Daily roundup: Child benefit, children's homes, and LSCB appointment

Families receiving child benefit would continue to see the value of their payments fall in real terms for the first two years of a Labour government. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls will announce Labour would extend the coalition's cap on increases in the benefit - due to expire in 2016 - for a further year. Under the plan, child benefit payments would not rise in line with inflation but by a fixed rate of one per cent per year until 2017, reports the BBC. 

Two Birmingham children’s homes have been closed after Ofsted raised concerns about young people frequently going missing. Fairfield Children’s Home, in Erdington, and Bournbrook Children’s Home, in Selly Oak, were temporarily closed last December following a major review of care facilities by Birmingham City Council. Now the council’s cabinet member for children and family services Brigid Jones has revealed the closures will be made permanent – while an agency will be hired to take over the running of the city’s remaining five other children’s homes, reports the Birmingham Mail.

Former Ofsted deputy chief inspector and director of social care John Goldup has been appointed as interim chair of Redbridge Local Safeguarding Children Board. Goldup left the inspectorate in March 2013 by “mutual agreement”.