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Uniform Database16/10/2021: We’re in a mental health pandemic, Somerset charity says
A mental health charity that helps young people in crisis has said the UK is in a “mental health pandemic”. In Charley’s Memory was named after 18-year-old Charley Marks from Burnham-on-Sea who killed himself in 2015. Charity director Dawn Carey said demand for its services had doubled since the coronavirus pandemic began.
Read: BBC
15/10/2021: Shout Out UK awarded youth engagement grant
Shout Out UK has been named as the latest recipient of the government’s youth engagement grant aimed at supporting young people to develop policy affecting them. The grant, previously known as the youth voice groups grant, is run by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and welcomes applications for up to £58,350, for projects which “enable more young people to have their voices heard and participate in decision making on a national policy level”.
15/10/2021: Care review maintains stance that children’s services over-investigate families despite Ofsted pushback
The children’s social care review has maintained its position that children’s services open too many investigations into families, despite Ofsted rejecting this. Responding to the sector’s feedback to its ‘case for change’ report published in June, the review said it was important to resolve why the number of child protection investigations that did not result in a child protection plan had increased threefold in the decade to 2019-20.
Read: Community Care
15/10/2021: Facebook must prioritise children’s wellbeing, Zuckerberg is told
Facebook has lost the trust of parents, is prioritising commercial gain over children’s needs and must take steps to restore faith in its platforms, a global alliance of child protection campaigners and experts has warned Mark Zuckerberg.
Read: Guardian
14/10/2021: Devon teens create mental health resources for schools
A group of teenagers from Devon are providing schools with mental health resources in a bid to start conversations and help fellow students. Conor, founder of Spark UK, said there was a “lack of resources and education for teachers”. The teenagers, aged between 14 and 16, are distributing the supplies to 60 schools across England, including in Lincoln, London and Bristol.
Read: BBC
14/10/2021: Online campaign launches to tackle youth loneliness
An online campaign using a digital recreation of the night sky has launched to offer support to the 1.9m young people in the UK affected by social isolation. The campaign sees the launch of support website Lonelynotalone.org, which aims to connect young people using an online replica of the evening’s night sky.
13/10/2021: Gloucester mental health podcast helps young people open up
Teenagers have said a new podcast discussing mental health in young people has helped them to open up about their own experiences. Finley, 16, from South Gloucestershire, talks about topics such as self-harm, anxiety and depression in his show called Unboxed. He said he had the idea for the show during lockdown when many young people started struggling with their health.
Read: BBC
13/10/2021: Children’s homes facing ‘horrific’ recruitment and retention problems
Residential children’s care providers are warning of a staffing crisis, amid burnout fears and a salary war breaking out among homes. One provider described the recruitment and retention problems as “horrific. Like I’ve never known”. The warning has been made by the Independent Children’s Homes Association (ICHA) after it canvassed members about their staff and recruitment and published the results as part of an internal memo seen by CYP Now.
12/10/2021: Warwick student Will Bargate took his own life during lockdown
A university “should have been more proactive” with a student who killed himself after disengaging with his course in lockdown, a coroner said. Will Bargate, 23, was in his second year of a business course at Warwick University when he moved to the family home in Essex to work remotely. He was seen on CCTV leaving home at 03:20 BST on 26 September last year and was found in nearby woods on 1 October.
Read: BBC
12/10/2021: Long-term youth unemployment increasing, ONS warns
Latest data on the labour market finds that between June and August this year, nearly 13,000 more people aged 16 to 24 had been unemployed for more than a year compared with the same period a year earlier.
12/10/2021: A boy wrote about his suicide attempt. He didn’t realize his school’s Gaggle software was watching
Round-the-clock surveillance of students’ accounts raises tricky privacy concerns. And do they really help keep kids safe?
Read: Guardian
12/10/2021: Another big rise in hate crime
The Home Office has today published its annual statistics on hate crime for the year ending March 2021. There were 124,091 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in the year, a nine per cent rise on the previous year. Although some of this increase is believed to be driven by improvements in crime recording and a better identification of what constitutes a hate crime, this is still a very worrying figure, particularly because we know that many people do not report incidents of hate crime against them.
Read: Work with Offenders
11/10/2021: Government appoints new youth minister
The government has appointed Nigel Huddleston as the new youth and civil society minister in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Huddleston, the Conservative MP for Mid Worcestershire, is the vice-chairman of the Conservative Party with responsibility for youth issues.
11/10/2021: Children locked in rooms at youth prison up to 23 hours a day
Children being held in a privately run prison have been locked in their rooms for up to 23 hours a day in uncomfortably hot conditions, according to a damning report by three inspectorates. Inspectors who arrived unannounced at Oakhill secure training centre (STC) for boys aged 12-17 identified “widespread failings” which they said were having “a significant impact on the care and wellbeing of the children held there”.
Read: Guardian
11/10/2021: Cyber Security – It Doesn’t Have to be Complicated
Cyber security is a vast subject and one which may not excite us all that much. Let’s face it, learning about different types of software and security features isn’t many people’s idea of a fun night out. Having said that, it’s one of the few areas that we unfortunately need the most information about as cyber security has rapidly become a top priority for organisations and schools across the world. It was found that 83% of schools experienced a cyber-incident or attack with 65% of schools not training staff about cyber-security.
