Category Archives: Children

Man who raped his wife tried to convince court he was victim of domestic abuse

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Claim of parental alienation made to ‘distress and frighten’, English court told

A man who raped his wife and was controlling and threatening towards her and their two children attempted to manipulate the family court into believing he was a victim of domestic abuse, a judge has ruled.

In a damning judgment Judge Middleton-Roy found the man’s conduct – which included frequently filming of his family using a body-worn camera – had been “reprehensible and unreasonable” after he pursued false claims against the mother and contested her allegations against him over a prolonged period.

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England childcare scheme may struggle to deliver places, finds ‘damning’ report

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Watchdog says only a third of local authorities are confident they will have enough places for September

The deployment of the government’s childcare scheme to tens of thousands more families is facing “significant uncertainties” and may struggle to meet its own targets, according to a report by Whitehall’s spending watchdog.

The National Audit Office revealed the Department for Education (DfE) had assessed the likelihood of being able to deliver the funded childcare places it promised for September 2024 and 2025 as “amber/red problematic”.

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French PM accused of recycling far-right ideas in youth violence crackdown

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Gabriel Attal says state needs ‘real surge of authority’ in speech in Viry-Châtillon, where 15-year-old killed

The French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, is facing criticism for his proposed crackdown on teenage violence in and around schools, after he said some teenagers in France were “addicted to violence”, just as the government seeks to reclaim ground on security issues from the far right before European elections.

In his speech in Viry-Châtillon, a town south of Paris where a 15-year-old boy was beaten and killed this month by a group of young people, Attal said the state needed “a real surge of authority”.

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Nestlé adds sugar to infant milk sold in poorer countries, report finds

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Swiss food firm’s infant formula and cereal sold in global south ignore WHO anti-obesity guidelines for Europe, says Public Eye

Nestlé, the world’s largest consumer goods company, adds sugar and honey to infant milk and cereal products sold in many poorer countries, contrary to international guidelines aimed at preventing obesity and chronic diseases, a report has found.

Campaigners from Public Eye, a Swiss investigative organisation, sent samples of the Swiss multinational’s baby-food products sold in Asia, Africa and Latin America to a Belgian laboratory for testing.

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Japan to allow divorced parents to share custody of children

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Change to civil code will bring Japan into line with other G7 countries, amid concerns existing law inflicts psychological harm on children

Divorced couples in Japan will for the first time be able to negotiate joint custody of their children after parliament voted this week for changes to laws permitting only sole custody.

Under Japan’s civil code, couples must decide which parent will take custody of their children when their marriage ends – a requirement that critics say causes children psychological harm and prevents the “left-behind” parent from playing a fuller role in their upbringing.

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One in 52 Blackpool children in care as poverty soars in north of England

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£25bn of public money would have been saved between 2019 and 2023 if north had same care entry rates as south, report says

One in every 52 children in Blackpool are in care compared with one in 140 across England, leading to calls for more to be done to urgently tackle the widening north-south divide, brought on by “decades of underinvestment”.

Nine in every thousand children are in care in the north, compared with six in the rest of England, according to a report by Health Equity North.

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Ban smacking children in England and Northern Ireland, say doctors

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Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health urges ministers to follow lead of Scotland and Wales

Parents in England and Northern Ireland should be banned from smacking their children because doing so is unjust, dangerous and harmful, leading doctors have urged ministers.

It was “a scandal” that Scotland and Wales had outlawed smacking but not the other two home nations, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said on Wednesday.

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Child sexual abuse content growing online with AI-made images, report says

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More children and families extorted with AI-made photos and videos, says National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Child sexual exploitation is on the rise online and taking new forms such as images and videos generated by artificial intelligence, according to an annual assessment released on Tuesday by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), a US-based clearinghouse for the reporting of child sexual abuse material.

Reports to the NCMEC of child abuse online rose by more than 12% in 2023 compared with the previous year, surpassing 36.2m reports, the organization said in its annual CyberTipline report. The majority of tips received were related to the circulation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) such as photos and videos, but there was also an increase in reports of financial sexual extortion, when an online predator lures a child into sending nude images or videos and then demands money.

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Teasing children about weight increases risk of self-stigma as adults, study finds

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Research reveals ‘long-lasting effects’ caused by pressure from parents, families, bullies and the media

Parents who tease their children about their weight are putting them at greater risk of feeling bad about their bodies decades later, regardless of whether they grow up to have obesity or not, a groundbreaking study has found.

Thirteen-year-olds who felt pressure from family members to shed pounds and endured weight-based teasing showed higher levels of internalised weight stigma when they turned 31, according to research by the University of Bristol published on Tuesday in the Lancet Regional Health Europe journal.

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Revealed: hundreds of vulnerable children sent to illegal and unregulated care homes in England

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Observer investigation finds that private companies made £105m despite not being registered with Ofsted

Hundreds of extremely vulnerable school-age children in England are being sent to illegal, unregulated homes every year because of a chronic shortage of places in secure local authority units.

An Observer investigation has established that councils placed 706 children, the majority of them under the age of 16, in their care in homes that were not registered with Ofsted, the children’s social care watchdog, in 2022-23.

