Budget 2025: how inflation and the two-child benefit cap have increased poverty

“I’ve sat and cried many times, feeling like I’ve let my kids down,” is the heartbreaking description one Kent mother gives of the difficulty she has meeting her family’s needs.With four children still under 13, the family live in a rented flat in the town of Herne Bay on the county’s north coast. She does not come to the door, but her partner passes a handwritten note relaying their meagre existence on benefits as the Guardian joins the local food bank’s morning delivery round.“I have to be careful with electric and gas, and food has to be £1 frozen food,” she writes. “Snacks are a very rare treat

Bereaved parents face ‘harrowing’ delays for NHS postmorterms

Bereaved parents are enduring “harrowing” delays of more than a year to find out why their child died because the NHS has too few specialist doctors to perform postmortems.The shortage of paediatric and perinatal pathologists is revealed in a report by the Royal College of Pathologists published on Sunday. It warns that the situation is “dire”, services in some parts of the UK have “totally collapsed” and families are paying the price.The NHS has so few of those doctors that in some regions the bodies of babies and children who have died have to be taken elsewhere for examination, for example from Northern Ireland to Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool, the college says.“Our service is in crisis”, said Dr Clair Evans, the chair of the college’s advisory committee that represents pathologists who specialise in the care of under-18s

‘We’ve got to find answers’: Corby families affected by cancer searching for truth about toxic waste sites

Alison Gaffney and Andy Hinde received the devastating news that their 17-month-old son, Fraser, had a rare type of leukaemia in 2018.Two years of gruelling treatment followed, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy, before a stem cell transplant. Fraser, then aged three, made a “miraculous recovery” from the surgery, before doctors declared the cancer in remission.It was at this point, as Fraser started to recover and grow stronger, that Gaffney, 36, began to look for answers. She could not stop thinking about comments made by hospital staff at the time of her son’s diagnosis

UK gambling firms spent ‘astronomic’ £2bn on advertising last year

British gambling companies spent an “astronomic” £2bn on advertising and marketing last year, according to a new estimate that has intensified calls for the chancellor to increase taxes on the sector.Bookmakers, online casinos and slot machine companies spent the sum through a mixture of print and digital promotions, as well as affiliate programmes, where third parties are paid to steer gamblers towards particular operators in return for a fee.The figure, produced by the leading media insights group WARC, far outstrips the £1.2bn that the Treasury collected last year from online casino companies.Media industry sources said the total spent on gambling advertising is likely to be hundreds of millions of pounds higher because it is difficult to accurately measure the actual amount of digital marketing spend

South Africa declares gender-based violence a national disaster amid G20 protests

Hundreds of women gathered in cities across South Africa on Friday to protest against gender-based violence in the country before the G20 summit in Johannesburg this weekend.Demonstrators turned out in 15 locations – including Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban – wearing black as a sign of “mourning and resistance”.They staged a peaceful 15-minute silent lie-down protest, symbolising the 15 lives lost daily to gender-based violence in the country.South Africa has one of the world’s highest femicide rates, with UN Women estimating that it is five times higher than the global average.Called the G20 Women’s Shutdown, it was organised by the NGO Women For Change, which urged women and LGBTQ+ communities to “refrain from all paid and unpaid work in workplaces, universities and homes, and to spend no money for the entire day to demonstrate the economic and social impact of their absence”

Coroners’ prevention of future deaths reports should be legally enforced | Letters

Thank you for your article on how coroners’ prevention of future deaths (PFD) reports are being routinely ignored (Coroners’ advice on maternal deaths in England and Wales routinely ignored, study finds, 19 November).Experience has shown us that a coroner’s PFD report is issued in response to serious systemic failings and a trust’s inaction to prevent future tragedies. Tolerating poor care and refusing to learn seem to be shared features of health scandals, including the treatment of people with learning disabilities, such as our own beloved daughter, Juliet Saunders, who died aged 25.She died because the local hospital made a misdiagnosis and discharged her unsafely. The harrowing experience of the inquest was softened for us by the coroner seeing that Juliet was dearly loved and happy