Social work news

• Meet Becky, aged 14, suicidal, alone and unwanted. Victim of a cruel and uncaring state | Louise Tickle

  18-05-2024 20:00
  
  I have followed the life of this desperate child as her life has been ruined by a bankrupt systemYou’re a teenage girl and you’ve been locked in a bare hospital room for more than 15 months. Your bed is a platform attached to the floor. There’s a plastic toilet and a sink moulded into the wall. Your only human contact is through a hatch in the door. Sometimes you get to hold your mum’s hand through it.You’ve tried to kill yourself multiple times, including trying to
  
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• How can a child in care cost £281,000 a year? Ask the wealth funds that have councils over a barrel | George Monbiot

  18-05-2024 09:00
  
  Children crying out for stability are paying the highest price for Britain’s chaotic and exploitative residential careI’m a patron of a small local charity that helps struggling children to rebuild trust and connection. It’s called Sirona Therapeutic Horsemanship, and it works by bringing them together with rescued horses. The horses, like many of the children, arrive traumatised, anxious and frightened. They help each other to heal. Children who have lost their trust in humans
  
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• Ministers clawing back £251m from carers hit by DWP’s allowance failures

  18-05-2024 01:01
  
  ‘Strikingly large’ sum being recouped from people who fell foul of system that did not flag overpaymentsMinisters are clawing back more than £250m from unpaid carers over benefit infringements that occurred largely as a result of government failures, it can be revealed.More than 134,000 people who care for loved ones are being forced to repay often huge carer’s allowance overpayments. The debts are incurred in many cases through no fault of their own, and leave carers sad
  
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