Community Care articles from January 2003

Community Care archives from January 2003

it's good to talk.
January 9, 2003... It's good news that an employment tribunal has ruled that the NSPCC was wrong to sack social worker John Power for contacting Community Care over staff concerns about reorganisation. The sooner the whole social care sector shakes off its...

decisive moments.
January 9, 2003... Can't make your mind up about how decisive to be? John Belcher, Sheena Doyle and Daphne Obang establish their intention to provide practical tips on decision-making skills Decisions, decisions. We all make them. Hundreds of them. Every...

postcode policy gets relocated.
January 9, 2003... viewpoint A fair system of care can best be delivered from a strong centre, so beware the new localism warns David Walker Here's the headline on a recent release from the Daycare Trust. "Will government plans end the childcare lottery and...

model answer.
January 9, 2003... Consultant Bob Welch believes the Laming report is an opportunity to recast the child protection model, with the emphasis put on training, better pay, new standards and interagency co-operation With the imminent publication of Lord Laming's...

disabilities; Sensory impairment services to be cut.
January 9, 2003... Tameside Council is hoping to clear an overspend of pound sterling500,000 by 2004 by reducing its sensory impairment services. The social services department is tightening up the eligibility criteria and changing the way it assesses cases...

knowing the risks.
January 9, 2003... While some attention has been focused on violence against social workers who visit clients alone, there is little knowledge about the extent of violence encountered by domiciliary care staff. Natalie Valios reports The Health and...

'at school it's brilliant'.
January 9, 2003... this life Schoolgirl Keeley Downing has the rare Usher syndrome, which has left her aurally and visually impaired Iwas born profoundly deaf. When I was five, my mum and I learned British Sign Language together, and I was the first deaf...

Workforce; Health visitors seek greater protection.
January 9, 2003... The leading membership body for health visitors is to begin talks with the Department of Health to create a better system for dealing with families considered dangerous, following the death of toddler Ainlee Labonte. The move by the...

child care; Clarke sets out Sure Start spending plan.
January 9, 2003... Education secretary Charles Clarke has announced detailed spending plans for the pound sterling4bn promised in the spending review for Sure Start by 2005-6. The money - pound sterling1bn in 2003-4, pound sterling1.3bn in 2004-5 and pound...

adoption by Derren Hayes; Government looks to allocate key workers for all potential adopters.
January 9, 2003... Every prospective adoptive parent will be allocated a "key worker" to support them through the adoption process under draft regulations unveiled by the government before Christmas. Local authorities will be given responsibility for...

call me up.
January 9, 2003... Aproject in Northern Ireland is providing older and vulnerable people with support and information through a daily telephone call. Anabel Unity Sale reports Noreen Robinson choked Paul O'Grady (aka Lily Savage) at the Community Care...

children; Working practices set for review as beacon council falls foul on adoption.
January 9, 2003... Three weeks ago, a High Court judge delivered a landmark ruling that could have major repercussions for adoption services. Derren Hayes reports on the concerns The 26 pages of Mr Justice Buckley's judgement on the case for damages brought...

race by sally gillen; Dossier on racism sent to watchdog as Unison damns Hackney in report.
January 9, 2003... Unison is urging the Commission for Racial Equality to use its legal powers against Hackney Council after a report by the public sector union uncovered instances of institutional racism. The 10,000-word document sent to the CRE includes...

residential care; More money to help pay for nursing care.
January 9, 2003... Nursing home residents are to receive more money to help them pay for the cost of their nursing care from April. The three bands of pound sterling35, pound sterling70 and pound sterling110, which individuals are assessed as being entitled...

disabilities; Parking boost for blue badge holders.
January 9, 2003... The government has agreed to press ahead with improvements to the disabled persons parking scheme. The improvements, part of a UK-wide study of the blue badge scheme, include reinforcing the eligibility criteria for badges and considering...

mental health; Man sues council for 'unlawful detention'.
January 9, 2003... A psychiatric patient who claims he was unlawfully detained for eight months is waiting to find out whether he can sue his local council for compensation under the Human Rights Act 1998. Despite a mental health tribunal's decision in July...

