The next phase of the ‘roles and tasks of social work in England’ project was launched today (14 March 2007) by a project team working with the General Social Care Council (GSCC).

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, today reported on the results of her investigation into complaints about the amount of redress received by some elderly and disabled people who had belatedly received NHS funding for their care.

Ed Miliband, Minister for the Third Sector, has announced that the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) will run a £2million programme to help local authorities harness the potential of the third sector to improve people’s lives.

All women’s prisons should be shut over the next 10 years and inmates transferred to small specialist units, a report for the Home Office has concluded.
Its author, Baroness Corston, called for a cut in the numbers of women jailed, with a far greater use of community punishment.

PCTs could set up local quality initiatives to reward GPs for promoting healthy lifestyles, says a DoH report. In addition, all practice-based commissioning schemes will be expected to include a means of ‘incentivising practice-based commissioners to reduce people’s lifestyle risks’ by 2008/9.

One hundred teenagers wearing “hoodies” will demonstrate outside Parliament as part of a campaign calling for Government action to help young people stay out of trouble.

The number of ethnic-minority people in the country will more than double and hit the 10 million mark within two decades, it has been claimed. Oxford’s Professor David Coleman, who has fought a student backlash over his views on immigration, said the face of Britain was “radically changing”.

Children as young as four are being taught about same-sex relationships through fairytales and storybooks with gay and lesbian characters.

Babies will be assessed on their gurgling, babbling and toe-playing abilities when they are a few months old under a legally enforced national curriculum for children from birth to five published by the government yesterday.

{mosimage}Every nursery, childminder and reception class in Britain will have to monitor children’s progress towards a set of 69 government-set “early learning goals”, recording them against more than 500 development milestones as they go. At five, each child will be assessed against 13 scales based on the learning goals and their score, called an early years profile, must be passed to the Department for Education and Skills.

When children enter compulsory schooling, they should be able to read simple sentences using a phonics based approach, count reliably up to 10 and sing simple songs from memory, as well as respecting others’ beliefs and learning to share and take turns.

The Early Years Foundation Curriculum, which comes into effect from September 2008, replaces non-statutory guidance already in place. If nurseries or other care providers want to opt out of the new requirements, for example because they follow an educational philosophy that introduces reading at a later age, they will have to apply for an exemption, and would have to forfeit any state funding.

The Department for Education and Skills’s framework immediately came under attack from the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations (NCPTA) and from the Tories for taking an excessively prescriptive approach and targeting children far too young.

Emergency services have been called to deal with an incident at an immigration detention centre in Oxfordshire. Thames Valley Police said 35 officers were dealing with an emergency at Campsfield detention centre near Kidlington.