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Society | The Guardian
- Some say it’s ‘genetic discrimination’, but insurance companies are fighting for access to these test results
‘I’m being discriminated against purely based on the genes I was born with’, says a Queensland man who couldn’t update his life insurance policy
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Hereditary bowel cancer claimed the lives of three women in Dwayne Honor’s family. They had Lynch syndrome, a genetic condition that increases the chances of certain cancers developing. But he never expected it to affect his insurance.
For years the Bundaberg resident and members of his family participated in university research to help understand and deal with the common condition. About one in 280 people are believed to have it.
Continue reading...- Is this actually PTSD? Clinicians divided over redefining borderline personality disorder
Some have argued BPD should be reclassified as a trauma disorder, maintaining those diagnosed are typically women with abuse in their past
When Prof Andrew Chanen was a trainee psychiatrist in 1993, patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) who had self-harmed were “vilified” and “treated appallingly”.
“There was this myth that somehow they were indestructible,” he says. Despite what his teachers told him, “most were dead by the end of my training”.
Continue reading...- ‘We’ve waited long enough’: Victorian government to pay $276m for those abused in state care
Allan government allocates $165m towards redress for victims of historical abuse and neglect in institutional care, while $111.4m will be spent on civil claims
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In a secret meeting as Victoria’s budget was being announced, the full scale of the historical abuse of children in state care – and its impact on the government’s finances – was being laid bare.
Though much was made of the budget’s flagship announcement of $400 for every public school student, costing $287m, a similar amount will be spent paying victims of institutional care via civil claims and a redress scheme that, until Tuesday, the government had only committed $7.5m to.
Continue reading...- Bird flu strain found in US cows flown to UK lab for testing
Virus sent to high-security facility so that experts can examine the potential risks to people and livestock
Avian flu typically spreads by infecting wild birds and moving along migration routes, but the virus currently running rampant in the US is about to be transported across the Atlantic by plane.
This category A pathogen, which is now spreading among cows in the US, is being sent to a high-security laboratory in the UK so that experts can better understand the potential risks to people and livestock.
Continue reading...- AstraZeneca’s Covid vaccine is no more – but its remarkable success must not be forgotten | Robin McKie
Although dogged by controversy, the firm’s coronavirus jab saved the lives of millions and helped avert humanitarian crises in nations unable to access costly alternatives
Last week’s announcement that AstraZeneca would no longer market its Covid vaccine brings an end to one of the century’s most remarkable medical stories. Created within a year of the arrival of the pandemic, the AZ vaccine was cheap, easily stored and transported, and helped stave off humanitarian crises in Asia and Latin America, where many countries could not afford the more expensive mRNA vaccines that were being snapped up by rich western nations. It is estimated that it saved 6.3 million lives in 2021 alone.
Yet from the start the vaccine – created by research teams led by Professor Andy Pollard and Professor Sarah Gilbert at the Oxford Vaccine Centre – was dogged by controversy. It was linked to blood clots, US observers criticised protocols for its trials, and French president Emmanuel Macron claimed it was “quasi-ineffective” for people over 65. In fact, the vaccine is particularly effective for the elderly.
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Community Care
- Social Care Online library closes after almost 20 years
The Social Care Online library has closed after almost 20 years providing access to information on the sector. The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), which ran the service, said it was no longer meeting the needs of social care…- DHSC launches £16m fund to tackle exploitation of overseas care staff
The government has launched a £16m fund to tackle the exploitation of overseas adult social care staff. The resource is an extension of the international recruitment fund for the adult social care sector, issued last year to help councils and…- How effective are case reviews in improving safeguarding practice?
Social work opinion is divided on how effective case reviews are in improving safeguarding practice, a Community Care poll has found. In late March, the local child safeguarding practice review into the murder of 10-month-old Finley Boden by his parents,…- Podcast: using new approaches to promote ‘old school’ social work for older adults
When Hampshire County Council’s adult social care teams noticed a doubling of the care packages required for people within its population aged over 85 years, it found a solution through an approach called proactive enhanced care (PEC). This approach taps…- Social workers from 22 bodies to develop resources to cut workloads
Social workers and managers from 22 organisations are to help develop and test resources designed to cut workloads among children’s practitioners. They will work with the Department for Education (DfE) appointed national workload action group (NWAG) to identify and quality…
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Blogs
Social Care Network | The Guardian
- 'Don’t expect a survivor to tell you her experience of undergoing FGM'
Specialist social workers explain how they support women and girls affected by the practice
When social worker Sam Khalid [not her real name] first began working with women affected by female genital mutilation (FGM), she found there wasn’t much awareness of the brutal practice in the UK.
She was in her first year at university, in 2011, on a placement with a Women’s Aid team. “The service I was placed in was just starting its FGM unit, and I learned about the practice and met and spoke to many survivors,” she says.
This article was amended on 12 December 2018. An earlier version referenced statistics from a recent Guardian article which was taken down after the Guardian was notified of a fundamental error in the official data on which it was based.
Continue reading...- We want to attract the right people with the right values to social care | Caroline Dinenage
New government recruitment campaign will raise the image and profile of the sector
This year we are celebrating the 70th anniversary of our amazing NHS, but we must not forget that adult social care is also marking 70 years. The National Assistance Act 1948 that created many of the core elements of the modern social care system came into effect on the same day as the NHS act.