reviews; Cleared nursery nurses win pay-out.
January 9, 2003... The home secretary is to pay compensation to two former nursery nurses who won a libel case after being wrongly accused of child abuse. Dawn Reed and Christopher Lillie were charged with abusing children at Shieldfield nursery in Newcastle...

local government; Councils pledge to help each other.
January 9, 2003... More than 100 councils have pledged their commitment to help each other improve their performance. Council leaders have signed up to the Local Government Association's written statement Moving Towards Excellence following the publication...

home care by katie leason; Standards for domiciliary staff fail to include criminal record checks.
January 9, 2003... The need for home care staff to undergo criminal record checks before starting work has been omitted from the Department of Health's new domiciliary care standards. Home care staff will be able to continue delivering personal care in the...

training; Diploma applicants tumble by one fifth.
January 9, 2003... The number of new applicants for the Diploma in Social Work has fallen by 19 per cent since 1998, according to the Social Work Admissions System. Only 5,093 people applied for the DipSW through the admissions system by the end of 2002,...

Children's services; More money for pilots and adoption.
January 9, 2003... The government has announced pound sterling1m of money for the first wave of councils to pilot children's trusts later this year. The funding will be allocated to the piloting councils through their children's services grant to help with...

youth Justice; New inspection regime for teams.
January 9, 2003... Youth offending teams are to be assessed under a new joint inspection programme announced just before Christmas. The Prisons, Probation and Constabulary Inspectorates are to carry out the inspections alongside the Social Services...

learning difficulties by sally Gillen; Charity claims High Court ruling contradicts Valuing People principle.
January 9, 2003... A learning difficulties charity has lost its application for a judicial review of the National Care Standards Commission's decision not to allow it to deregister five of its 16 homes. North West England-based Alternative Futures made the...

Care trusts; Investigations into trusts launched.
January 9, 2003... Two of the existing five care trusts are under investigation following incidents involving service users. Camden and Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust is to carry out an internal investigation concerning a man charged this week...

mental health; GP surgery staff need more training.
January 9, 2003... Primary health care workers do not receive adequate training in mental illnesses, according to a report by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. It claims that the training they do receive does not match the skills they need. People with...

schools; Trouble-tamers to train teachers.
January 9, 2003... Disruptive pupils in secondary schools will soon be tackled by behavioural consultants rather than teachers, as part of an initiative to stop antisocial behaviour in the classroom. At the start of the next school year behavioural...

workforce; Sacked worker wins case against NSPCC.
January 9, 2003... A social worker who was sacked from his job at the NSPCC after he alerted Community Care to staff concerns over restructuring and job losses at the organisation has won his claim for unfair dismissal. Central London Employment Tribunal...

readers' views; Few clued-up on human rights law.
January 9, 2003... Nearly three-quarters of visitors to Community Care's website say they have not received any training on how the Human Rights Act 1998 affects their work. A report from the British Institute of Human Rights says social care staff are...

the invisible abusers.
January 9, 2003... Only a few years ago the protection of vulnerable adults moved up the policy agenda as child protection had a couple of decades earlier. The challenge of preventing and responding to adult abuse was different from that of child abuse, but what...

stand up against hatred.
January 9, 2003... We should no longer be surprised when this government's treatment of asylum seekers takes yet another turn for the worse. But we must still be alarmed. For social care professionals can become hardened to the systematic degradation of those who...

finance; MPs attack councils' money allocation.
January 9, 2003... A House of Commons select committee has attacked the government's proposals for reforming local government finance as "confusing". The report into the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's handling of the reform programme found many of the...

new year's honours by community care reporters; Public and voluntary sector people honoured in New Year's list 2003.
January 9, 2003... Social services directors of three of the 11 three-star social services departments were rewarded in the New Year's Honours List. The list was dominated by public sector employees and voluntary and community workers. People working in...

joint reviews; Inspectors praise councils' services.
January 9, 2003... Nottingham social services department has the potential to be one of the best-performing departments in the country, according to a joint review by the Social Services Inspectorate and the Audit Commission. The review team was impressed by...

