Daily roundup: School absenteeism, new Doncaster DCS, and child abuser concerns

A director of children’s services who has worked to improve high-profile failing children’s services is to join Doncaster Council. The BBC reports that Eleanor Brazil will take over as interim director of the service in June when current director Chris Pratt retires. Brazil was brought in to Haringey Council in the aftermath of the Baby P scandal, and worked at Birmingham after the government issued the authority an improvement notice. Doncaster’s child protection services were brought under government supervision in 2009.

Absence levels of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in state-funded primary, secondary and special schools were substantially higher in 2011/12 compared to those with no SEN. Department for Education statistics show this gap has changed little over recent years. Higher absence rates were also recorded for children eligible for free school meals. However, levels of absence among other pupils fell.
 
More than 5,000 children were reported as abusers to police in England and Wales over the past three years, the NSPCC has claimed. BBC Radio 1 reports that figures obtained by the charity through freedom of information requests showed the number of children being sexually abused by other children was growing. Almost all of those accused of the abuse of other children were boys. Some of those reported were as young as five.
 
A government head for the Troubled Families programme has been appointed as director of implementation for the Early Intervention Foundation. Dolly Molloy formerly worked in the Families at Risk Division at the Department for Education. She joins the foundation’s recently appointed chief executive Carey Oppenheim and director of evidence Leon Feinstein. Chair Graham Allen described them as a “formidably strong, experienced and creative trio of senior campaigners”.