Daily roundup: Child grooming, health and wellbeing, and youth services

Professionals helping child victims of sexual abuse are not keeping pace with technological advances, academics say. They warn that while perpetrators have become more ingenious in their use of technology to engage with vulnerable children, the training available to professionals has not kept up. The researchers who surveyed health, education and children's services workers across England concluded that professionals are playing "catch-up" with abusers, the BBC reports.

Parties across the political spectrum must show ‘ambition’ and present a coherent view to the electorate on what they would do to make the UK the best country in the world to begin life, according to 23 children’s charities and campaign groups in a letter to The Times today. The group say that for too long government health and social care policy has focused on older people with too little emphasis placed on children's needs. Organisations including the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Barnardo’s, Children’s Society, NCB and Brook are signatories.