asylum seekers by Clare jerrom; New policy will force asylum seekers into destitution, say refugee groups.
January 9, 2003... Many asylum seekers will be left sleeping rough and destitute as a result of a new government policy, according to asylum and refugee groups. From this week, people who do not apply for asylum "as soon as reasonably practicable" after...

troubled youth and the art of parenting.
January 9, 2003... Yvonne roberts The Youth Justice Board wants a huge increase in parenting classes provision. Will it work? Head of the Youth Justice Board Lord Warner has announced hopes for a 600 per cent increase in parenting classes at a cost of...

lost from view.
January 9, 2003... Wide gaps in services for visually impaired people have emerged in a new study. John Percival discusses the results Although one in 10 people older than 65 in the UK have severe visual impairment, little is known about their...

adoption; Pressure leads to 'ill- judged' placements.
January 9, 2003... A leading child care lawyer has raised fears that the government's drive to promote adoption is resulting in some looked-after children being placed with families inappropriately. Allan Levy QC told Community Care that the government's...

not exactly a ball.
January 9, 2003... The government has challenged social care's Cinderella image by treating the profession as equal to other public services. Nevertheless, tensions remain in Labour's approach, says Peter Beresford It is appropriate to be writing this at the...

How wishing on a starr helped.
January 9, 2003... Nine-year-old Homayra Ibrahim was severely traumatised when she sought asylum in Britain. Andrew Starr, primary mental health worker (left), tells Graham Hopkins how social care staff helped her recover by offering practical support to pursue...

stains on the record.
January 9, 2003... As we begin 2003 and approach six years of Labour rule, Ruth Winchester takes a critical look at the government's social care record Labour's social care record: a conspiracy, or a cock-up? This government has made an...

a matter of trust.
January 9, 2003... welfare rights Rules regarding how money from trust funds can be spent have changed, writes Gary Vaux Increasingly, I get queries about clients of social services who have money in a trust fund. I also get queries about clients who receive...

selection panel could cover Gaps.
January 16, 2003... Every social worker, team leader and director in fieldwork knows one or two families who sound more dangerous, or less safe, than other families on the child protection register. And many at-risk children fall through the gaps in the system and...

news in brief.
January 16, 2003... l New research by the Youth Justice Board has revealed that consumer culture - and particularly the rise in mobile phone ownership - is driving street crime among teenagers. The importance young people place on image, together with economic and...

trust in us.
January 16, 2003... Early last year times were hard for Woman's Trust, a small charity providing mental health services to women suffering domestic violence. "It was desperate," says Kyria Conner, the project's co-ordinator, "I really thought we might be...

www.communitycare.co.uk.
January 16, 2003... For an information service updated daily go to Community Care's website. Features include: A special report on the law change which campaigners have warned will lead to hundreds of asylum seekers being made destitute. Legal updates...

moving targets.
January 16, 2003... Pragmatic new measures have replaced the government's doomed 10-year strategy to attack the nation's drug problem. Natalie Valios gauges their likely effectiveness In 1998, the government proudly unveiled an ambitious 10-year drug...

book reviews.
January 16, 2003... Supporting Families Ruth Gardner, John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 0 471 49970 6, pound sterling55 Testing the Limits of Foster Care Moira Walker, Malcolm Hill and John Triseliotis, Baaf Adoption and Fostering. ISBN 1 903699 18 5, pound...

joint review; Nottinghamshire wins high praise.
January 16, 2003... Nottinghamshire social services department has the potential to be one of the best-performing departments in the country, according to a recent joint review by the Social Services Inspectorate and the Audit Commission. The review team was...

older people; Milburn wins care funding case appeal.
January 16, 2003... Health secretary Alan Milburn has won a legal test case over procedures used by councils to force home owners to use their property to fund residential care. At the end of last month, the Court of Appeal overturned a High Court ruling made...

drugs fill the gap.
January 16, 2003... The association between inequality and drug abuse is being ignored by the government. Instead, the responsibility to find solutions is partly falling on locally run community projects, says Bob Holman In the past 25 years, I have known a...

