Category Archives: Social care

Aged care workers struggle to cover basics as low wages and rising living costs take toll

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Full-time income of a single parent worker not enough for essential expenses, Australian Aged Care Collaboration report reveals

Aged care workers are being priced out of their communities, with low wages and rising living costs leaving a worker in a typical two-parent household with $34 of disposable income each week, and a single parent full-time worker unable to cover basic expenses.

The findings come from a report published on Wednesday by the Australian Aged Care Collaboration (AACC), a group of six aged care peak bodies. The report compared average wages for workers in the residential and home care sectors against key cost of living indicators including average rents, childcare expenses, grocery costs, and petrol.

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Victims of ‘vile’ abuse of children in care in Northern Ireland reject apology

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Religious orders called on to pay compensation for physical, sexual and psychological abuse carried out for more than 70 years

Victims of sexual, psychological and physical abuse of children in care in Northern Ireland have rejected a formal apology by religious orders and called on them to pay compensation.

Ministers and representatives of six institutions at the centre of the scandal on Friday issued a long-awaited statement saying sorry for what was described as “vile” and “unimaginable” abuse carried out for more than 70 years.

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UK has ‘sleepwalked’ into dysfunctional children’s social care market, says regulator

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CMA finds local authorities are being forced to pay excessive fees for substandard privately run services

The UK has “sleepwalked” into a dysfunctional market for children’s social care with local authorities forced to pay excessive fees for privately run services that often fail to meet the needs of vulnerable children, an official report has concluded.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) called for an overhaul of the £6.5bn UK market for children’s residential and foster care, saying it had found “significant problems” with the provision of the privately dominated services.

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Caring roles block career advancement for three in five women

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Research shows as many as 50% of ethnic minority carers say responsibilities hold them back from finding new positions

Three out of five women say their caring responsibilities for children and other vulnerable or elderly relatives are preventing them from applying for a new job or promotion, while only one in five men say the same, according to new research.

The poll of 5,444 people by Ipsos Mori and the charity Business in the Community (BITC) found that nearly half the workforce are combining paid work and care. Almost three in 10 adults have left or considered leaving a job because of difficulties in balancing work and care. The latter was particularly true of women.

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Revealed: money for educating excluded children funded Bolton bar owner’s social life

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Call for ‘seismic change’ in social care system after Robert McGuinness’s use of funds

The owner of a children’s home in Bolton shut down for “serious and widespread failures” spent thousands intended for educating marginalised children on drinking, foreign trips and his pub business, the Guardian can reveal.

Between 2015 and 2021, £1.5m was paid by two local authorities to a “community interest company” (CIC) run by Robert McGuinness, the main director of the children’s home. The CIC was set up to provide vocational training to children from years 9 to 11 (ages 14-16) excluded from mainstream schools.

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UK government has abandoned its own Covid health advice, leak reveals

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Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak said to have agreed to decision not to follow public health advice on testing in vulnerable settings

Public health advice is no longer being followed under Boris Johnson’s “living with Covid” strategy to end mass testing, senior civil servants have acknowledged in a leaked account of a cross-Whitehall briefing.

The briefing by a senior member of the Covid taskforce was delivered to civil service leaders across Whitehall on Thursday afternoon, making clear that following public health advice was no longer the sole priority.

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Care home Covid rules to be relaxed in England allowing more visitors

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Easing of restrictions comes as legal requirements for masks and NHS passes are dropped

Care home residents in England will be able to receive unlimited visitors from Monday as the restrictions to tackle the Omicron variant are eased, the Department of Health has said.

Self-isolation periods will be reduced from 14 days to 10 days for those residents who test positive, with further reductions if they test negative on days five and six.

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Star Hobson verdict: mother’s girlfriend found guilty of murdering toddler

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Amateur boxer punched 16-month-old to death in Keighley, West Yorkshire, while mother found guilty of allowing the death

A “cunning and clever” woman has been found guilty of murdering her girlfriend’s toddler after being caught on CCTV “terrorising” the child when she was left to babysit.

Savannah Brockhill, 28, an amateur boxer and security guard who called herself the “number one psycho”, punched 16-month Star Hobson to death in Keighley, West Yorkshire, on 22 September 2020.

