Daily roundup: Child poverty, child protection and troubled families

A report by the New Policy Institute and Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests child poverty has dropped to its lowest level since the late 1980s. The report, which analyses income, employment, housing and health data, says in 2011/12 27 per cent of children lived in poverty, the lowest level for almost 25 years. At the same time, poverty among working-age adults with children remaines at 23 per cent, broadly in line with the previous few years, Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion finds.

A five-year-old girl who weighed three times the average for her age has been taken into care by Newport Council. The Metro reports that child health experts have described it as "shocking" that the girl, who weighed just over 10 stones, could have gained so much weight without intervention from doctors, teachers or her family. Newport City Council confirmed that she was taken into care last August solely because of her weight.