Grapevine

Society | The Guardian

• Bristol surgeon ‘harmed’ 203 women with unnecessary operations

  Anthony Dixon performed pelvic floor surgery instead of offering less invasive alternative treatments

  More than 200 women were harmed when a rogue surgeon carried out operations on them unnecessarily, an NHS inquiry has found.

  Some of the women were left with life-changing physical problems or unable to work, while many also suffered trauma and serious psychological harm as a result.

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• The Guardian view on child protection failures: social workers need backup | Editorial

  A review of social services’ role before the murders of Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes rightly avoids pinning blame on individuals

  There were 536 incidents involving serious harm to a child, where abuse was a factor, in the year to March 2021 in England. Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, whose murderers were convicted last December, were among the 223 children who were killed. For reasons including timing, the existence of upsetting video footage showing both children being assaulted, and the fact that in each case a woman who was not a relative was convicted of murder, these tragedies received far more attention than is typical.

  The purpose of a just-published report on these cases, by the safeguarding practice review panel, is to bring together lessons and suggest how to make similarly awful events less likely in future. How urgently this needs to happen was further illustrated this week when Laura Castle was convicted of murdering Leiland-James Corkill, a baby she was in the process of adopting (the local authority in this case, Cumbria, has apologised).

  Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at [email protected]

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• Shropshire baby deaths inquiry midwife to lead Nottingham review

  Donna Ockenden is appointed to investigate failings after families brand current report ‘not fit for purpose’

  Donna Ockenden, the senior midwife who investigated the Shrewsbury and Telford maternity scandal, has been appointed to lead a review into failings in Nottingham following a campaign by families.

  The current review into maternity services, which had been branded “not fit for purpose” by affected families, will conclude on 10 June.

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• Police investigated No 10 parties ‘without fear or favour’, insists Met chief

  Acting commissioner Stephen House says no evidence was found that PM breached Covid rules more than once

  The Metropolitan police investigated parties inside Downing Street “without fear or favour”, and found no evidence that Boris Johnson had breached Covid regulations more than once, the force’s interim head has insisted.

  The acting Met commissioner, Stephen House, also rejected that Johnson or other senior No 10 staff might have avoided sanction by not filling in police questionnaires about their activities, saying someone doing this would be “a spur for more work, not less”.

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• UK government to allow councils to sever Russian contracts

  Councils pushing to break ties had been prohibited from taking ‘non-commercial considerations’ into account

  The UK government introduced legislation on Thursday to help councils, NHS trusts and other public bodies exit contracts with Gazprom and other Russian companies

  Councils have been keen to withdraw from contracts amid concerns they were helping to fund Vladimir Putin’s regime. They had been prohibited from taking “non-commercial considerations” into account when procuring or terminating contracts, and they have a statutory duty to find the cheapest deal on behalf of the taxpayer.

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Community Care

• Arthur and Star cases show need for expert child protection units, finds review
  

  The murders of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson demonstrate the need for child protection practice to be handed over to specialist multi-agency teams of expert practitioners. That was the verdict today from the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel’s inquiry into…
• Council at risk of losing control of children’s services as DfE sends in commissioner
  

  A council is at risk of losing control of its children’s services after the government intervened in the light of a damning Ofsted report. The Department for Education (DfE) has appointed a commissioner, Paul Moffat, to oversee and direct improvements…
• Review proposals to ‘axe’ child protection conference chairs a ‘massive concern’, warns BASW
  

  By Charlotte Goddard and Mithran Samuel Care review proposals for “expert” social workers to both lead safeguarding cases and chair child protection conferences pose a “massive concern”, the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) has warned. BASW said that the…
• Qualified Adults Social Worker – Out Of Hours
  

  https://jobs.communitycare.co.uk/job/1401719441/qualified-adults-social-worker-out-of-hours-hcc275150/…
• Care review urges national social work pay scales to reward expertise and boost retention
  

  By Mithran Samuel and Rob Preston (story updated) The government must introduce national pay scales for social workers, tied to a “vastly improved” learning and development offer, to boosts skills, reward expertise and retain staff in practice, the Independent Review…

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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

• Steve Bell on Rishi Sunak’s cost of living package – cartoon
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• The Guardian view on energy windfall taxes: cynical, but welcome | Editorial

  Rishi Sunak’s new plans to redress the cost of living crisis are substantial, but they should have been introduced much earlier

  In politics, 2022 is already the year of the guilty euphemism. It’s the year in which Downing Street tried to airbrush an unlawful lockdown party as “a work event”. It’s the year in which the invasion of Ukraine was cynically misdescribed as a “special military operation”. And now, in Rishi Sunak’s latest emergency mini-budget, it is the year when the government prefers a tax measure to be known as a “temporary, targeted energy profits levy”. Good luck with that one, chancellor. To the rest of us, what Mr Sunak announced on Thursday is unmistakably a windfall tax.

