse and has been central in pushing for a formal apology for the abuse he and other victim-survivors suffered at Beaumaris primary school, in Melbourne’s south-east.

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Ukrainian teenagers win peace prize for developing apps to help young refugees

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Sofia Tereshchenko, Anastasiia Feskova, and Anastasiia Demchenko awarded 2023 International Children’s Peace prize

Three Ukrainian teenagers who developed apps for children who have fled war have been awarded this year’s International Children’s Peace prize at a ceremony in London.

Sofia Tereshchenko, 18, Anastasiia Feskova, 17, and Anastasiia Demchenko, 17, were awarded the prize for developing a pair of apps for refugee children.

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US health officials warn of fruit pouches tainted with lead after 22 toddlers fall ill

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WanaBana, Schnucks and Weis fruit puree recalled as reported symptoms include headache, vomiting and diarrhea

US health officials are warning doctors to be on the lookout for possible cases of lead poisoning in children after at least 22 toddlers in 14 states were sickened by lead linked to tainted pouches of cinnamon apple puree and applesauce.

Children ages one to three were affected, and at least one child showed a blood lead level eight times higher than the level that raises concern, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

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Six people arrested in China’s Hubei province over ‘baby-trafficking ring’

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Whistleblower claims hospital director colluded with ‘online intermediaries’ to sell birth certificates for about £10,750

Six people have been arrested in central China’s Hubei province over alleged involvement in a baby-trafficking ring linked to a hospital in one of the province’s biggest cities.

The allegations about Xiangyang Jianqiao hospital first came to light on 6 November via a Weibo user by the name of Shangguan Zhengyi, who describes himself as an “anti-trafficking volunteer”. Shangguan posted a series of claims about the hospital’s director, Ye Youzhi, whom he accused of colluding “with online intermediaries” to sell birth certificates for 96,000 yuan (£10,750).

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Psychology body says costs ruling ‘unfair’ in appeal on use of unregulated experts in England and Wales

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Association of Clinical Psychologists must pay £20,000 after intervening in family justice case where it mounted ‘critique of expert’

A professional body ordered to pay costs of £20,000 by the president of the family division after intervening in an appeal regarding the qualifications of a court-appointed expert has said the ruling was “unfair” and could have a “chilling effect”.

The Association of Clinical Psychologists UK (ACP-UK) said it had acted in good faith on a matter of “public protection”, after being criticised for conducting itself in a “wholly exceptional manner” during an appeal before the most senior family judge in England and Wales.

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