Prison, care home and mental health institution visit limitations failing to consider impact on family life, campaigners say
Children with parents in prison have been forgotten during lockdown, campaigners have told MPs.
The cross-party human rights committee is looking at the impact on the right to family life, with a focus on people in institutional settings including prisons, care homes and mental health facilities.
Continue reading...NSPCC welcomes changes as it says abusers are taking advantage of pandemic to target children online
Children on TikTok will face “groundbreaking” new restrictions in an attempt to prevent grooming on the platform, the video-sharing company has announced, with particularly strict new rules for users under 16.
The platform, which has a lower age limit of 13, said users under 16 would no longer be able to receive comments from strangers, have their videos used for “duets” or mark their posts as available to be downloaded.
Continue reading...This lockdown comes with increased pressures for educators, writes a primary headteacher
In March 2020, when we first went into lockdown, my school went overnight from over 200 pupils to having between three and 10 pupils. Having seen it coming way before the government – not that you needed the gift of prophecy – we were prepared with remote learning from the very next day.
We were able to keep staff and pupils safe, and invite in the handful of pupils who we knew were more at risk, satisfied that this would work within our risk assessments.
Today, the picture in my school and in those of many of my peers could not be more different. Today I have nearly a quarter of my pupils eligible for a place. All of them want it and more are still getting in touch. How has that picture changed so significantly in under 10 months with practically the same cohort of pupils? Who are these pupils?
There is the core group, the ones we saw in the last lockdown, whose parents are health professionals, food distributors, social workers, bus drivers and children of those working in education. They know the drill and there is mutual respect between us communicated in nods at the end of the day.
Then we have the parents who technically qualify for a place because one of them works in a key worker profession, but actually they and their partner were able to look after their child the last time. This time though, they’ve weighed up the personal cost of how difficult they found home schooling with the risks to their child.
Then there are the vulnerable children. Last time, that was based on school knowledge because actually we know the children best. This time there is strict categorisation, which as always misses the nuances. Not every child who has a local authority care plan (known as an EHCP) needs a place – I know that many parents of special needs children find this deeply insulting, that their child is deemed vulnerable. Vulnerable from what? But now we have to encourage these families in and mark them in the registers as not attending. Therefore some come in.
My greatest concern is the pupils who do not fit in the vulnerable category but absolutely should. Because the reality is, these are the ones without any agency looking out for them. The ones without social workers who truly need the stability of school. The ones who keep me and thousands of other teachers awake at night.
Some may scoff at the idea of having 25% of our pupils in. Surely that would make it easier to socially distance. But a couple of problems have arisen.
Firstly, we are now under a legal framework which entitles all the pupils who are at home learning to have a standard of remote learning equivalent to what they would get in school. And too right, of course they should. Though seriously, Gavin Williamson, I know Ofsted inspectors have bugger all to do at the moment, but telling parents to run to them when they don’t quite like something with their learning is a bit low when only a minute before you said you trusted teachers.
Contrary to popular belief, it is impossible to be both in two places at once. Many parents demanded full days of live lessons. Thankfully, I have been able to persuade my community that this is not desirable or attainable for practical reasons, if anything, but I know other schools are ploughing on.
Related: English schools struggle with demand for key worker places
Continue reading...Critics condemn idea of animated series about a man who cannot control his penis, but others have backed it
John Dillermand has an extraordinary penis. So extraordinary, in fact, that it can perform rescue operations, etch murals, hoist a flag and even steal ice-cream from children.
The Danish equivalent of the BBC, DR, has a new animated series aimed at four- to eight-year-olds about John Dillermand, the man with the world’s longest penis who overcomes hardships and challenges with his record-breaking genitals.
Continue reading...More than 9,000 readers contribute to charities supporting young people through Covid crisis
With more than a week still to go, the Guardian and Observer 2020 appeal has raised an amazing £1m for its three partner charities supporting disadvantaged young people living in communities hit by the Covid pandemic.
More than 9,500 readers have donated to the appeal since it launched in early December, including hundreds who called journalists to donate through the annual telethon shortly before Christmas. The funds raised will be shared among the charities UK Youth, YoungMinds and Child Poverty Action Group.
Continue reading...Help disadvantaged young people by calling Marina Hyde, John Crace, Jonathan Freedland and others on Saturday
It’s your chance to discuss this extraordinary year, one-to-one, with your favourite journalists. Marina Hyde, John Crace, Jonathan Freedland, Anushka Asthana, Owen Jones and others will be taking your calls and donations at the Guardian and Observer 2020 charity appeal telethon this Saturday.