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Coroners in England issue rare warnings over avoidable deaths in pandemic

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Exclusive: at least 16 notices issued to prevent future deaths after inquests highlight care failures

Coroners in England have said lessons must be learned from failings made by overstretched services that struggled to adapt during the Covid pandemic, as details of inquests into deaths only now emerge.

At the height of the pandemic, everything from mental health and coastguard services to care homes had to quickly change how they operated, and coroners across England are highlighting failures made during this time through reports that identify avoidable deaths.

Azra Hussain, 41, who died in secure accommodation in Birmingham on 6 May 2020. Two months before her death, she had been due to begin electroconvulsive therapy, but because of an administrative error the treatment was cancelled and was then no longer possible because of Covid restrictions. The inquest jury concluded that had she been given this treatment, she would probably have lived.

Ruth Jones, a frail older woman thought to have caught Covid, who died in a care home after a fall in self-isolation. A coroner said the care home was not equipped to watch Jones during her isolation but she needed to be monitored because of her risk of injury if left alone.

Anthony Williamson, an experienced sea kayaker who died on his 54th birthday after getting into difficulty. The coroner said he was concerned there was a reduced level of coastguard cover around the Cornish coastline owing to the pandemic.

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Campaigners threaten UK legal action over porn sites’ lack of age verification

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Exclusive: failure to prevent children seeing online porn puts them at risk of abuse and lifelong trauma, say children’s safety group

The UK data watchdog must introduce age verification for commercial pornography sites or face a high court challenge over any failure to act, children’s safety groups have warned.

The demand in a letter to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) states that the government’s failure to stop children seeing porn is causing lifelong trauma and putting children at risk of abuse and exploitation. It urges the ICO to use the powers under the recently introduced age appropriate design code (AADC) to introduce rigorous age-checking procedures for publicly accessible porn sites.

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Don’t be fooled by deceitful parents, top child expert warns social workers

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Professionals urged to be more sceptical and ready to remove at-risk children after death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes

Social workers need to be more sceptical and decisive when confronted by “manipulative and deceitful” parents, one of the UK’s leading child protection experts has urged following the torture and killing of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes at the hands of his stepmother and father.

Martin Narey, a former head of children’s charity Barnardo’s and senior government adviser, said social services should view potentially abusive parents “more critically” and not shy away from taking children into care.

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‘We are sick of double speak’: French government intensifies attack on Johnson over Channel tragedy – live

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Latest updates: Macron slams Boris Johnson for trying to negotiate with him via Twitter as it cancels talks with UK officials over Channel crossings

The French government has accused Boris Johnson of “double speak”. In a briefing, the French government spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, said that the proposal in Johnson’s letter to Emmanuel Macron for France to take back people who successfully cross the Channel on small boats was “clearly not what we need to solve this problem”.

According to PA Media, Attal also said that the letter doesn’t correspond at all” with the discussions Johnson and Macron had when they spoke on Wednesday. Atta went on: “We are sick of double speak.”

What would be completely unacceptable, a stain on our country and a scandal would be to see in future those whose parents have died being placed in inappropriate institutions, in elderly care homes or mental health institutions.

That would be something that I think would bring shame to our country as well as an utterly inappropriate lifestyle for those to whom we should be giving the best possible care.

This is not a bill about a condition, it is not about dealing with Down’s syndrome, it is about people who deserve the same ability to demand the best health, education and care as the rest of our society.

It is not on our part an act of charity, it is an act of empowerment and the recognition that all members of our society must have a right to respect, independence and dignity. That is why I brought this bill forward.

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UK employers step up demand for workers vaccinated against Covid

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Analysis shows job adverts requiring candidates to be jabbed rose by 189% between August and October

Employers in the UK are following the lead of their counterparts in the US by stepping up demands for staff to be vaccinated against Covid-19, analysis of recruitment adverts reveals.

According to figures from the jobs website Adzuna, the number of ads explicitly requiring candidates to be vaccinated rose by 189% between August and October as more firms ask for workers to be jabbed before they start on the job.

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Johnson ‘losing the confidence’ of Tory party after rambling CBI speech

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Senior party members concerned after chaotic fortnight, with PM said to be losing his grip over key policies

Conservative MPs are increasingly worried about Boris Johnson’s competence and drive after he gave a rambling speech to business leaders and was accused of losing his grip over a series of key policies from social care to rail.

Senior members of his own party said they needed Johnson to get the government back on track after a disastrous two weeks amid dismay about his performance at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference, where he lost his place in his speech for about 20 seconds and diverted into a lengthy tangent about Peppa Pig.

