Links from around the world of youth work and social care:
- Online abuse: Facebook has announced that it has removed 8.7 million pieces of content that violated their child nudity or sexual exploitation of children policies in the past quarter.
- Young people’s mental health: statistics provided by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, in response to a written parliamentary question from Bambos Charalambous, show that in 2017/18 there were 27,487 attendances at accident and emergency departments in England by young people aged 18 or under with a recorded first diagnosis of psychiatric conditions. This was almost double the figure for 2012/13, when there were 13,800 attendances.
- Characteristics of children in need: The Department for Education (DfE) has published statistics for children referred to and assessed by children’s social services in England for the year ending 31 March 2018. Figures show there were 404,710 children in need at 31 March 2018, an increase of 4% on the previous year; the number of child protection plans at 31st March 2018 has increased to 53,790, an increase of 5.3% on the figure for 2017.
- UK Youth Parliament: UK Youth Parliament has published the results of the Make your Mark consultation, run by the British Youth Council, which asked young people in the UK to choose issues they felt were a priority for discussion. Responses from 1,106,788 young people aged 11-18 show that putting an end to knife crime and improving mental health services for young people were among the top priorities identified.
- Domestic abuse: The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee has published a report following an inquiry into the government’s proposed domestic abuse strategy and draft bill on domestic abuse. The report looks at the impact of domestic abuse on children and makes recommendations including: the impact of domestic abuse on children should be explicitly recognised in the legislation; the government should develop a clear strategy to ensure that children experiencing domestic abuse are protected and given the support necessary to help them recover; children affected by domestic abuse should be given special waiting list status for all NHS services, including child and adolescent mental health services.
- Digital Media Is ‘Like Cocaine’ for Babies’ Developing Brains: Some doctors refer to behaviors resulting from overexposure to digital devices as “virtual autism.”