This year’s appeal cause is disadvantaged young people, and we are raising money for three charities doing fantastic work at the sharp end of the Covid-19 social crisis: UK Youth, which funds grassroots youth work schemes; Young Minds, which helps young people with mental health support; and the anti-poverty campaigners Child Poverty Action Group.
Continue reading...Preventable diseases still plague those missing out on vaccines. Efforts to halt coronavirus could help crack this issue
The massive public, private and foundation investments in a coronavirus vaccine are producing results at a record pace. And countries are reacting accordingly. A recent global assessment of purchasing agreements for Covid-19 vaccines reveals that high-income countries, as well as a few middle-income countries with high manufacturing capacity, have already bought enough doses for their populations.
But delivery of the vaccine needs a new level of focus. This is especially the case for populations in poor and war-torn countries, where the health system is weak or nonexistent. Even before the pandemic, approximately 20 million infants a year, often some of the most vulnerable in the world, were missing out on basic vaccines. For example, there are estimated to be more than 10.6 million children in the world’s poorest countries who in 2019 did not receive even a first dose of a diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine (DPT).
Continue reading...Experts voice concern over growth of ‘deviant’ videos, including foster-child abuse fantasies, on Pornhub and other mainstream sites
Groups working on the frontline in the fight against child abuse in the UK have warned that an increase in abuse-themed pornography is “normalising” child abuse.
Children’s charity Barnado’s said it is working with vulnerable children who are being put at risk by “deviant” pornography that fetishises fantasies of sex with children.
Continue reading...For health, wellbeing and life chances children need an education – and we must not let Covid drag us back to the bad old days
Covid has brought with it a spate of disturbing reports of schoolchildren reverting to child labour, increases in child marriage, trafficking, domestic violence and a sharpening digital divide in education. Children the world over are falling through the cracks, with governments ignoring child rights violations under the guise of having more urgent crises to tackle. Equally disturbing is any acceptance of this as a regrettable necessity. For activists, civil society groups and international agencies working to reverse regressive norms legitimising child labour, any message that appears to condone it in any form is dangerous.
Apologists for child labour often argue in favour of “good” work – usually done in household settings, against “bad” work – which takes place in commercial settings and is deemed exploitative and hazardous. But in reality, it is virtually impossible to draw a clear line between good and bad work. The negative impacts of child labour on physical and mental health are well documented – poor growth, malnutrition, serious skin and other infections, chronic lung disease, musculoskeletal deformities, impairments to hearing, vision and immune function, and behavioural and emotional disorders. These harms are not restricted to the most hazardous forms of child labour but can be equally true for activities undertaken within the household. Even a seemingly benign task such as cooking the family meal will expose a girl to the risks associated with indoor pollution caused by cooking fires.
Continue reading...Mainstream pornography sites are ‘changing what is normal’, warns child abuse expert Michael Sheath
Michael Sheath has been counselling people with what he describes as “deviant sexual interests” for a long time.
“I have been working with men who abuse children for 33 years. For the first 15 years I worked with child molesters and I still do that, but now I also work with downloaders of child abuse imagery and online groomers.”
Continue reading...As food shortages worsen due to drought and the economic insecurity of lockdown, one in three children are malnourished
Baby Grace lies quietly in the clinical ward under the watchful gaze of her mother, Rose Mapeka. Her parched skin, which hangs off her tiny body, and the milkiness of her eyes, show only too clearly that the 18-month-old is undernourished.
Grace is lucky to be alive. Health workers in Kuwadzana, a high-density suburb in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, identified her as needing immediate hospital treatment for malnutrition during their home visits to the city’s nursing mothers.
Continue reading...Home Office accused of making ‘no arrangements’ for transfers of unaccompanied minors after EU rules expire at end of year
Unaccompanied children in France are being told by the French authorities that they should give up hope of being reunited with family in the UK after the Home Office failed to offer the help it had promised.
With the deadline to enter the UK legally and safely under the EU’s family reunification rules due to expire at the end of the year, the Home Office is accused of reneging on its vow to help unaccompanied children reunite with family in the UK.
