Daily roundup 28 July: Neet scorecards, sexting, and children's centres
Jess Brown and Adam Offord
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Government to start rating councils on how well they reduce numbers of Neets in their area; police warn that children as young as 11 are "sexting"; and plans to close children's centres announced, all in the news today.
Local authorities are to be scored on how many young people aged between 16 and 19 who are not in education, employment or training (Neet) there are in their area. The BBC reports that new scorecards will be introduced, which will rate an area’s percentage of teenagers in education, and judge the efforts of councils to tackle the issue.
Children as young as 11 are sending intimate photographs of themselves over social media, a senior police officer has warned. The Mirror reports that schools are dealing with cases of sharing photographs of this nature on a weekly basis, according to Chief Inspector Graham Goulden, of Police Scotland's national Violence Reduction Unit.
Sixteen children’s centres in Wirral are to be reduced to just three main “hubs” in an attempt to save £1.5m. The Liverpool Echo reports that Tony Smith, lead member for children’s services at Wirral Council, said the council had seen a drop in funding for children’s centres from £10m in 2010 to just £3m.
Nearly 70 children in Wolverhampton have gone missing from care in the last five years, figures have revealed. The Express & Star reports that last year the highest number of missing children in the city was recorded at a total of 26, which includes a 10-year-old.
A three-year-old child from Tower Hamlets is one of hundreds of young people in the capital who have been tipped as potential future radicals and extremists. The Independent reports 1,069 people have been put into the government’s de-radicalisation programme, with the three-year-old child a member of a family group that had been showing suspect behaviour.
National spending on play equipment has increased by nearly 10 per cent, the Association of Play Industries (API) has said. Latest figures from API member companies show order values worth £48.2m for the second quarter of 2015 – a 9.6 per cent increase on the same quarter last year (£43.9m).
