Daily roundup: Single parents, online safety for autistic children and drugs education

Government must take urgent action to help single parents and their children, the charity Gingerbread has said. A three-year campaign, launched today, calls on government to help parents escape unemployment and working poverty. Research by the charity found that single parents with children aged over 12 face double the rate of long-term unemployment than other groups. Gingerbread chief executive Fiona Weir said: “Getting single parents into work is vital if we’re going to tackle child poverty, reduce the number of children growing up in homes where no one works, and cut the cost of the benefits bill. Yet years of political rhetoric have made very little practical difference to hundreds of thousands of single parents.”

A guide has been launched to to help parents of children with learning disabilities and autism use the internet. The guide, created by charities Cerebra, Mencap and Ambitious about Autism, seeks to limit the risks to children online. The charities say that young people with a learning disability can be at higher risk of online grooming, cyber bullying and exposure to inappropriate content because of increased vulnerability, and social naivety. Tracy Elliot, head of research at Cerebra said: “We wanted to support parents in making informed choices about internet use and enable them to help their child get the most out of the internet.”

Lessons about drugs, alcohol and relationships should become compulsory in schools, according to Labour MP Diana Johnson. The Hull MP will introduce a private members’ bill on Wednesday, that would make lessons about the issues mandatory in all schools, including academies and free schools. Johnson said: “Giving our young people the life skills to make wise choices will help the fight against the costly social ills of binge drinking, drugs abuse and relationships breakdowns. A few years ago, under the previous Labour government, we were close to getting these subjects included as part of the National Curriculum. Sadly, this was blocked by the Conservatives before the general election.”

The need for drug education has also been emphasised in a new report by the UK Drug Policy Commission. The report said there is “little evidence” that drug-specific education makes a difference to the prevalence of drug taking, but giving young people accurate information about drugs and their risks “can influence drug-taking behaviour”. “Overall the evidence for cost effectiveness of drug-specific education is weak, although there is some evidence to support broader programmes that address behaviour more generally and build self-efficacy, help with impulse control and teach life skills, and these should be part of the national curriculum,” the report said.

Children who take the drug Ritalin are largely positive about the way in which it helps them deal with the symptoms of ADHD. The research by Ilina Singh, of King’s College London, found no evidence that the drug turns children into “robots”, but found that it did help them to make decisions. “Children value the medication because it puts them in a place where they can make good moral decisions, which is exactly what the ethicists are worried about,” she said.

And finally, police have been accused of luring young people to commit crime. The Observer reports that more than 100 people have been convicted as a result of an operation that saw undercover police staff a pawn shop in north London to trade stolen goods. Jennifer Twite, policy adviser at Just for Kids Law, said: "It concerns me that this operation may have encouraged people to commit crime, which is damaging both to society and to those who may not have otherwise ever received a criminal record.”