Government misses child trafficking deadline

The government has come under fire for failing to meet a deadline to provide guardians for children who have been trafficked into the UK.

The children’s charity Ecpat UK said an EU directive from 2011, due to be implemented by 6 April, should also have resulted in the creation of an anti-trafficking commissioner, and action to prevent prosecutions of trafficked children who have been forced into crime.

Bharti Patel, chief executive of Ecpat, said the government’s current approach to trafficked children is “not up to scratch”.

”The government states that it has a series of ‘equivalent mechanisms’ that bring it into compliance with the EU directive,” she said.

“Quite simply, these are not up to scratch. As long as the government continues to shy away from fully committing itself to the directive’s measures, our ability to effectively combat human trafficking and protect its victims will be seriously undermined.

“We urge the government to wholeheartedly commit to the introduction of these measures as part of our shared mission to effectively tackle a crime that is tantamount to modern-day slavery.”

Last month, the Children’s Society called on the government to take urgent action to protect child victims of trafficking after a reportestimated there were almost 400 cases of children in modern-day slavery in the UK in 2012.

The study by the Centre for Social Justice found children had been subjected to forced labour, sexual exploitation, domestic servitude and forced criminality.

A Home Office spokesman said: “Human trafficking is abhorrent and we are committed to combating this crime in all its forms.

“That is why we opted into the EU directive in July 2011 and why we have taken additional steps to fully comply with the directive and strengthen our approach.

“From later this year the National Crime Agency will build on existing work to combat trafficking by using its enhanced crime fighting and intelligence capabilities to target criminal gangs.”

Source: CYPNoq

Online adoption gateway opens

The government today launched an online portal that will act as a national “gateway” for prospective adopters.

The First4Adoption website brings together information about the adoption process in a single place.

The Department for Education hopes the site will help England’s estimated four million potential adopters understand the adoption process.

Children’s minister Edward Timpson said the site would also dispel myths that put off prospective adopters and complement the existing adoption information line 0300 222 0022.

“Every child deserves a loving home, but too many children are waiting too long,” he said.

“I want no prospective parent to be in any doubt that the government, and the whole system, are on their side.

“For too long families have been deterred by baffling, over wieldy and unduly slow processes, or by myths around the types of families sought.”

To coincide with the launch of First4Adoption, the DfE publishedresearch showing that up to four million people in England are “fairly likely”, “very likely” or “certain to” consider adopting in the future.

First4Adoption is being run by the children’s charity Coram, Adoption UK and the Coram Children’s Legal Centre.

Shuna Kennedy, director of the British Association for Adoption & Fostering, welcomed the launch of the site.

“With such a desperate need for more adopters, First4Adoption can only be considered a very positive initiative,” she said.

“To have a resource where those thinking about adoption can quickly and easily get professional help and information about the adoption process, and where and how to apply, will surely encourage more people to take that very important first step towards giving a child or children a safe, permanent and loving home through adoption.”

But the children’s charity Barnardo’s warned that First4Adoption’s goal of recruiting more adopters would be undermined by other government reforms of the adoption system.

“It is bewildering to see the government working hard to improve the adoption system while putting contradictory plans into place,” said Janet Grauberg, director of strategy at the children’s charity.

“The government’s own evidence highlights the urgent need to simplify the adoption process, yet it is proposing to introduce a new level of complexity into proceedings.

“First4Adoption aims to eliminate barriers that have put off potential parents for too long, but the government threats to stop councils from recruiting adopters will do quite the opposite.”

She added: “To increase numbers of adoptive parents, all recruitment streams must be kept open and recent reforms allowed time to take effect.”

The DfE also released its latest set of adoption maps today. They show how many children are up for adoption and the supply of adopters in each English local authority area.

The maps are based on local authority figures and do not include data from voluntary adoption agencies.

Source: CYPNow

DfE axes Children’s Improvement Board funding

The government is to stop funding the Children’s Improvement Board just two years after it was set up, it has been announced.

The body, which is responsible for helping councils improve their children’s services and implementing government policies, received £10.5m from the Department for Education (DfE) in 2011/12 and £8m in 2012/13.

But the board has now been told that it will not be funded in the current financial year.

A DfE spokesman said it was always intended that support for the board would be “time-limited” and that, in the longer term, “sector-led improvement should mean ‘sector-funded’”.

The board’s director, Colin Hilton, warned that the move risks jeopardising work to improve local authority performance on adoption, sexual exploitation and learning from child abuse cases.

“We knew this funding was always going to be time-limited, but this announcement comes as a complete shock when we are already a week into the new financial year,” he said.

“It leaves no time for contingency planning and puts at risk the good work carried out by the Children’s Improvement Board in supporting councils to improve their children’s services.

“Since the ministerial announcement of our continued funding last autumn, we have worked with the DfE and agreed on plans for improving performance on adoption, tackling child sexual exploitation and learning lessons from serious case reviews. This decision will now throw this important work into doubt.

