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6 Nov 12
Reductions in local government funding could lead to some abused children falling through the social services net, MPs warned today.
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5 Nov 12
Changes at the Department for Education could lead to a reduced focus on early years policy, MPs warned today.
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25 Oct 12
Pressure on council children’s services is mounting as more children are taken into care, a local authority survey has shown.
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24 Oct 12
Plans to cut £150m from council funding for children’s services could ‘severely hamper’ town halls’ early intervention programmes and put Sure Start children’s centres at risk, the Local Government...
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19 Oct 12
Procedures for delivering children’s care services are loaded in favour of local authority provision and are failing vulnerable Scottish youngsters, an alliance of third and private sector providers...
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10 Oct 12
Council ‘virtual schools’ have had little success in closing the education gap between children in care and other pupils, Ofsted has concluded.
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8 Oct 12
The government will cut another £10bn from the welfare budget within four years, targeting housing benefits for young people and payments for children, George Osborne told the Conservative Party...
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26 Jul 12
The £1.25bn of funding being channelled through the pupil premium is not necessarily going to be well spent, both the Sutton Trust education charity and Ofsted have warned.
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10 Jul 12
There is ‘not a snowball’s chance in hell’ that the government will reach the statutory target to eradicate child poverty by 2020, former Labour minister Alan Milburn said today.
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9 Jul 12
Working families with children have been dealt a ‘triple financial blow’ in the recession through cuts to tax credits and rising costs of childcare and transport, according to the Joseph Rowntree...
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14 Jun 12
The government wants to redefine the way it measures child poverty, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith announced today.
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11 Jun 12
Every eligible local authority in England has agreed to take part in the government's plan to turn round the lives of 120,000 problem families by 2015, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles announced...
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21 May 12
Nurseries and children’s centres should be able to take on ‘academy status’ and be freed from local authority control, according to a Conservative MP.
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18 May 12
Plans to cut the costs of the child maintenance system in the UK are ‘high risk’ and could end up increasing child poverty, the Public Accounts Committee warned today.
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16 May 12
The Scottish Care Inspectorate is to spearhead a strategic assessment of care services for children over the coming year, under plans published today in the latest local government inspection...
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14 May 12
The government has been ‘inundated’ with more than 2,000 applications from schools to run summer schools funded by £50m of the pupil premium programme, according to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.
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11 May 12
The government’s assessments of individual adoption services, published today, lack credibility and could deter prospective adopters, councils have said.
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26 Apr 12
A campaign is mounting to secure councils a grant funding top-up to meet the costs of children in care, Public Finance has learnt.
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16 Apr 12
Parents who persistently allow their children to miss school should have their Child Benefit docked, the government’s ‘behaviour czar’ has recommended.
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11 Apr 12
Care applications received by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Court Service have reached a record high, statistics published today reveal.
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30 Mar 12
Lengthy court cases cause the ‘most significant’ delays to adoptions, Ofsted has revealed.
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29 Mar 12
The ten councils with the largest number of troubled families in England have agreed to join a government scheme that will pay them up to £4,000 for each problem household they help.
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28 Mar 12
Every young person out of work for more than a year should be given a publicly funded ‘Youth Job Promise’, according to the independent experts examining last summer’s riots.
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21 Mar 12
Chancellor George Osborne confirmed that the government will explore a shift to regional pay in the public sector.
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12 Mar 12
Half of children leaving local authority care believe this happens too early, according to a report by England’s children’s rights director.