  As such, it is better late than never. In a better managed political and economic culture than ours, in which effective regulation of markets was accepted as desirable in itself and action was taken when it was most needed, the measures might have been viewed as those of a strong and confident government. After all, an overheated energy market has been reined in. The consumer interest has been prioritised. The poorest have been given special protection. And there is a recognition that, temporary or not, the emergency may last up to two and a half years. All this is welcome.

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• The Guardian view on child protection failures: social workers need backup | Editorial

  A review of social services’ role before the murders of Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes rightly avoids pinning blame on individuals

  There were 536 incidents involving serious harm to a child, where abuse was a factor, in the year to March 2021 in England. Star Hobson and Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, whose murderers were convicted last December, were among the 223 children who were killed. For reasons including timing, the existence of upsetting video footage showing both children being assaulted, and the fact that in each case a woman who was not a relative was convicted of murder, these tragedies received far more attention than is typical.

  The purpose of a just-published report on these cases, by the safeguarding practice review panel, is to bring together lessons and suggest how to make similarly awful events less likely in future. How urgently this needs to happen was further illustrated this week when Laura Castle was convicted of murdering Leiland-James Corkill, a baby she was in the process of adopting (the local authority in this case, Cumbria, has apologised).

  Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at [email protected]

  Continue reading...
• The Met has made a big mistake in tying its reputation to Boris Johnson’s | Gaby Hinsliff

  Unless the police answer outstanding questions surrounding Partygate fines, they risk losing the confidence of the public

  Everyone is equal before the law. There are few greater cornerstones of liberal democracy than the idea that anyone, from pauper to prime minister, can have their collar felt. When that crumbles, corruption swiftly follows. So while the excruciating details of Sue Gray’s report on Downing Street’s lockdown party culture – the flippant WhatsApp from the prime minister’s principal private secretary, Martin Reynolds, about the drinks they “got away with”, or the cleaners left mopping up drunken vomit – should weigh heaviest on political consciences, the spotlight now turns to the police.

  Too many of us just can’t square those pictures of Boris Johnson raising a toast at his press secretary Lee Cain’s leaving do with the fact that some around the booze-laden table got fines, and he magically didn’t.

  Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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• Letter: Kathy Boudin obituary

  In 1950s New York, Kathy Boudin and I were friends and school-mates at both the Little Red Schoolhouse and Elisabeth Irwin high school. Her later life as a radical revolutionary and penal reformer notwithstanding, my abiding memory of Kathy is of her prodigious talent as an athlete.

  She was among the best young female basketball players in New York City, and deployed a strong throwing arm when she played demon third base on the softball diamond in the public recreation park opposite her family’s house on St Luke’s Place. Helena Kennedy’s account helped me put those memories in context.

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Learning in the Modern Workplace

• Online Workshop: Empowering self-development at work
  Next public workshop: 7 March – 8 April 2022 Continuous learning and development in the workplace is much more than continuous training. Whilst it is up to everyone to become a lifelong learner and keep up to date with what’s happening in their industry or profession to remain employable, it’s also up to L&D departments […]
• Online Workshop: Social & Collaborative Learning At Work
  Next public workshop: 17 January – 18 February 2022 Social learning is not a new training trend; it’s the way we have always learned from one another. However, it is something that managers and individuals will need to value as an integral part of their daily work. In this workshop we will look at how […]
• Online Workshop: Learning from the daily work
  Next public workshop: 25  October – 26 November 2021 Although L&D departments have traditionally focused on training people to do their jobs, research tells us that most of what employees learn at work happens as they do their job – it’s just that they are not aware of it or make the most of it.  So, […]
• Top Tools for Learning 2021
  The Top Tools for Learning lists have now been published. 2021 was the YEAR OF DISRUPTION! There were a substantial number of new tools nominated this year so the main list has now been extended to 300 tools to accommodate them, and each of the 3 sub-lists has been increased to 150 tools. Although the top of […]
• Online Workshop: Modern Training Practices
  Next public workshop: 6 September – 8 October 2021 Modern training is not just about digitising current training events but thinking differently about what is appropriate for today’s workforce. In this 5-week online workshop we will first look at how to address the issues with current training and then consider some of the modern training […]