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‘I went to school drunk in a bikini’: how Sophie Willan turned her chaotic life into sitcom gold

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She won a Bafta for Alma’s Not Normal – and that was just the pilot episode. As the full series launches, the ex-standup talks about growing up in care, getting the comedy bug in Ibiza and finally hitting the big time

Earlier this year, Sophie Willan went through an extraordinary run of extreme highs and lows. She was filming her sitcom Alma’s Not Normal, a project she started working on years ago, when her grandmother died. She had brought Willan up for part of her childhood and inspired a character in the show. The day after, Willan found out she had been Bafta nominated for comedy writing.

A few weeks later, while she watched the ceremony on a laptop on a picnic bench outside the converted barn she was staying in, Willan was named the winner. Her response, posted on Instagram by castmate Jayde Adams, is the most joyous thing you may see all year: Willan takes off on a victory lap, magnificent red sequinned dress matching a tractor in the background, sprinting and shouting “What the fuck?” over and over. “I woke up all the kids that had been put to bed in the house next door,” says Willan, laughing. “It was fabulous. It was surreal.”

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A childhood desire to wear women’s pants has returned. Is it perverted? | Ask Annalisa

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Don’t be ashamed. Shame is for the other people in your life who failed you, says Annalisa Barbieri

As a child, I stole a pair of my mother’s high-waisted, pink and white nylon knickers and wore them under my short trousers to school. I was six years old and not getting what I needed from her. I felt I couldn’t access her. She was physically and emotionally unavailable, and in a marriage that was “on the rocks”, as she used to say. I had also tried to tell my parents I was being physically, sexually and emotionally abused at school, but they scolded me for telling lies and not concentrating on my work.

I’m now in my 60s. I’ve been in therapy for many years, and have come to understand my parents’ difficulties and, more importantly, myself. Recently, I have felt the old, suppressed urge to buy women’s underwear online. But I’m conflicted, confused and haunted by other people’s messages. This might be because I grew up in a country dominated by religion.

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Angela Rayner: ‘We don’t want to be an opposition, we want to be a government’

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Labour’s deputy leader opens up about being a carer, byelections, and achieving a ‘cultural shift’ in the workplace

Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, has said her own experience as a care worker helped to convince her more flexible working could be a “win-win” for staff and employers.

Speaking to the Guardian after announcing new policies last week on employment rights and flexible conditions, Rayner said she had helped negotiate family-friendly working when she was a trade union representative.

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Police review teen killings in search of catalyst for spike in murders

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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.

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English care homes could lose 70,000 staff over mandatory Covid jab

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Government estimates between 3% and 12% of staff may resist getting jab – meaning they will lose their jobs

Up to 70,000 care home staff in England could leave the workforce or lose their jobs because the government is insisting they must be vaccinated against Covid, with women and ethnic minorities disproportionately affected, according to an official estimate.

In an impact statement from the government, officials believe between 3% and 12% of care home staff may still resist getting a Covid jab by the end of a 16-week grace period. The central estimate was that 40,000 could be left without jobs, but it could be as high as 70,000 or as low as 17,000.

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‘Everything I do now is for her’: the woman who saved me from rock bottom

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At my lowest ebb, I found hope in wickedly funny Leah, who lit up the crisis centre where we met. But just months later, she was dead. Could I stop my grief pulling me back under?

Over the years there have been only a few people I would have classed as best friends. People whom I counted on in my darkest moments. When I was at my lowest, and feeling more alone than ever, I met Leah. She was an incredible person who showed me how to find joy and belonging even in the worst possible circumstances. But within less than 12 months she was dead, and life was changed for ever.

We first met at Scarborough Survivors, the mental health crisis cafe I started attending in December 2018. I was 21, homeless and sofa-surfing, and I didn’t want to be alive any more. The cafe – open until 1am every morning – was my last option. It was a Saturday night, just before Christmas. Leah came in wearing a bright pink Adidas tracksuit and one of her many pairs of Nike Airs. Her thick Welsh accent echoed around the place, and as soon as she started talking, the atmosphere changed. I could tell from the off that humour was one of her coping mechanisms. It was hard to tell how old she was; I sensed some immaturity, but also a deep wisdom. I later learned that she was only 28, and the wisdom came from experiencing unimaginable trauma.

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