Social work news

• UK care home firm under fire as children forced to move hundreds of miles

  21-05-2023 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Private provider criticised for uprooting more than 60 vulnerable children, with some transferred from south-east England to ScotlandThe trade body that oversees children’s care homes has taken the unprecedented step of publicly berating a major private provider for jeopardising “the wellbeing of young people in its care” after it announced a string of home closures.The Observer revealed last month that England’s fourth largest provider of residential places for looked-af
  
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• ‘Care bots’: a dream for carers or a dangerous fantasy?

  21-05-2023 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Robots that can assist caregivers have been talked up as being transformative. But some researchers fear such technology could take more than it givesIngrid’s 22-year-old son Tom doesn’t understand danger. He cannot leave the house by himself because he does not know that cars may kill him and, in winter, he forgets to wear enough clothes to stay warm. He was born with Down’s syndrome and Ingrid says that “he’s calm and shy and really polite, but he needs help with
  
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• Becky, 12, tried to kill herself. The care she received? Eight weeks in solitary | Louise Tickle

  21-05-2023 08:32 via theguardian.com
  
  Children with serious mental illnesses are being locked up in a modern bedlamIn January, a 12-year-old girl was locked into a “seclusion” room in a hospital in Staffordshire. The room contained a platform with a mattress on it, a moulded basin and toilet, and nothing else. For almost 24 hours a day, her only human contact was through a hatch in the door. She was held in that room just short of eight weeks.“Becky” has complex emotional and behavioural needs, and seemed det
  
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