JCVI decision comes two weeks after body recommended against routine vaccination of children
Covid vaccines will be offered to all 16- and 17-year-olds without needing the consent of their parents, after government experts reversed their advice from just two weeks ago.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said older teenagers should be offered their first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab and advice on when to offer the second dose would come later.
Continue reading...Analysis: official advisers have called for jabs to be given to children aged 16 and 17 in a rethink of policy
Just weeks ago, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommended that children over the age of 12 should only be vaccinated if they were extremely vulnerable or lived with someone at risk, citing concerns about an inflammatory heart condition linked to the Pfizer/BioNTech jab. Now the JCVI has tweaked that decision to allow children aged 16 and 17 to be routinely offered the vaccine.
Continue reading...Pilot scheme hopes to discover patterns that will help prevent more deaths
Measures are being introduced to try to identify what is driving rising murder rates in the wake of a spike in teenage deaths in some of the UK’s homicide hotspots.
All homicides in London, Birmingham and south Wales will be reviewed by the authorities in an attempt to learn from the chaotic sequences of events that often preempt a death.
Continue reading...As TV revisits the scandal, the author of an acclaimed play about it asks what the media and key institutions have learned – and whether survivors are now treated any better
Journalistic parlour game question: what are the most significant news stories of the past decade? Few would argue with the pandemic and Brexit. Not far behind, perhaps, is the Jimmy Savile scandal.
Not many stories change our world. This one did. It transformed how we deal with allegations of sexual assault. We reassessed our attitude to celebrity. We saw more clearly than ever how morally corrupt institutions could be. It was the harbinger of the #MeToo movement.
Continue reading...The report into sexual abuse in London council’s children’s homes heard from many who experienced it
Hundreds of vulnerable children aged two to 19 suffered sexual abuse, violence and intimidation in children’s homes run by Lambeth council in south London over several decades from the late 1960s, a report has found.
Here are three accounts from some of those who gave evidence to the inquiry of their experiences in the care of Lambeth council.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Analysis raises questions about the organisation’s safeguarding procedures
More than 250 people in the UK and Ireland have been convicted of child sexual abuse offences committed while they were Scout leaders or in other positions of responsibility within the Scout movement, according to analysis that raises questions about the organisation’s safeguarding procedures.
For decades, the Scout movement has been promoted as offering the chance to experience adventures and gain life skills but a review of offenders shows that for scores of children it has led to abuse at the hands of someone entrusted with their welfare.
Continue reading...We must apply our own home-grown initiatives if we are to curb abuses of Africa’s most vulnerable
Of all the unspeakable injustices suffered by Africa’s children – and I’ve witnessed many – violence is surely the worst because it is almost entirely preventable. Africa’s children suffer many hardships, including poverty, hunger and disease. Violence against children is avoidable, yet young people in Africa, especially girls, continue to live with sexual violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, forced labour, corporal punishment and countless other forms of abuse.
After decades spent trying to improve young people’s life chances, I had hoped to see at the very least a significant reduction in violence that threatens children. It is now 31 years since the adoption of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and we have seen some governments putting into place laws and policies aimed at ending violence against children. There have also been efforts, though insufficient, towards eradicating female genital mutilation and child marriage, which cause untold lifelong suffering.
Continue reading...Sajid Javid accepts JCVI advice that jab should only be offered to clinically at-risk children over age of 12
Children in the UK will get a Covid vaccine only if they are over 12 and extremely vulnerable, or live with someone at risk, as scientists raised concerns about inflammation around the heart linked to the Pfizer jab.
Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said he accepted the advice of scientific advisers that only children over 12 with severe neuro-disabilities, Down’s syndrome, immunosuppression and multiple or severe learning disabilities should be allowed to get the Pfizer vaccine. Children over 12 who live in the same house as people who are immunosuppressed will also be eligible for jabs.
Continue reading...Analysis: opinion is becoming sharply divided in the absence of official recommendations
The delay in deciding whether to vaccinate children over 12 against Covid is unlikely to help resolve what is already a contentious issue.
A survey by the Office for National Statistics has found that almost 90% of parents in England would favour giving their children a vaccine if offered, and school leaders have also backed jabs for pupils.
Continue reading...Some of the UK’s best-loved illustrators, including Axel Scheffler, Debi Gliori and Jackie Morris, have created artworks telling the stories of children in rural Nepal who struggle to get an education. The pictures are being raffled by the charity United World Schools, which has opened schools in the country.
All photographs by Navesh Chitrakar for UWS
*All girls’ names have been changed
Continue reading...At 17, Priyanka Bairwa refused her arranged marriage. Instead, she started Rajasthan Rising to help thousands of others and call for free education
Priyanka Bairwa was 15 when her family began to look for a husband for her. The pandemic sped up the process, as schools shut and work dried up. By October 2020, her parents had settled on a suitable boy from their village of Ramathra in the district of Karauli, Rajasthan.
