Unicef analysis also finds children in eight countries spend more than half the year in temperatures above 35C
Almost half a billion children are growing up in parts of the world where there are at least twice the number of extremely hot days every year compared with six decades ago, analysis by Unicef has found.
The analysis by the UN’s children’s agency examined for the first time data on changes in children’s exposure to extreme heat over the past 60 years.
Continue reading...Jacinta Allan says age of criminal responsibility won’t be raised to 14 amid concern about youth crime
Indigenous organisations, legal experts and human rights groups have condemned the Victorian government’s decision to abandon plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14, describing it as a “betrayal” of vulnerable children.
As revealed by Guardian Australia, the premier, Jacinta Allan, made the major policy reversal on Tuesday, as she announced several changes to the government’s 1,000-page youth justice bill.
Continue reading...Latest housing data show 151,630 children in temporary accommodation – the most since records began
More than 150,000 children in England are living in temporary accommodation, prompting calls for the government to address what it calls a “national scandal”.
Living in temporary accommodation is considered a form of homelessness and can involve people staying in hostel or bed and breakfast (B&B) accommodation.
Continue reading...England research shows huge benefits with resulting savings for NHS and councils
Curbing child poverty by scrapping the two-child benefit cap would save hundreds of lives a year and avoid thousands of admissions to hospital, the largest study of its kind suggests.
Keir Starmer has faced repeated demands from within Labour ranks and opposition leaders to abolish the policy, which was announced in 2015 by George Osborne, then chancellor. Almost half of all children in some towns and cities now live below the breadline.
Continue reading...Broadcaster removes image and voice from content as Welsh organisations erase disgraced presenter from websites
Huw Edwards’s image and voice are being urgently removed from hours of BBC archive footage, starting with family and entertainment content on iPlayer, the Observer has learned.
Photographs of the disgraced Welsh television news anchor are also being removed by prominent institutions and charities, and from websites throughout Wales, where he was a national figurehead.
Continue reading...About one in five teenagers aged 16-18 display problematic behaviour with their phones, study finds
Teenagers who fall prey to “problematic smartphone use” are more likely to suffer from insomnia, anxiety and depression, a new study suggests.
About one in five teenagers aged 16-18 displayed problematic behaviour with their phones, with many saying they wanted help cutting down, experts from King’s College London found.
Continue reading...Limit on welfare support, introduced in 2013, leaves some with just £4 a day for each family member
Low-income families affected by the benefit cap are living on as little as £4 for each person a day, often in overcrowded, rat-infested and damp homes with little prospect of escape, according to a new study.
The cap puts a ceiling on the amount a working-age family can receive in welfare support if no one in the household is working or they are on very low wages. Families affected by it in many parts of the country are, in effect, trapped in poor quality, private rented properties they cannot afford, even though these are often already the cheapest homes available in their local area, the London School of Economics study said.
Continue reading...A group of Muslim men put themselves in danger to calm unrest in Harehills over children being taken into care
Nadsy Qurban bent his neck to show how the crown of his head was covered in a number of burns, each the size of coins. “The smell was like I’m burning some goat or something, like I’m cooking some goat. That’s how bad it was,” he said.
Needless to say, it hurt. But a week on, the burns he gained while putting out fires during unrest in the Harehills area of Leeds are starting to heal.
Continue reading...Alongside prosperity in Holborn and St Pancras are thousands of households for whom lifting the two-child benefit cap could mean an end to hunger
• The two-child benefit cap: what is it, does it work and how much would it cost to scrap it?
It’s been one of Cat Onyac’s better days. Her two children are concentrating on their crochet project, sitting in the sunshine at HvH Arts in north London. And they’ve eaten. “All the children get a hot meal,” she says.
The family is at a summer scheme for children in Camden on the edge of Keir Starmer’s constituency, and food is just as important as learning photography, painting or music.
Continue reading...Acasia Welburn pleaded guilty to three charges of sexual activity with child by person in a position of trust
A school worker has been jailed for sexually abusing an autistic boy who was under 16 at the time, police said.
Acasia Welburn, now 26, had been working at a school in North Yorkshire in a “trusted care position” when she abused the child.
Continue reading...Government move to engage archaeological specialists comes after ‘suspicious’ locations identified at Kinchela Aboriginal institution
The New South Wales government will engage a specialist to explore the site of a notorious boys home where locations “consistent with clandestine human burials” have been found using ground-penetrating radar.