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Childcare workers to get wage boost in budget as Australia battles staff shortages

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Exclusive: Move is intended to prevent workers from leaving for other sectors, including aged care, where wages were recently increased

The Albanese government is in the final stages of signing off on a boost to childcare workers wages as a centrepiece of next month’s budget.

Guardian Australia understands the budget razor gang, the expenditure review committee, has considered a number of proposals on the sector-wide wage increase, which would see the government cover a significant pay rise for early childcare educators.

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Woman threw daughters, one who died, on to freeway after killing partner, say LA police

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Danielle Johnson reportedly tossed infant and nine-year-old out of moving SUV after killing Jaelen Chaney, and then died by suicide

An infant girl and her nine-year-old sister who were found on a busy Los Angeles-area freeway were thrown from a moving SUV, and investigators believe their mother was responsible and died by suicide after also killing her partner, authorities said Tuesday.

The eight-month-old was pronounced dead at the scene early on Monday, and the older girl was taken to the hospital for moderate injuries, according to law enforcement officials.

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Thousands of children unsure of gender identity ‘let down by NHS’, report finds

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Leading consultant paediatrician says unproven treatments and ‘toxicity’ of trans debate damaging outcomes

Thousands of vulnerable children questioning their gender identity have been let down by the NHS providing unproven treatments and by the “toxicity” of the trans debate, a landmark report has found.

The UK’s only NHS gender identity development service used puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, which masculinise or feminise people’s appearances, despite “remarkably weak evidence” that they improve the wellbeing of young people and concern they may harm health, Dr Hilary Cass said.

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Mother criticises ‘agenda from above’ after release of Cass report

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Parent of trans girl says report promotes agenda that ‘things need to be made more difficult’ for children with gender dysphoria

While the Cass report’s 400 pages will be pored over and debated, one thing is certain – young trans people face an anxious future.

The mother of a 17-year-old trans girl who was a patient at the now-shut Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust said she had initially welcomed Cass’s inquiry, but had been left “disappointed”.

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Labour reveals plan to digitise NHS personal child health records

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Parents and NHS would be able to monitor vaccinations and checkups through digital version of ‘red book’

Labour plans to digitise the NHS “red book” that parents use for their children’s medical records as part of a series of changes to the NHS app.

Parents and the NHS would be able to see if children are behind on jabs or checkups through a new digital record, with automatic notifications to prompt them to book appointments under the party’s plans.

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Support positive masculinity in England and Wales schools, union conference told

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Boys and young men need guidance – not punishment – to avoid ‘manosphere’, teacher tells NEU

Teachers should promote positive masculinity in schools in England and Wales in order to support boys who might otherwise feel demonised and end up turning to “the manosphere” for hope, a union conference has been told.

Charlotte Keogh, a secondary school English teacher from Worcestershire, said boys and young men needed support and guidance as they grappled with ideas about masculinity, rather than being punished and silenced.

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California sheriff’s deputies kill 17-year-old boy with mental health issues

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Boy, as yet unidentified, is third child killed by San Bernardino law enforcement in less than two years and second in under a month

Southern California sheriff’s deputies shot and killed a 17-year-old boy with mental health issues after he armed himself with a knife and locked himself inside a bathroom at a home, authorities said Wednesday.

The teen was being transferred from a hospital, where he had been treated after cutting himself, to a mental health facility when he escaped on Tuesday, the San Bernardino county sheriff Shannon Dicus said.

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‘Not a normal war’: doctors say children have been targeted by Israeli snipers in Gaza

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IDF says it ‘completely rejects’ charge that its soldiers deliberately fired on any of the thousands of civilians killed in Israeli offensive

Dr Fozia Alvi was making her rounds of the intensive care unit on her final day at the battered European public hospital in southern Gaza when she stopped next to two young arrivals with facial injuries and breathing tubes in their windpipes.

“I asked the nurse, what’s the history? She said that they were brought in a couple of hours ago. They had sniper shots to the brain. They were seven or eight years old,” she said.

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Rishi Sunak criticised for laughing off question about timing of general election – UK politics live

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Liberal Democrats say PM is ‘laughing in the face of people crying out for change’

At the weekend the Observer splashed on a story by Toby Helm saying government lawyers have told ministers that Israel is breaking international humanitarian law in Gaza.

In an interview today, asked about the legality of what Israel is doing, Rishi Sunak said the government believes Israel has “the intention and the ability” to comply with international law. He said:

Our view is longstanding that Israel has both the intention and the ability to comply with international humanitarian law, I’ve made that very clear to prime minister Netanyahu whenever I’ve spoken to him.

There have been too many civilian deaths in Gaza, of course we want to see an immediate humanitarian pause so that we can get the hostages out and more aid into the region.

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Labour under pressure to say whether it would keep free hours childcare system

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Gillian Keegan asks Bridget Phillipson to clarify after party refuses to commit to sticking to plan if it wins power

Labour is under pressure to clarify whether it would keep the government’s free hours childcare system, after the party refused to commit to the plan beyond the next election.

A shadow cabinet minister said on Monday that Labour “will not reduce” the number of free childcare hours parents were entitled to in England if it entered government.

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