Children in care in Southern Australia are 52% more likely to be hospitalised by their mid-teens than those children who have had no contact with the care system, new research has found. Elevated hospitalisation rates for children in care continued on into adulthood, with most being admitted for mental illness, drug abuse and physical injury during childhood and beyond. The research, produced by the University of South Australia and published in the Child Abuse and Neglect journal, is the first ever study to examine the impact of child abuse and neglect from data about 608,540 South Australian ..read more

The NSPCC and the Children’s Society have recently unveiled plans to enlist food delivery companies, plumbers and postal workers to look for signs of child abuse while visiting people’s homes. The charities say the campaigns have been set up in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, which has left vulnerable children isolated at home while many schools and community centres remain closed. On Friday, the Children’s Society launched a poster campaign in partnership with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, advising anyone concerned about a child being abused to reach out. The training initiative ..read more

Former Home Secretary Sajid Javidhas announced that he will lead a “No Holds Barred” think tank on child sexual abuse at the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), but that will mean treading a fine line between cultural pressure points and universal truths that lie at the heart of abuse. Javid’s think tank on child sexual abuse – do we really need another – was announced in The Telegraph on 30 May, and included an account of what the exercise would involve, as well as some not-so subtle soundbites blaming lockdown for child abuse ahead of schools reopening in full the following day. Among the list ..read more

Legislation has been passed in New York which raises the bar for entries into the state’s Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment (SCR). The amendment makes it harder for social services to place parents on the register without sufficient evidence. The amendment, which was placed inside New York’s 2020 budget bill, raises the legal threshold for determining that someone maltreated a child, reduces the length of time before records of neglect are sealed, and provides additional protections for accused parents before employers can access their records. The legislation has been called th ..read more

The first ever national study has confirmed that mothers who make complaints of child abuse against a father in court are more likely to lose contact rights with their children. The research also found that this risk doubled when a father made a counter-claim of parental alienation, leading the researchers to conclude that “alienation trumps abuse”. The data revealed the following: When fathers alleged mothers were engaged in alienation, regardless of any abuse claims, they took contact rights away from her 44% of the time; When the genders were reversed, and fathers started out with custody ..read more

A senior family law judge has called on Education Secretary Gavin Williamson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to intervene in a case where a serving diplomat and his wife are said to routinely assault their children. Sir Justice Mostyn asked the ministers to try to arrange for the diplomat’s immunity to be waived during the proceedings. Williamson and Raab originally accepted the request, but later refused to engage with the case without giving an explanation. The case, which involves serious allegations of physical and emotional child abuse against a serving diplomat, is the first of its ki ..read more

The House of Commons is hosting a debate on Operation Augusta, a police and social services investigation into child sexual exploitation in South Manchester, which was launched in response to the death of a 15 year old girl, Victoria Agoglia. The debate, which was raised by Graham Stringer MP, takes place today in the House of Commons from 9.30am – 11am. Victoria had been in the care of Manchester City Council when she died in 2003, after being injected with heroin by a 50 year old man, in his home. Police and social services were aware that Victoria was being targeted by sexual predators. Vic ..read more

The government’s acting Children’s Minister, Michelle Donelan, made a dramatic U-turn on Wednesday over a policy pushing adoptions for children in care after this site published a post explaining the proposal was illegal. Donelan had asked all councils in a letter sent on January 16, to prioritise adoptions in every child protection case, and to ignore court judgments which approved alternative forms of care. The proposal was met with strong resistance by several key stakeholders inside the child welfare sector, including fostering agencies who were concerned that the policy would lead to a re ..read more

A Welsh councillor being investigated over his handling of a child protection case has failed to offer evidence that he has child protection qualifications, after claiming he had been trained in the field. Neil McEvoy contacted Researching Reform after reading a piece we wrote on a child protection case he had taken on, claiming that the report contained several factual inaccuracies. This site offered to amend its original report upon Mr McEvoy furnishing the site with evidence. Mr McEvoy told this site in a message exchange on Facebook that we were wrong in suggesting that he had no child pro ..read more

A Welsh politician who was expelled from Plaid Cymru in 2017 for bullying and harassing party members has taken on a child protection case. Neil McEvoy made headlines in 2011 for accusing Welsh Women’s Aid of “publicly funded child abuse”, claiming the group helped women break court orders involving fathers’ access to children, in a series of tweets he sent out on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. McEvoy has so far not produced any evidence to justify the claim. McEvoy apologised  for his outburst shortly before he was suspended from the party saying: “I apo ..read more