Daily roundup: Youth homelessness, strip searches, and child protection

A survey commissioned by youth homelessness charity Centrepoint has found that 61 per cent of adults believe the government must make ending youth homelessness a priority. The poll of more than 2,000 British adults found that the greatest support for government action on youth homelessness comes from London and the South East.

More than 4,500 children under 16 have been strip searched by the Metropolitan Police over the past five years. The Guardian reports findings of a Freedom of Information request, which reveals that 4,638 children between 10- and 16-years-old were asked to remove their clothes before being searched by officers as part of their investigations.

A council has apologised after a couple were mistakenly sent confidential details about a child welfare case. Cumbria Council says it has taken action after a man and his partner, from Carlisle, received private minutes from a children’s services meeting about a child who was nothing to do with them. The document, which has been seen by the News & Star, contains highly sensitive and explicit information about a young boy.

Former director of children’s services in Bradford Kath Tunstall said staff at the Yorkshire council have been deeply affected by the death in 2009 of four-year-old Hamzah Khan, even though a serious case review concluded the only person to blame was his mother. Tunstall, whose seven-year tenure as DCS ended last week, told the Telegraph and Argus: “We all have to live with this and the whole situation made people dreadfully upset – we were all affected by it. Just because the independent review said no-one was to blame that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a lot of soul searching.”

A think-tank has called for a radical overhaul of Ofsted’s inspection processes. According to the Telegraph, a critical report by Policy Exchange recommends a greater focus on struggling schools and calls on the inspectorate to make shorter one-day checks every two years.

Children’s social workers in Croydon are to be given £1,000 by the council if they work at the authority for at least a year. The Croydon Advertiser reports that the bonus is one of a number of incentives being offered to new staff to reduce the number who leave due to the stresses of the job or to pursue more lucrative agency work.

The ever-increasing gulf between rich and poor in Britain is costing the economy more than £39bn a year, according to a report by the Equality Trust think-tank. The Observer reports that the effects of inequality can be measured in financial terms through its impact on health, wellbeing and crime rates, according to the independent campaign group.