Fewer children dying from injuries in the UK

Over 800 children in the UK die from injuries every year – between 50% to 70% fewer than in 1980 – but the difference in injury rates between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is widening, according to new research.

The study also reveals that injury mortality remains a major problem in adolescents with boys aged 10 to 18 at the highest risk.

The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, was conducted by researchers at University College London’s Institute of Child Health reveals that disparities in child injury death rates are widening between England, which has the lowest injury death rates, and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where injury mortality rates are significantly higher.

If all countries had the same injury mortality rate as England for 10-18 year old children, between2006-2010 there would have been 52 fewer deaths per year in total (29 in Scotland, 8 in Wales, 15 in Northern Ireland)

The study also finds that death rates from injuries in boys aged 10 to 18 years are 2.7 times higher than in girls of the same age; the decline in deaths due to injury since the 1980s seen in the UK is due to a decrease in injuries caused by accidents; and, there has been no decline in mortality rates due to injuries caused by self-harm, assault or injuries of undetermined causes in children aged 10 years or over since 1980.

Deaths due to injuries caused by assault, self-harm or undetermined causes account for 34% of injury deaths in boys and 37% of all injury deaths in girls aged 10 to 18 years.

The differences between countries and the different trends according to type of injury, means better targeting of prevention efforts are required, say the report authors.

Professor Ruth Gilbert, research lead for the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said: “This research shows that injury death rates are going down in children which is very good news. But we must not become complacent: in older children, differences between countries in injury death rates are widening, which means more can be done to reduce the risk of injury in children, particularly in older children and young adults.

“The big tragedy shown in our research is that there has been no decline in deaths due to suicide and assault in older children in any UK country since 1980. This might surprise a lot of people because these types of injuries might be thought of as the most preventable.

“The risk factors that contribute to deaths due to suicide or assault in children are complex and often accumulate over childhood. They include combinations of factors such as deprivation, alcohol or drug misuse and other mental health problems in children and their parents.”

The study was conducted using data from death certificates and looked at the causes of death of children aged between 28 days and 18 years in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland between 1980 and 2010.

The research undertaken by University College London is part of a larger programme of work – Child Health Reviews UK – a UK-wide project led by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, funded by the HQIP on behalf of the departments of health in the four UK countries.

Source: Socialworker.co

Mid-teens is most unhappy age, research finds

The most unhappy young people in the UK are 14- and 15-year-olds, research from The Children’s Society has found.

The charity’s second annual Good Childhood Report shows that children’s happiness and satisfaction levels overall have continued to stall following a rise from 1994 to 2008.

Among the 42,000 eight to 17-year-olds surveyed, those aged 14 and 15 were found to have the lowest sense of wellbeing.

This is based on a raft of factors including their families’ financial situation, health, education, behaviour, housing, sense of independence and their relationships with friends and family.

Around a sixth of 14- and 15-year-olds were considered to have a low sense of wellbeing, compared to four per cent of eight year olds.

The research found that 15-year-olds were particularly unhappy with the amount of choice they had over their lives.

Between the ages of eight and 15 the aspects of children’s lives where a sense of wellbeing fell were appearance, money, the future and school life. However, they became happier about these issues over the following two years.

The charity warns against dismissing unhappiness among teenagers as an inevitable part of adolescence.

Matthew Reed, The Children’s Society chief executive, said: “These findings clearly show that we can’t simply dismiss their low wellbeing as inevitable ‘teen grumpiness’. They are facing very real problems we can all work to solve, such as not feeling safe at home, being exposed to family conflict or being bullied.

“It is so important that we all listen and take seriously what children and teenagers are telling us.”

He also described the lack of progress in children’s sense of wellbeing as “incredibly worrying”.

YoungMinds director of campaigns, policy and participation, Lucie Russell blames “the unprecedented toxic climate children and young people face in a 24/7 online culture where they can never switch off” as well as the poor state of the economy for unhappiness among many teenagers.

Source: CYPnow

Child Protection Training Forum

We have launched our new forum this is a place where you can to ‘get together’ to share best practice, resources, ideas and experiences, to take action on collective issues, to get information from partners, and other groups and to identify opportunities (such as training or collaborative opportunities). You can ask questions, give advice or just have a friendly chat with other members!

Visit our new forum – click here –

Online pornography to be blocked by default, PM announces

Most households in the UK will have pornography blocked by their internet provider unless they choose to receive it, David Cameron has announced.

In addition, the prime minister said possessing online pornography depicting rape would become illegal in England and Wales – in line with Scotland.  The new measures will apply to both existing and new customers.

In his speech, Mr Cameron said family-friendly filters would be automatically selected for all new customers by the end of the year – although they could choose to switch them off.

And millions of existing computer users would be contacted by their internet providers and told they must decide whether to use or not use “family-friendly filters” to restrict adult material.

The filters would apply to all devices linked to the affected home Wi-Fi network and across the public Wi-Fi network “wherever children are likely to be present”.