child protection; Inquiry call over girl found dead in canal.
January 16, 2003... An inquiry has been demanded into the way social workers handled the case of a five-year-old girl whose body was found last week in a canal in the Highlands. Relatives of Danielle Reid say social workers were told months ago that the girl...

children; Will Boateng defy all oppositionand revolutionise child protection?
January 16, 2003... The government's scourge of social services departments is toying with proposals to transfer responsibility for child protection to a national agency. Lauren Revans reports While many of us tuned in over Christmas to watch Richard...

on Politics.
January 16, 2003... The government is tackling the causes of crime. If only it were more upfront about it

children by amy taylor; Sure Start chief fears government control could damage initiative.
January 16, 2003... Just a month after the official launch of the new interdepartmental Sure Start Unit, its director has expressed concern over the effects of increased control from central government. At a conference on modernising health visiting, Naomi...

criminal checks by sally gillen; Voluntary groups' confidence in records bureau hits rock bottom.
January 16, 2003... The leading membership body for the voluntary sector is calling for reform of parts of the Criminal Records Bureau after a study revealed that the sector had an "extreme lack of confidence" in it. In a report published this week, the...

child protection; Cash boost for Scottish groups.
January 16, 2003... Three organisations working with vulnerable children in Scotland are to receive a major funding boost. Scotland's minister for young people, Cathy Jamieson, told the Scottish executive that Barnardo's and Who Cares? Scotland would receive...

mental health; Mad Pride founder Shaughnessy dies.
January 16, 2003... A mental health service user survivor who was one of the founders of activists' organisation Mad Pride has died, aged 40. Peter Shaughnessy had been closely involved in the political movement Reclaim Bedlam, which was launched in 1997 after...

mental health; Change to incapacity test needed, say GPs.
January 16, 2003... Doctors in Scotland are calling for changes to be made to the way they are required to implement the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000. The act allows other people to make decisions on behalf of people who lack the capacity to...

Funding; Merger of lottery funds a 'bad idea'.
January 16, 2003... The voluntary sector has raised concerns over government proposals to merge lottery money distributors, the Community Fund and the New Opportunities Fund. Membership bodies for the sector are opposing the move, arguing that it could lead...

children; Guidance on risk indicators released.
January 16, 2003... The government has drawn up a list of risk factors that could alert professionals to children that are in danger of developing social problems. The list is included in interim guidance to local authorities on how to develop and implement...

substance misuse by Katie Leason; Charities urge government to target and tailor alcohol treatment services.
January 16, 2003... Alcohol treatment services need to be both mainstream and tailored according to age, ethnicity and other specialist needs, the government was told this week. As the consultation period for the national alcohol harm reduction strategy...

young offenders; Prison suicide toll reached 12 in 2002.
January 16, 2003... Twelve young offenders committed suicide in prisons in 2002, according to the latest figures published by the Howard League for Penal Reform. The figure includes one 16 year old, one 17 year old and 10 in the 18-20 age group, where poor...

learning difficulties; Task force calls for greater effort to implement Valuing People strategy.
January 16, 2003... Most government departments are lagging behind the Department of Health's pioneering work on learning difficulties, says a new report. Anabel Unity Sale reports quality of life without too much bureaucracy," she says. Appropriate...

young people; Youth agency hails new standards.
January 16, 2003... New government standards for the modernisation of youth services in England represent the most important development in youth work for 40 years, according to the chief executive of charity the National Youth Agency. Tom Wylie has praised...

mental health; Children suffer if relative imprisoned.
January 16, 2003... Children with a prisoner in the family are more likely to suffer from significant mental health problems, according to a report from Action for Prisoners' Families published this week. Young people often experience difficulties at school,...

news in brief.
January 16, 2003... l Only 17 per cent of people rated social services in the capital as good to excellent in 2002 compared with 21 per cent in 2001, according to a survey carried out by the Association of London Government on behalf of London's 33 councils....

older people; Advert for magazine too much to stomach.
January 16, 2003... A television advert portraying the neglect of an older person has resulted in 280 complaints to the Independent Television Commission. The advert, which has since been taken off air, was for Take a Break magazine and depicted an older woman...

