Daily roundup: Care proceedings, teacher training, and physical education

The Department for Education is to produce a series of online materials to help social workers understand new legislation that requires care proceedings to be completed in 26 weeks in all but exceptional cases. The resources will be published in the summer alongside a pilot version of a template that practitioners can use to produce more consistent evidence for courts. The details were revealed in a letter from children's minister Edward Timpson to directors of children's services to highlight changes to the way family courts work.

More than 70 per cent of mainstream teachers have said their training failed to prepare them to teach children with special educational needs. According to the Priory Group, the statistic means that the 71 per cent of children with autism who attend mainstream schools are missing out on specialist support.

Nearly two thirds of children would be relieved or “not bothered” if the competitive element were taken out of school sport. The Independent reports that a study of 1,000 eight- to 16-year-olds and a similar number of parents found that mothers and fathers are often more anxious about the result of school games than their children are.

Toddlers who play puzzles with their parents will be better off than those who are taught to read and write at a young age, according to a Cambridge University psychologist. The Daily Mail reports that David Whitebread believes that the government is wasting money by investing in formal early years education.

A teenager suspected of hanging herself in a children's home should not have there in the first place, an inquest has been told. The BBC reports that Rebecca Watkins, of Braintree, was found dead at the Evergreen children's home in Brandon, Suffolk, in 2009. The teenager's care assistant Rochelle Chevalier told an inquest that the 16-year-old, who suffered with depression, bulimia and suicidal thoughts, should have been somewhere where she could have received more support.

Kath Tunstall, who retired as Bradford Council’s strategic director of children’s services (DCS) in March, has been nominated for a Sue Ryder Yorkshire Women of Achievement Award 2014. Tunstall became director of social services in 2005 and then DCS in 2007, reports the Telegraph and Argus. Tony Reeves, chief executive of Bradford Council, said: "Kath has worked tirelessly throughout her career and had a real impact on the outcomes for all of the children and young people who live, work or who are looked after in the Bradford district, and beyond."