Daily roundup: Gang crime, adoption powers and state boarding school

There has been a fall in attempted murders and numbers of times people have been wounded with knives since the riots of August 2011, a study has found. The BBC reports that a review of the government’s ending gang and youth violence strategy between 2012 and 2013 found that the falls could not be attributed to the government programme which was set-up in the wake of the 2011 violence. But Home Secretary Theresa May said the initiative was working.

The British Association for Adoption & Fostering (BAAF) has welcomed the government's decision to withdraw plans to give the Education Secretary the power to remove local authorities from the adoption recruitment process without parliamentary approval. BAAF said that ensuring parliament will have to approve the withdrawal of a local authority’s responsibility for adopter recruitment and assessment will mean robust evidence is at the heart of any such decision. "What matters most is that looked after children get the best chances in life and any system surrounding them must support that," Srabani Sen, BAAF chief executive said.

Planning permission has been refused for a £22m state boarding school in West Sussex for children from inner-city London. The BBC reports that the South Downs National Park Authority said the proposals to create a 375-pupil school were too big and it would have an "inappropriate" impact on the landscape.

The government has said it will amend the Children and Families Bill to ensure it benefits disabled children and young people. Every Disabled Child Matters said that without the changes, there was a risk that around 25 per cent of disabled children and young people and their families would not benefit from other elements in the Bill, such as local joint commissioning arrangements.

Kent’s children’s services department has had a government improvement notice lifted. The Kent Messenger reports that Ofsted has rated safeguarding, children in care and adoption services all to be “adequate”, with important areas of ‘good’ practice. The department was issued with an improvement notice three years ago following an Ofsted report in 2010, which found that services for vulnerable children were inadequate in virtually every area.