Daily roundup 3 July: Domestic abuse, loneliness, and state-run nurseries
Neil Puffett
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
Charity claims thousands of parents falsely claiming domestic abuse in order to claim legal aid in custody cases; Childline reports 14 per cent increase in children getting in touch due to loneliness; and education select committee chair calls on government to protect funding for state-run nurseries, all in the news today.
Thousands of parents falsely claim domestic abuse to access legal aid and stop estranged partners from seeing their children, a parenting charity has claimed. The BBC reports that Families Need Fathers said parents are being encouraged by some solicitors to file for non-molestation orders - injunctions used in urgent abuse cases. New figures show a 30 per cent rise in orders made after legal aid was axed in everything but abuse cases in family courts in 2012.
More children are struggling with feelings of loneliness, with the impact of social media being blamed. Sky News reports that figures published by NSPCC's Childline show that the service gave 4,636 counselling sessions that were devoted to loneliness in 2017/18. This was a 14 per cent increase on the previous year. Most of those seeking help were teenagers but the youngest person was just 10 years old.
Ministers must protect funding for state-run nurseries in England or risk seeing them close, Conservative MPs have warned. The BBC reports that education select committee chair Robert Halfon warned that Treasury "bean-counters" would store up huge problems if the nursery schools were not protected. Conservative ministerial aide Craig Tracey and Chichester MP Gillian Keegan were among those who raised the issue with ministers.
An imam who bullied and beat children as young as 10 in his Islamic study classes has been jailed. The Independent reports that Abdul Rauf, 51, admitted 21 separate charges but a judge at Manchester Crown Court took around 80 attacks into account. Police said they saw evidence of "consistent assaults" on children recorded by a CCTV camera inside a mosque teaching centre in Rochdale.
A head teacher who kept pornography on her work phone and stole £350 from a PTA collection to pay towards her mortgage has been banned from teaching for life. The Metro reports that Catherine Jones, 42, was also found guilty of a string of other misconduct offences, including "cheating" by inflating children's exam results. The former history teacher was promoted to head teacher of Stoneleigh Academy - now Willowpark Academy, in Oldham, Greater Manchester, in September 2012.
