Daily roundup: Childcare vouchers, Birmingham children's services and deaf children

Top-rate tax payers will be excluded from childcare voucher schemes in the future, the Financial Times reports. The newspaper says government officials plan to rule out parents who earn more than £150,000 a year in a forthcoming announcement to make childcare more affordable. The new programme is expected to replace the existing childcare voucher scheme and provide eligible families with a tax-break worth up to £2,000 per household.

More than five per cent of staff at the children’s services department of England’s largest local authority were on long-term sick leave last year, it has emerged. The BBC reports that 431 children’s services staff were absent for more than 12 weeks in 2012. The council is facing cuts of around £110m in its budget for 2013/14. A council spokeswoman said certain areas of the council's work, such as frontline social work, create “greater stresses and demands” and result in higher than average sickness rates. The council has said it is working to reduce levels of staff sickness.

One third of deaf children in England are suffering as a result of cuts to speech and language support, a National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) study of 900 families has found. “The message given to us from parents paints a very bleak and worrying picture of the future for deaf children in this country,” said Jo Campion, NDCS deputy director of policy and campaigns. “Speech and language therapy is invaluable to many deaf children in helping them to learn and interact with other people and cutting this support will adversely affect their academic and employment opportunities.”