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

• The Guardian view on Donald Trump’s tariffs: a spectacle of struggle and control | Editorial

  The US president wields tariffs not as a policy tool but as an instrument of pressure, rewarding loyalty and punishing defiance – even among allies

  Donald Trump has probably not read much Michel Foucault. But he appears to embody the French philosopher’s claim that “politics is the continuation of war by other means”. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his fondness for tariffs. He presents taxing foreign imports as a way to rebuild the American economy in favour of blue-collar workers left behind by free trade and globalisation. Yet he plainly thinks that politics is not about truth or justice. It is about leverage and supremacy.

  Britain is learning first-hand that Mr Trump, with his us-versus-them framing and taste for spectacle, is an accidental Foucauldian – using tariffs as tools of loyalty and dominance, even against allies. If Mr Trump follows through on his threat to impose a 20% tariff on all imports, UK growth will suffer. The effect depends on the response. No British retaliation would mean GDP 0.4% lower this year and 0.6% next. A global trade war would push that to 0.6% and 1%. Either outcome would wipe out the government’s fiscal headroom. But while British policymakers fret over the shrinking margins of fiscal rules, Mr Trump sees no need to cloak power in objectivity.

  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 South Sudan: the world's youngest nation is on the brink of a new conflict | Editorial

  The arrest of vice-president Riek Machar takes the country closer to a second civil war

  After less than a decade and a half in existence, the world’s newest country, South Sudan, appears to be sliding towards a second civil war. A 2018 power-sharing deal between President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, the first vice-president, put an end to five years of fighting. But last week’s arrest of Mr Machar effectively ended that agreement, his party says. The United Nations warns that his house arrest, along with mounting military clashes and reports of attacks on civilians, has brought a fragile peace closer to collapse, posing a direct threat to millions.

  The fear is not just of a battle between factions, but of ethnic cleansing and civilian massacres. Political violence in South Sudan has previously descended into intercommunal conflict between the Dinka ethnic group (to which Mr Kiir belongs) and the Nuer (to which Mr Machar belongs).

  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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• Moving fast and breaking things is no way to govern a country | Letters

  Readers agree with Simon Jenkins’ view that the US is ‘moving fast and breaking things’ – but do not see any positive outcome

  Simon Jenkins is right: Donald Trump is certainly moving fast and, two months in, the sound of things breaking is cacophonous. His contention that the end result might be a better US, however, is beyond contrarian (27 March).

  In rejecting his argument, I would cite the work of several American commentators and academics: the constitutional and legal experts Marc Elias and Joyce Vance, the widely acclaimed historians Timothy Snyder and Heather Cox Richardson, and the Yale philosopher Jason Stanley are all full of apprehension for the future of the country they love. None suggests an upside; all anticipate a long and difficult fight. The risk is existential.
  To take two examples of how serious the challenge to American democracy is, I would draw attention to Mr Trump’s relentless efforts at voter suppression and the willingness of his officials both to break the law and to disobey direct judicial instructions. Beyond this, there is the trashing of decades-old alliances, the coddling of Vladimir Putin, the betrayal of Ukraine, the ludicrous appointments, the barefaced lying, the reduction of politics to spectacle and the full-frontal assault on the structures of the federal state. So no, I find it impossible to see how any of this will have the positive outcome Mr Jenkins anticipates.
  John Bailey
  Farnborough, Hampshire

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• Questions raised by Met police raid on Quaker meeting house | Letters

  Readers respond to the forced entry of a place of worship and arrest of six people at a Youth Demand meeting in London

  I represent a non-Quaker spiritual group with a longstanding arrangement to meet twice a week at the Westminster Quaker meeting house in London, from which building six female members of a youth protest group were recently arrested by means of violent forced entry (Report, 30 March).

  A symptom often felt by people who are burgled is that their personal space has been invaded. When those who commit violence are those whose role is to protect us, it is doubly shattering. We were not present when the forced entry took place, yet the manner of it leaves us with a feeling of devastation and destruction of so much of what we have created. Of course it will be argued that the invasion of the space was a necessary evil, but I have to state with force that what we now suffer is real hurt, whereas the prevention of resistance in London is harm as yet not done.

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• If you’re over 70, protect yourself and ask for breast screening | Letter

  Catherine Sims on the importance of asking for potentially life-saving checks

  The supplement in your print edition about breast screening (24 March) left out one very shocking fact. If you are over 70, then you are no longer called for breast screening. In my case, I lost my temper with my bra – the wire was digging in and making my right breast sore. I marched down to my local bra shop, where the lovely shop assistant asked me if I had had a scan recently. When I said “no” she suggested that I see my doctor. Three weeks later, I was having an operation on my left breast to remove a very sneaky cancer at the deepest part of the breast against my chest wall. This meant that I couldn’t feel a lump, so having a breast scan regularly is vital. It is still vital if you are over 70, and you can ask for a scan.
  Catherine Sims
  Penrith, Cumbria

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