In September, Guardian Australia revealed there are at least nine “suspicious” sites of possible graves on the grounds of Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home, one of the most violent and abusive institutions of the stolen generations era.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Territory is ‘one of the most, if not the most dangerous place to be a child right now’, Catherine Russell says, and ‘we desperately need this conflict to end’
The “incredibly alarming” discovery of the poliovirus in Gaza only adds to the besieged territory’s status as one of “the most dangerous places to be a child right now”, the head of the UN children’s agency has warned.
The executive director of Unicef, Catherine Russell, said during a visit to Australia that Gaza was increasingly lawless.
Continue reading...Report warns of crisis of poverty and mental health which ‘casts a shadow’ over young people’s wellbeing
Ministers have been urged to reform the benefits system to tackle child poverty, after a report found it to be a major cause of mental illness that “casts a shadow” over young people’s wellbeing.
The report, by the Centre for Mental Health, Save the Children UK and the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition, found that the number of children living in poverty in the UK had increased to 4.3 million, while one in five children and young people aged between eight and 24 had a diagnosable mental health problem.
Continue reading...Exclusive: E Street Band and Sopranos star visits south London to see his TeachRock programme in action
Legendary guitarist and Sopranos star Stevie Van Zandt has made an impassioned plea for more arts and music in England’s schools as a way of engaging disaffected young people during a visit to south London.
It was a last day of term like no other for pupils at Beckmead College – a school for students aged 14-19 with social, emotional and mental health needs – when the E Street Band member turned up, dressed like a rock star in purple velvet, winkle picker boots and trademark bandana.
Continue reading...Keir Starmer under pressure to scrap limit as more than dozen MPs thought to support king’s speech amendment
Keir Starmer has come under further pressure to scrap the two-child benefit limit after another of his backbench MPs described the policy as “heinous”.
Writing in The Sunday Times, Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield said the cap, which came into effect under then-chancellor George Osborne in 2017, was “sinister and overtly sexist” and had been the main reason driving her to stand for parliament.
Continue reading...Minister pledges more sports and drama in curriculum review as row deepens over two-child benefit cap
• Interview Labour’s Bridget Phillipson: ‘I will help working-class pupils defy the odds to succeed’
Expanding opportunities for working-class children by broadening the school curriculum to include more sport, drama, art and music alongside core academic subjects will be top priorities for the Labour government, the new education secretary says today.
In her first newspaper interview since being appointed to the cabinet by Keir Starmer, Bridget Phillipson insists her aim is to “break the link between background and success”, and to ensure every child has the same level of opportunity, regardless of their parents’ means.
Continue reading...‘Serious disorder’ in Harehills began after children from Roma family taken into care
Leeds city council is undertaking an urgent review of the child protection case that triggered unrest in the city on Thursday night.
A police car was flipped on its side and a bus burned out in what police described as “serious disorder” in the Harehills area of the city, which began when children from a Roma family were taken into care.
Continue reading...As Labour backbenchers call for Keir Starmer to scrap the cap, families reveal their struggles as a result of the two-child limit
Keir Starmer has launched a cross-government taskforce to tackle child poverty, but backbench Labour MPs are calling for the government to go further and scrap the two-child benefit cap. Here people reveal how the limit affects their families.
Alicia* is a mother of four children in Newcastle, and is separated from their father. She does everything she can to avoid going to collect a parcel from a food bank. She will often buy a big sack of potatoes and cook them in different ways throughout the week – jacket potatoes, fried chips, wedges – so her kids get variation. She often skips breakfast and lunch herself.
Continue reading...Concerns over ultra-processed foods and effect on health have led some countries to introduce new labelling
Adolescents in the UK get nearly two-thirds of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, with consumption highest among those from deprived backgrounds, researchers say.
The findings emerged from an analysis of food diaries kept from 2008 to 2019 by nearly 3,000 participants aged 11 to 18 as part of the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey.
Continue reading...Health secretary understood to be ‘minded’ to make ban permanent as Labour MPs criticise move to retain Tory policy
Wes Streeting is expected to tell MPs his reasons for supporting a ban on puberty blockers being prescribed to children for gender-based reasons, amid discontent in his own party.
After growing criticism among some Labour MPs, the health secretary used social media to defend his backing of an emergency ban on the drugs’ use, imposed by his Conservative predecessor Victoria Atkins, which is being challenged in the high court.
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