Customers who do not click on either option – accepting or declining – will have filters activated by default, Tory MP Claire Perry, Mr Cameron’s adviser on the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood, told the BBC.

The UK’s biggest internet service providers have agreed to the filters scheme meaning it should cover 95% of homes.

Other measures announced by the prime minister included:

• New laws so videos streamed online in the UK will be subject to the same restrictions as those sold in shops
• Search engines having until October to introduce further measures to block illegal content
• Experts from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre being given more powers to examine secretive file-sharing networks
• A secure database of banned child pornography images gathered by police across the country will be used to trace illegal content and the paedophiles viewing it

Mr Cameron, who has faced criticism from Labour over cuts to Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre’s funding, insisted the centre’s experts and police would be given the powers needed to keep pace with technological changes on the internet.

According to some experts, “default on” can create a dangerous sense of complacency, says BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.

He says internet service providers would dispute Mr Cameron’s interpretation of the new measures, insisting they did not want to be seen as censors.

What do you think ? Will the PM’s announcement work?

Children’s centres target disadvantaged at the expense of universal services

Children’s centres are increasingly targeting services at disadvantaged families and broadening their geographical reach, Department for Education research shows.

The Evaluation of Children’s Centres in England report showed the “one-stop shop” model for delivering family and children services from a central location is being replaced by centres forming clusters and opening satellite sites.

University of Oxford researchers interviewed staff and surveyed service providers in more than 120 children’s centres across England in 2012 to assess changes in service delivery.

They found budget cuts to children’s centres meant workers were scaling back universal services and spending more time delivering targeted work and visiting families in their homes.

Single centre managers were increasingly managing a group of children’s centres. Some staff in such clusters reported a decline in the centres’ overall “organisation and management” as a result.

Oxford University professor Kathy Sylva, one of the report’s authors, said the greater focus for targeted support for vulnerable families meant other local children could miss out.

“This change is probably positive for vulnerable families, but because there is no extra money, some of the universal services, like stay and play, are being cut back because staff are out visiting vulnerable families in their homes,” said Sylva.

Stay-and-play sessions allow parents or carers to spend time playing with their children at a children’s centre.

The research found that about three-quarters of the children’s centres surveyed were located in the 30 per cent most deprived areas according to the Income Deprivation Affecting Children measure.

The children’s centres drew almost two-thirds of their users from these immediate, deprived areas.

Sylva said parents’ proximity to the centres suggested some less vulnerable families would be affected by cuts to services.

“Some of the families might be working poor, where the dad works during the day and the mum does shift work,” she suggested. “The mum probably took her child to stay and play, so the child had access to lovely toys and she could meet other mums.

“But in a time when all services have been cut, children’s centres cannot put in more effort for vulnerable families and provide universal services. This causes a tension between support for the most vulnerable and neighbourhood families who were using universal services such as childcare.”

This was the fourth report of the Evaluation of Children’s Centres, which is a six-year study commissioned by the DfE.

Source: CYPNow

IWF report – 88% of sexting images are copied

he final paper relating to a study into self-generated, sexually explicit content of young people on the internet has been published.

It was conducted in September 2012 over 47 working hours. The Internet Watch Foundation’s Analysts looked at the amount of content they could find which was sexually explicit, of young people which appeared to be self-generated either by themselves or someone else.

It revealed that most of the content catalogued by the analysts – in fact a whopping 88% – had been taken from its original upload source and put somewhere else. Often this would be in collections.

The message to our young people is that if they take part in creating this sort of imagery they are likely to lose control of it once it is uploaded on the internet.

A copy of the report can be found here

Source: UK Safer Internet Centre Insider

The latest Ofsted safeguarding briefing for schools Inspecting Safeguarding Briefing (April 2013) provides guidance on safeguarding / child protection arrangements within schools, including the importance of training:

 “the importance for all staff in an establishment of having appropriate training and induction so that they understand their roles and responsibilities and are confident about carrying them out”.

We offer Safeguarding / Child Protection Training at different levels:

Safeguarding Children Level 1 – Basic Child Protection Training for all

Safeguarding Children Level 2 – More in Depth look at Child Protection & the Law

Safeguarding Children Level 3 – Designated Person / Child Protection Officer / Safeguarding Manager

Safeguarding Children Level 3 Update Course – Designated Person / Child Protection Officer / Safeguarding Manager Update course – for those who have already attended the level 3 in the last two years.

Safeguarding Children Two Day Course – includes the level 3 one day course and Safer Recruitment and Safe Working Practice

Bespoke Training – Bespoke training can be very effective, both in terms of outcomes and cost.  The training is carried out on your own premises and, although any of our training packages can be delivered, you may want to mix and match various modules, so that all your areas of concern are covered.  So why not let us know what you are looking for and let us do the rest.

Take a look at our website for the range of online courses and face to face open course we run throughout the UK www.childprotectiontraininguk.co.uk