Council failings a factor in death of foster carer run over by child, inquest finds

Failings by a local council contributed to the death of a woman who was killed when a 12-year-old boy she was fostering ran her over with her own car, an inquest has found.Marcia Grant, 60, suffered catastrophic injuries as she tried to stop the boy taking her car outside her home in the Greenhill area of Sheffield in April 2023.The boy, referred to as Child X, was jailed for two years in November 2023. He pleaded guilty to causing her death by dangerous driving, after a murder charge was dropped.On Tuesday, the South Yorkshire coroner Marilyn Whittle recorded a narrative conclusion after an inquest into Grant’s death

Where does the welfare bill climbdown leave UK public finances?

Keir Starmer managed to avert a parliamentary defeat over his main welfare bill on Tuesday, but only by removing a central element. So where does the government’s latest climbdown leave the public finances?Cuts to the personal independence payment (Pip) announced at Rachel Reeves’s spring statement in March were meant to save the Treasury £5bn a year.Ministers’ changes to the bill last week to try to avoid a Commons defeat – reversing some cuts to universal credit and applying the stricter Pip eligibility rules only to new claimants – had already reduced that saving to about £2bn.After stripping the Pip changes out of the bill completely on Tuesday, the Resolution Foundation estimates there will be no savings in five years’ time – leaving a £5bn hole in the chancellor’s plans.Reeves also faces a £1

Chris Whitty says culture-war coverage of cycling could harm nation’s health

Culture war-based coverage of cycling based on stereotypes of middle-aged men in Lycra could harm the nation’s health because it shifts focus away from the people and communities who benefit from physical activity, Chris Whitty has said.Speaking a day before the launch of the NHS’s 10-year-health plan, which is expected to focus heavily on prevention, the chief medical officer for England called on people to set aside media cliches and instead focus on “data which nobody can dispute”.If active travel “is seen as something which is simply the reserve of middle-aged, Lycra-clad people cycling possibly too fast around the park, that completely misses the point of actually where the huge health gains are”, Whitty told a conference in York.He said: “There are some areas where you can send a debate from a cultural war into a much more day-to-day one by actually saying, ‘OK guys, but this is the maths,’ and ensuring that you do so with facts which people find surprising.“So for example, the culture wars will always try and paint the person who’s in favour of active transport, and let’s say cycling, as middle-class, entitled, speeding like a bad person

‘I was constantly scared of what she was going to do’: the troubled life and shocking death of Immy Nunn

Two years after Immy killed herself, her mother Louise is still trying to understand how she found her way to a pro-suicide forum – and a man accused of supplying more than 1,000 packages of poisonJust a few hours before she ended her life, Immy Nunn seemed happy. She and her mother, Louise, had been shopping and had lunch. It was the final day of 2022 and Immy, who was 25, appeared positive about the new year. She talked about taking her driving test and looking for a new flat. She was excited about the opportunities her profile on TikTok was bringing her; known as Deaf Immy, she had nearly 800,000 followers, attracted by her honest and often funny videos about her deafness and her mental health

Cass review: how has report affected care for transgender young people?

At the heart of the controversy about how to meet the needs of young people questioning their gender has been the huge rise in referrals to the Tavistock – previously the only dedicated clinic in England and Wales treating children with gender dysphoria.The clinic was closed one month before the Cass review into youth gender identity services, commissioned by NHS England and led by the British paediatrician Hilary Cass, which found that children had been “let down” by the NHS amid a “toxic” public discourse.Her report recommended a significant shift in treatment away from medical intervention towards a more holistic approach to care, including therapy and treatment for coexisting mental ill health, neurodivergence or family issues, and to be provided by a network of regional hubs rather than concentrated in one location.Fourteen months later and the exponential rise in referrals for NHS care has halted, with figures showing a sharp reduction from up to 280 referrals a month at the Tavistock to between 20 and 30 a month this year, a 10th of the earlier rate.James Palmer, the medical director for specialised services at NHS England, who is responsible for implementing the recommendations of Cass, suggests a number of factors are behind the decrease

Children should not be strip-searched or detained unless a last resort, say MPs

Children should not be detained in custody unless arrested for a serious crime and strip-searched only under truly exceptional circumstances, two parliamentary reports have said.Harrowing testimonies of children in England and Wales who were strip-searched and who accused police of racism and making damaging, disrespectful comments are included in the research for the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on children in police custody.The reports – the culmination of a year’s research involving children, police forces and parents – were released days after the sacking of two Metropolitan police officers who were involved in the strip-search of a schoolgirl who become known as Child Q.While a police misconduct hearing found that racism was not a factor in that incident, the research gives voice to young people who said that racism was a factor in their strip-searches.Children as young as 10 in England and Wales are currently subject to the same processes and have essentially the same protections as adults when they are detained in police custody