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Will sanctions or support ward off trouble?

    Opinion
  • Tuesday, April 1, 2008
  • | CYP Now
One element of the "triple track" response in the new Youth Taskforce Action Plan is the idea of non-negotiable support. Some will immediately baulk at the concept: surely support has to be wanted to be effective?

The beautiful game has started to turn ugly

    Opinion
  • Tuesday, January 15, 2008
  • | CYP Now
In one of the first discussions on youthful antisocial behaviour during the 1990s, I noted in a speech that most of the lads' magazines tended to be preoccupied with half-naked women and bad-boy footballers.

Progress in joint working must go on

    Opinion
  • Monday, November 22, 2010
  • | CYP Now
The decision last week to strip the Children's Workforce Development Council (CWDC) of government funding will inevitably raise concerns that any genuine "development" of the workforce will stall. A plan for how the Department for Education intends to take forward the quango's work is yet to be articulated.

Riot response requires long-term solutions, not knee-jerk policies

    Opinion
  • Monday, August 22, 2011
  • | CYP Now
The violence across English cities this month triggered its own riot - of condemnation, debate and knee-jerk policy pronouncements. In the days that followed the first outbreak in Tottenham, an exercise in national soul searching took place through the media. Yours truly, for one, did the breakfast TV paper review on Sky News.

It's time to respect children's rights

    Opinion
  • Tuesday, November 17, 2009
  • | CYP Now
You wait ages for one 20th anniversary, then three come along at once. We've just marked the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1989 Children Act. And this week it is 20 years since the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child came into existence.

The next commissioner needs bite

    Opinion
  • Tuesday, June 16, 2009
  • | CYP Now
The Department for Children, Schools and Families has fired the starting gun to recruit a children's commissioner for England to succeed Sir Al Aynsley-Green early next year.

Hidden costs of payment-by-results

    Opinion
  • Monday, July 5, 2010
  • | CYP Now
We are in an age of austerity where outcomes are critical. So it is difficult to take issue in raw principle with the government's desire to commission more public services on a payment-by-results basis.

Focus of spending must be balanced

    Opinion
  • Tuesday, September 8, 2009
  • | CYP Now
It's official: the UK spends more money on child welfare and education than the average market economy. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report out last week, we spend just over 90,000 per child from birth to 18 compared to an OECD average among 30 member countries of just under 80,000.

Outstanding challenge for Ofsted

    Opinion
  • Monday, February 1, 2010
  • | CYP Now
Ofsted-bashing has been on the rise for several months. Cries of exasperation over the way the children's services inspectorate goes about its business have come in fits and starts from all quarters.

A moving parting gift from young offenders

    Opinion
  • Tuesday, October 21, 2008
  • | CYP Now
As my board membership of the Youth Justice Board (YJB) was coming to an end last month, I paid a final visit to Her Majesty's Young Offender Institution Parc, near Bridgend.

Shhh... Every Child Matters lives on

    Opinion
  • Monday, August 9, 2010
  • | CYP Now
Watch out, the language police are about. An internal Department for Education memo lists 30 terms the government wants consigned to history, and the words that should be used in their place. Many relate directly to children's services.

Resilience prevails amid Osborne's bleak choices

    Opinion
  • Tuesday, December 11, 2012
  • | CYP Now
Like a piercing, bitter English winter, Chancellor George Osbourne's "autumn statement" was eye-wateringly harsh. It is, without doubt, children and young people growing up in the most deprived households who are being asked to bear the brunt.

Commissioner for Wales is up to the challenge

    Opinion
  • Tuesday, March 25, 2008
  • | CYP Now
It was an "exceedingly drawn-out" appointments process, according to one Welsh politician. But Keith Towler came through the interviews, both with young people and politicians, to secure the position of children's commissioner for Wales, just under a year after the untimely death of his predecessor Peter Clarke.

Embarrassing custody rates require creative solutions

    Opinion
  • Monday, July 25, 2011
  • | CYP Now
The high number of young people held in youth custody in England and Wales has been a cause of national embarrassment. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has quite rightly raised concerns at the levels of young people held in our youth jails in its recent reports. Despite impressive reductions in recent years, more than 2,000 under-18s were in custody in May.

Wild wastelands should be scenes of fun

    Opinion
  • Tuesday, April 21, 2009
  • | CYP Now
The swathes of land that were once the industrial heartlands of Britain, now reclaimed by nature, offer a fantastic adventure playground for children and young people. The communities that grew up surrounded by coal and steel now have wild parklands on their doorstep.

Can good services remain standing?

    Opinion
  • Monday, June 21, 2010
  • | CYP Now
Like the suffocating drone of vuvuzelas, cuts continue to dominate the atmosphere in the children's services arena and in public services more generally.

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