Continue reading...Companies respond as investigation finds videos of rape and revenge pornography
Mastercard and Visa said on Thursday they would block their customers from using the credit cards to make purchases on Pornhub following accusations the pornographic website showed videos of child abuse and rape.
They reacted following an investigation by the opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times that also alleged the site depicts revenge pornography and video taken without the consent of participants. Pornhub has denied the allegations.
Continue reading...Site – visited 100m times a day – to make changes following allegations it was hosting abusive and non-consensual material
Pornhub, one of the largest adult content sites in the world, has announced it will be banning unverified video uploads after allegations that it has been hosting child abuse videos.
An investigation by the New York Times last week claimed Pornhub was hosting non-consensual and child abuse content on its website. Activists have long called for changes to Pornhub’s business model, claiming it was not carrying out sufficient checks to ensure videos were consensual.
Continue reading...Life chances are in danger of being blighted by the pandemic. That’s why young people are at the heart of our charity appeal this year
In a year of blight, uncertainty and lives interrupted, 21-year-old Aadam Patel’s experience of the pandemic will resonate among many young people and their families: “I have pressed pause on my life,” he told the Guardian in October, “and although I’m dying to resume it, I don’t even know if there’s a play button there any more.”
Getting life back on track during Covid has proved hard for many of us; but for millions of young people it will be a very major challenge. Society’s odds were already stacked against youngsters from economically deprived communities and from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds; the pandemic has brought those stark inequalities into even sharper focus, whether it is in the job market, around holiday hunger, or access to online schooling.
Continue reading...The Internet Watch Foundation is seeing a growing number of tipoffs about child abuse. We talk to one analyst about her work
Isobel* has been working throughout lockdown. With her colleagues in the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) analyst room in Cambridge she has been responding to a rising number of tipoffs from the public that child abuse images are circulating online. The work is gruelling.
“Today I started at 8.30 and I’ll be looking at content all day long: thousands and thousands of images in a day. We analysts come from all sorts of backgrounds. The main thing is your emotional resilience – it’s incredibly important that you can look at this content and then go home and not think about it.”
Continue reading...The use of webcams and live streaming has led to increased grooming by predators during the coronavirus pandemic
Child abuse experts are warning that an growing trend of children being groomed through webcams and live streaming by predators has led to a sharp rise in the number of abusive images circulating online since the beginning of the pandemic.
Much of this abuse is happening in children’s own homes while their parents or caregivers are in another room, according to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which says it had already dealt with an increased number of reports of online child abuse images this year. September was a record month with 15,000 reports from the public, 5,000 more than the same month in 2019.
Continue reading...Pengsoo was created for children’s television, yet it became such a sensation with adults that it was named South Korea’s person of the year. Now it’s ready to take over the globe
Growing up in the South Pole, Pengsoo was to his penguin peers what Rudolph was to Santa’s reindeers: an outcast shunned for being different. Bullies latched on to Pengsoo’s towering frame – at nearly 7ft, Pengsoo is almost twice the height of the average emperor penguin – and its large, unblinking eyes.
“The other penguins didn’t play with me because I was too big,” 10-year-old Pengsoo told producers at a studio in the Korea Educational Broadcasting System (EBS) headquarters in Seoul in April 2019. Sitting in a gray room, empty save a too-small chair positioned beside a childish self-portrait, Pengsoo stared at the producers as it spoke. Pengsoo had swum to South Korea from the Antarctic “not too long ago”, it said, in the hopes of becoming the next big sensation on YouTube, which was “getting very popular” in its homeland. But the bullying there had been too much.
Continue reading...Survey of 600 people finds some parents regret having offspring for same reason
People worried about the climate crisis are deciding not to have children because of fears that their offspring would have to struggle through a climate apocalypse, according to the first academic study of the issue.
The researchers surveyed 600 people aged 27 to 45 who were already factoring climate concerns into their reproductive choices and found 96% were very or extremely concerned about the wellbeing of their potential future children in a climate-changed world. One 27-year-old woman said: “I feel like I can’t in good conscience bring a child into this world and force them to try and survive what may be apocalyptic conditions.”
Continue reading...Annual special – where garish sweaters meet unrestrained children – airs on Friday evening
It is possibly the most anticipated moment in Ireland’s cultural calendar, a television event that draws huge ratings, unites the diaspora and is parsed as a barometer for the mood of the nation.
Expectation builds months in advance, rumours about the theme, leaks about participants, sometimes alarm that the formula may change.
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