small step forward.
January 16, 2003... Mencap's Fred Heddell offers a personal view of the progress made in implementing the forward-looking learning difficulties strategy Valuing People in its first year funding arrangements prevent an overall picture being painted and...

hopes and fears.
January 16, 2003... Parents whose children are subject to child protection procedures are among the most difficult service users to consult, and they are often the people least listened to by those responsible for planning services and developing policy. Social...

workforce; Derbyshire accused of breaching deal.
January 16, 2003... Unison is accusing Derbyshire Council of breaching a national agreement over pay and conditions for more than 1,000 staff in care homes for older people and children. The council threatened to sack the workers unless they signed new...

learning difficulties by Alex Dobson; Disability Rights Commission condemns 'voucher payments'.
January 16, 2003... A woman with learning difficulties who was paid in gift vouchers for five years by a major high street newsagent could have a claim for back pay, according to the Disability Rights Commission. Karen Godfrey, 45, who worked at WH Smith in...

workforce by sally gillen; London congestion charge could hit staffing levels, warns union.
January 16, 2003... Unison is calling on London mayor Ken Livingstone to postpone the introduction of congestion charges next month until an assessment can be carried out into how it will affect public sector workers. In a letter sent this week, the public...

more than mental health.
January 16, 2003... Our multidisciplinary team looks at the case of a teenage mother with a history of self-harming and low self-esteem panel responses Oonagh Moriarty In the case of Kelly and Leah good multi-agency working is crucial. It is...

Behind the headlines.
January 16, 2003... Our regular panel comments on a topic in the news Has the spotlight on child protection put the protection of vulnerable adults in the shade? That was the opinion of some commentators last week when new domiciliary care standards were...

youth justice; Inspectors worried over prison racism.
January 16, 2003... Race relations in Chelmsford prison and young offenders institution need "urgent attention", according to a report by the prisons inspectorate published last week. Chief inspector of prisons Anne Owers said there was a backlog of racial...

Obituary; Social care grieves for loss of Simons.
January 16, 2003... The learning difficulties movement has been rocked by the death of Ken Simons, one of its leading figures, at the age of 49. Tributes have been pouring in highlighting his huge contribution to the movement, promoting self-determination for...

events.
January 16, 2003... See www.community care.co.uk for more comprehensive events listings 29 January An interactive approach for life story work Progress Children's Services Birmingham 0121 609 7017 progresscs@ukonline.co.uk 10...

research into practice.
January 16, 2003... Teenage parents seek different things from older parents when using a confidential helpline, says research co-author Jane Akister This research was undertaken with Parentline Plus and the Young Parents' Project (YPP) which is a...

Creative thinking.
January 16, 2003... Background The Republic of Nicaragua covers 129,494 sq km - just over half the size of the UK - and has a population of 4.9 million. Ethnic groups: Mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white) 69 per cent; white 17 per cent; black 9 per cent;...

diary.
January 16, 2003... This week's writer is a probation officer seconded to a youth offending team, who is also an accredited practice teacher and a sessional university lecturer Monday Visit my GP first thing with an ear infection. Iam prescribed 20mls olive...

Corps standards.
January 16, 2003... A partnership between children's services and the army in south Wales is winning a battle against youth offending by use of an intensive four-day adventure training course. Graham Hopkins reports That the army should be called in to take on...

yes it's payback time - for society.
January 16, 2003... At the inquest into the death of Charlene Ellis, one of the two Birmingham teenagers killed in the shoot-out between two gangs on New Year's Eve, coroner Aidan Cotter said it was time for black people to "pay back" efforts to accommodate them...

safety at work is an issue for all.
January 23, 2003... How safe are you at work? For many people, social work involves excessive, heavy caseloads, too much paperwork, hopelessly inadequate resources plus continual reorganisation and change. If that wasn't bad enough the job might also involve...

news in brief.
January 23, 2003... l The National Family & Parenting Institute last week published a report looking at the feasibility of using schools to reach parents with information at important stages in their children's development. Children Growing Up: Schools-based...