“We know Whitehall intervention is not the answer to protecting vulnerable children and a sector-led approach is the best way forward.

“However, such work needs to be adequately resourced and it is untenable to throw the full weight of this on councils, which are already contending with government cuts to their budgets by a third.”

Established in 2011, the board is a partnership between the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS), the Local Government Association and the council chief executives’ group SOLACE.

Andrew Webb, president of the ADCS, said local authorities are working hard to improve the services they provide and there has been improvement since the board was introduced.

“The strengths of peer-to-peer support and challenge are well recognised as a way of driving sustainable improvement and have proven not only to deliver results, but also to be cost-effective,” he said.

“In a time of diminishing budgets and rising expectations of what children’s services can and should deliver, the Children’s Improvement Board was a vital way of driving improvement.

“The decision to abolish it is out of step with the progress being made by the sector with its help.”

A DfE spokesman said: “It is the responsibility of local government, working with delivery partners, to lead its own performance improvement and take individual and collective responsibility for achieving better outcomes for children.

“At a national level, the department will continue to work to drive improvement across children’s services; freeing up local authorities from unnecessary bureaucracy, improving the quality of the workforce and taking focused action in areas where performance across the country is not strong enough.

“Our work on adoption, on early years and on implementing the Munro Review of Child Protection are just some areas where we have made significant progress this year.”

Source: CYPNow

Care applications reach new record high

The number of care applications has risen by eight per cent in the past year, according to latest statistics from Cafcass.

Figures for the 12 months between April 2012 and March 2013 show the organisation received a total of 11,055 applications – the highest recorded in a single year. The figure for 2011/12 was 10,244.

In February 2013 alone, there were 998 applications – the highest on record for a single month.

Despite increases in care application demand, the length of care cases has dropped, from 54 weeks in 2011/12 to 45 weeks in the third quarter of 2012/13.

Anthony Douglas, chief executive of Cafcass, said the organisation is working hard with courts, local authority services and agencies to reduce unnecessary delays for children and young people going through care proceedings.

“While pressure continues to come from the increase in application numbers, we know that these applications are being brought in a more timely and better prepared way than was the case in 2008, when we first witnessed a large increase following the Baby Peter case in Haringey,” he said.

“Work will continue over the coming year, both at national and local levels, to ensure we are working together to provide the best service possible to the children we support.”

Cafcass is also continuing to experience high levels of private law cases. In March, a total of 4,001 new applications were passed to the organisation, a one per cent increase on March 2012.

The organisation has said the increase appears to be linked to changes regarding legal aid, which came into effect on 1 April. Most parents will no longer be eligible for legal aid in disputes about children following separation or divorce

Source: CYP Now

Disclosure & Barring Service – Filtering of old and minor convictions and cautions

March 2013

Today, the Home Office has started the legislative process (subject to agreement by Parliament) so that certain old and minor cautions and convictions will no longer be disclosed on a DBS certificate.

This action is in response to the Court of Appeal judgment in January this year which stated that the disclosure of all cautions and convictions on a DBS Certificate was incompatible with Article 8 of the Convention for Human Rights.

Since the judgment, we have been working very closely with the Home Office to develop a set of filtering rules that would remove certain old and minor convictions and cautions from a DBS certificate. The filtering rules which are now before parliament for consideration are:

An adult conviction will be removed from a criminal record certificate if:

(i) 11 years have elapsed since the date of conviction
(ii) it is the person’s only offence and
(iii) it did not result in a custodial sentence.

Even then, it will only be removed if it does not appear on the list of specified offences. If a person has more than one offence, then details of all their convictions will always be included.

An adult caution will be removed after 6 years have elapsed since the date of the caution – and if it does not appear on the list of specified offences.

For those under 18 at the time of the offence:

A conviction received as a young person would become eligible for filtering after 5.5 years – unless it is on the list of specified offences, a custodial sentence was received or the individual has more than one conviction.

A caution administered to a young person will not be disclosed if 2 years have elapsed since the date of issue – but only if it does not appear on the list of specified offences.

The changes will not come into force until after the legislation has completed its passage through Parliament. Until then, it’s business as usual.

Government publishes its final version of Working Together

The revised guidance, Working Together To Safeguard Children (2013), has been launched today and condenses around 700 pages of guidance into 95 pages.

A cross-party group of MPs and peers has warned that the Government has not fully thought through its social care reforms and that without greater integration with health and housing, and a focus on prevention and early intervention, the care and support system will be unsustainable

Source: Learning Disability Today

People with learning disabilities die 16 years sooner on average than the general population and more than a third of these deaths are down to people not getting the right healthcare, official research has concluded.

Source: Learning Disability Today

Source: NSPCC CASPAR

Source: NSPCC CASPAR