Grapevine

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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.
  

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• 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

• Le Corbusier’s social housing was meant to be the dream. In a summer of extreme heat, it is a nightmare | Anna Richards

  When temperatures get to 40C inside, and French building regulations won’t even allow shutters, these tenants’ listed homes are simply unlivable

  The population of Firminy, south-east France, has been dwindling for decades. Its recent history is one of factory closures in a region built by steel, and locals tell me that many people leave for better opportunities in neighbouring Saint-Étienne, or to live in the Haute-Loire’s countryside.

  On the top of a hill, however, stands Firminy’s pride: l’Unité d’Habitation, an imposing tower of concrete designed by Le Corbusier. The architect’s final project is an oddity – a building for people, where two-thirds of the apartments are dedicated to habitations à loyer modéré (or HLM – social housing); but also a piece of history, whose facade and roof were listed as monuments historiques in 1993.

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• The Guardian view on mental health: the new secretary of state should make it a priority | Editorial

  Parity for people with physical and psychological ailments has been promised for years. New neighbourhood clinics are a step in the right direction

  The rise in children and young people with mental health problems makes this week’s announcement of a new network of community clinics in England particularly welcome. A&E departments have recorded an increase in difficult-to-manage symptoms including aggression and hallucinations. New specialist walk-in mental health services should take some of the pressure off. The bringing forward of a deadline for ending out-of-area acute placements, and a pledge to reduce waiting times for children, are also positive.

  Declining mental health was among the key themes of Alan Milburn’s interim report on young people and work. It is a big factor behind the rise in claims for illness and disability benefits. Children’s anxiety and other psychological difficulties are also among the many challenges facing schools. Recent years have seen steep rises in emotionally based school avoidance, as well as in autism and neurodiversity.

  Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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• The Guardian view on Italy’s new far-right party: the rise of a rogue general | Editorial

  The early success of Roberto Vannacci’s National Future sends an ominous signal as extreme politics become normalised

  When a serving Italian general published a far-right tract in 2023 entitled The World Turned Upside Down, a disciplinary inquiry swiftly followed. Roberto Vannacci’s text was a sustained exercise in bile and bigotry, attacking among other things the “normalisation” of homosexuality, and questioning whether a high-profile black volleyball star could really be considered Italian. The controversy sent the book into the bestseller charts, and its author was suspended for bringing the army into disrepute.

  A year out from Italy’s next general election, Mr Vannacci is a problem not for the military but for the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. Now a member of the European parliament, in February he exploited his notoriety to found National Future, a political party which argues that Ms Meloni’s coalition government has sold out its far-right supporters through not being extreme enough. The “true right”, according to the former paratrooper – who once served as a military attache in Moscow – should be pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine, anti-EU, and committed to restoring the “cultural homogeneity” of Italy through the expulsion of immigrants and their descendants.

  Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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• Catholic or not, many of us share Andy Burnham’s beliefs | Letters

  Readers respond to an article by Julian Coman on Andy Burnham’s faith and the influence of Catholic social teaching on his work

  Julian Coman’s article about Andy Burnham resonated with me, as I share his belief in compassion, social responsibility and concern for those who are struggling (Like Burnham, I was an altar boy. His Catholic upbringing is shaping the way he governs, 1 August). Where I differ is in the suggestion that these values are rooted primarily in Catholicism.

  I grew up in inner-city Manchester during the Thatcher years, in a low socioeconomic working-class community facing unemployment, poverty and drug misuse. My parents were not religious, but they instilled in me a humanist outlook based on empathy, fairness and our shared responsibilities to one another.

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• Early release is a sign of a broken prison system | Letters

  Readers respond to Andy Burnham’s review of controversial measures for the early release of thousands of prisoners to free up space in jails

  There is something deeply incongruous about a penal system centred on incarceration having to release prisoners early because it has run out of room to incarcerate them (PM to tighten early release rules but men jailed over PC Harper’s death can be freed, 4 August).

  The government’s latest early-release measures may be necessary to prevent our prisons from becoming completely overwhelmed, but they are surely a symptom of a much deeper failure. We appear to be operating a revolving-door policy: tougher sentencing fills the prisons, overcrowding forces early release, public concern produces calls for tougher sentencing, and the cycle begins again. It is rather like baling water out of a sinking boat without ever fixing the hole.

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