In the NHS’s birthday month we have heard many stories of the dedicated nurses, doctors and support staff who have been saving and transforming lives across its seven decades. While these staff are rightly seen as the backbone of the NHS, hardworking care workers, nurses, social workers, managers and occupational therapists are, likewise, the foundation of the adult social care sector – and they have been on the same 70-year journey as colleagues in health. They are two sides of the same coin – inseparable and essential to each other.
Continue reading...- The UK project giving refugees another chance at childhood
Young refugees face unspeakable trauma to get here. But a cross-charity initiative is helping them to rebuild their lives
It is hard to be an adult when you feel like you haven’t had the chance to be a child.
This simple statement has stayed with me over the last 12 months of working with young refugees and asylum seekers. Among them, a 17-year-old boy forced to sleep in a railway station for months; and another who witnessed the killing of his brother and father and escaped from his home country in fear of his life.
Continue reading...- UN: spend an extra £5tn by 2030 to tackle global 'care crisis'
Report highlights risk of rising inequality against women worldwide
The world economy faces a looming “care crisis” risking further division between men and women across the planet, according to a UN report calling for governments and companies worldwide to spend at least an extra $7tn (£5.3tn) on care by 2030.
Making the case for spending on support for children, old people and the neediest in society to double by the end of the next decade, the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) warned demographic changes alone mean the current path for care funding falls far short of requirements.
Continue reading...- Theresa May got it wrong with her cash boost for the NHS. Here's why
Assessing what the health service needs is essential before giving it more money to meet demand
Four key things were missing from Theresa May’s announcement of extra money for the NHS.
There was no admission that there is an NHS crisis that needs tackling. Or that money is needed now for both the the health service and social care. Without this emergency cash injection, there will be insufficient time and resource to make the necessary preparations to avoid a repeat – or indeed worsening – of last year’s winter crisis in the NHS and social care with the trail of waits, delays, suffering and extra deaths that accompanied it.
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Opinion | The Guardian
- The Observer view on Sudan’s civil war: a humanitarian disaster we choose to ignore
Ethnic cleansing and war crimes in Darfur have left 25 million people in urgent need, yet the west’s attention is elsewhere
Parents are killed in front of their children. As they cry for help, the children die too. Panicked people fleeing attacks become moving targets. Entire communities are set ablaze and destroyed. Dislocation, hunger and thirst follow, a prelude to famine and death. Abandoned, terrified, unprotected, unseen, the people despair.
This is not a description of Gaza today. It’s Sudan, war-torn, desperate – and largely ignored. Upper estimates of the number of people killed there since a senseless civil war erupted just over one year ago reach 150,000. About 9 million residents, principally in the western Darfur region, have been displaced. Aid agencies say 25 million people are in need of urgent assistance. The future cohesion of a country already cleaved by the 2011 secession of South Sudan and conscious of next-door Libya’s disintegration is at stake.
Continue reading...- Shirley Conran’s legacy is not only the filthy bits, but sisterhood too | Rachel Cooke
The author was had an extraordinary life, but I will most remember her for Lace, a tale of ambitious heroines for whom anything was possible
Somewhere at the back of a cupboard in my house is the pair of tiny white lace shorts Shirley Conran gave me when I interviewed her in 2012. I’ve never worn them; although she insisted they were just the thing for bed, I worried they would frighten the horses even there. Yet every time I think of throwing them out, I’m unable to do it.
Conran, one of the funniest, sharpest people you could ever meet, bought those shorts to mark the publication of a new edition of Lace, her bestselling bonkbuster of 1982, and because of this I regard them as an important cultural artefact. One day, I may give them, along with my signed copy of Lace, to the Bodleian Library in Oxford: an acquisition that will illustrate to future generations both her lack of pretension, and the way in which women’s writing and reading was still belittled, even at the back end of the 20th century.
Continue reading...- Chris Riddell on Britain and the US hiding from the reality of Gaza – cartoon
Confronted with devastation in the Middle East, the west can only mouth platitudes
• You can order your own copy of this cartoon
Continue reading...- Brexit didn’t bring down the curtain on Rufus Wainwright’s show. The play’s the thing | David Benedict
Word of mouth is vital if a costly West End production is going to succeed, and Opening Night had the wrong kind
When was the last time anyone read a synopsis in a theatre programme? At a lesser-known Shakespeare, perhaps? More likely at an opera being sung in a foreign language with a typically clotted plot. The last place you’d expect to find one is at a musical.
Discovering one detailing the otherwise baffling action in the programme for Rufus Wainwright and Ivo van Hove’s musical, Opening Night, felt not just necessary but a woeful admission of defeat. A musical in English needing a printed explanation for audiences to follow what was going on?
Continue reading...- A dearth of priests suggests the Catholic church should widen recruitment | Julian Coman
It’s no wonder numbers training for the priesthood continue to fall when married men or any woman are still barred
Walking down towards the River Nidd in Knaresborough, the pretty North Yorkshire market town where I grew up, it would be easy to pass by St Mary’s Catholic church without noticing it. Built only two years after the Emancipation Act in 1829, the church was designed to resemble a private house in order not to offend local Protestant sensibilities. Two centuries later, sectarian sentiment is no longer a problem, but the crisis of vocations in the church certainly is.
Back in Knaresborough, over the bank holiday weekend, I was in the Sunday morning congregation to hear Father William pass on sad news. A letter from the bishop of Leeds informed us that when William returns to Ampleforth Abbey, after 12 years’ sterling work, he will not be replaced by a resident priest. Instead, the parish will share one with a church in nearby Harrogate. Inevitably, that will mean fewer masses, and it is hard to imagine that the new man (because, of course, it will be a man), will be able to devote the same level of pastoral care and attention to the town.
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