But Bairwa, now 18, wouldn’t hear of it. “During the pandemic, every family in the village was eager to marry off their girls. You’d have to invite less people, there were fewer expenses,” says Bairwa. “But I refused to be caught in a child marriage. There was a major backlash – constant fights. I finally threatened to run away and, fearing I would do something drastic, my family called it off. My mother convinced them to let me study and I joined a college.”
Continue reading...Analysis, showing 4% of 5,830 children hospitalised in 12 months to February entered ICU wards, could inform vaccine policy
During the first year of the pandemic 25 children and teenagers died as a direct result of Covid-19 in England and about 6,000 were admitted to hospital, according to the most complete analysis of national data on the age group to date.
Children seen to be at greatest risk of severe illness and death from coronavirus were in ethnic minority groups, and those with pre-existing medical conditions or severe disabilities.
Continue reading...A look at the demographics as 18.5 million people in the UK fall into the heightened risk category
About 18.5 million individuals, or 24.4% of the UK population, are at increased risk of developing severe Covid because of underlying health conditions. It is well known that older people are at high risk, but the understanding of all the risk factors is incomplete. Experts say that this knowledge needs to develop at speed to support policy and planning given that social restrictions will end in England on 19 July.
Continue reading...MP to take over private member’s bill proposed by Sajid Javid to raise legal age to 18, after his promotion to health secretary
The MP Pauline Latham will step in to adopt Sajid Javid’s private member’s bill to end child marriage after his promotion to health secretary.
Javid presented a bill raising the minimum legal age of marriage to 18 in England and Wales to parliament earlier this month, but is not able to take it forward because he is no longer a backbencher.
Continue reading...Equality minister says draft law marks ‘giant step forward for LGBTI rights, particularly trans people’
Spain’s government has approved a draft law that would allow anyone aged 14 and over to change their gender on official documents without the need for hormone treatment or a medical report, and which would also ban conversion practices and strengthen the rights of LGBTI people.
The proposed measures – which follow months of wrangling between the Spanish Socialist Worker’s party (PSOE) and its junior coalition partners in the far-left, anti-austerity Podemos party – would abolish existing legislation that requires people wishing to change their gender to obtain a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and undergo hormone treatment.
Continue reading...Until there is truth-telling in Australia about the colonisation process, reconciliation remains superficial
First Nations people across Australia are mourning with Canadian First Nations families as evidence mounts of hundreds of deaths of children at residential schools.
We are standing with our Canadian First Nations brothers and sisters on these recent horrific discoveries.
Continue reading...Human rights groups call for bar on junior entry, which accounts for quarter of intake to army
Ministers have been urged to stop the practice of recruiting children to Britain’s military by a coalition of 20 human rights organisation as MPs debate the armed forces bill.
The pressure to end the practice also comes as figures showed that girls aged under 18 in the armed forces made at least 16 formal complaints of sexual assault to military police in the last six years – equivalent to one for every 75 girls in the military.
Continue reading...Unvaccinated children have potential to drive third wave of highly transmissible Delta variant, says virologist
The drive to vaccinate all adults over the age of 18 in the UK could lead to the concentration of Covid-19 cases in schoolchildren, a leading British virologist has warned.
Under-18s would then become reservoirs in which new variants of the virus could arise, said Julian Tang, of Leicester University.
Continue reading...Photographers Linda Bournane Engelberth and Valentina Sinis document the lives of working parents from Botswana to the UK for Unicef
If investing in family-friendly policies is good for business, then many companies are missing a trick. Giving parents and families adequate time, resources and services to care for children, while staying in their jobs and improving their skills and productivity, pays off according to employers. But for many, in all parts of the world, paid parental leave and childcare are not a reality. And that can compromise the first critical years of life – a time when the combination of the right nourishment, environment and love can strengthen a developing brain and give a baby the best start.
Evidence suggests family-friendly policies pay off in healthier, better-educated children and greater gender equality, and are linked to better productivity and the ability to attract and retain workers. Momentum for change is growing with an increasing number of businesses beginning to see the value.
Continue reading...‘Don’t do as we did,’ says Pippa Biddle, who highlights colonial structure of industry where unqualified Western tourists pay to volunteer abroad
Seven years ago, Pippa Biddle wrote a blog post about volunteering abroad. She recounted her struggles speaking Spanish to children living with HIV in the Dominican Republic and how local people in Tanzania would spend all night redoing the construction work she and her classmates had done poorly.
“Taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign,” Biddle wrote. “It’s detrimental.”
Continue reading...