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The privately-owned children’s home accused of failing to protect a victim of the Rochdale sex abuse ring is being investigated by standards watchdogs. Inspectors turned up unannounced at the single-occupancy home which is now part of a group owned by an Anglo-American private equity company. The education watchdog Ofsted, which is responsible for standards in [...]

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Childminders in England say their professionalism could be undermined, and families ill-served, if government plans to change the way they are regulated go ahead. Liz Bayram, joint chief executive of the National Childminding Association, said she was “very concerned” about signals that the government is seeking to bring “a lighter touch” to childminding regulation based [...]

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Child minders may be allowed to look after more children, particularly toddlers, so that the costs associated with care are spread between a greater number of parents. Other rules may also be relaxed to make it easier for parents and grandparents to look after one another’s children. A recent study by the OECD found that [...]

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The worst thing about politics is how easily it can land you on the wrong side of an argument. If, for instance, you consider yourself an old-fashioned Tory, you may have found yourself spluttering into your cornflakes at the Government’s plan, announced as part of the Queen’s Speech, to give fathers more paternity leave. Men, [...]

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David Cameron is planning to stem the tide of child yobbery blighting Britain – by giving families £100 vouchers for parenting classes. Mothers and fathers will be able to collect the free vouchers at some branches of Boots from tomorrow, entitling them to up to ten two-hour sessions on how to bring up their children. [...]

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When I watch my children hurling themselves into the sea off a rock, I just look away and trust them not to hurt themselves. After all, they’ve been doing this stuff without me watching for years. All their physically challenging firsts are made with their father, who is far less nervous than I am, so they [...]

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Local authorities have been accused of undermining standards in nurseries by employing fewer teachers and more nursery nurses. Parents, headteachers and teachers have joined forces to highlight the issue. They say in the six years to 2011 the number of teachers in nurseries has fallen by 12%, to 1,500. Cosla, the umbrella body representing Scottish [...]

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The parents of a toddler who died in a day home mystery have spoken of their pride after their young daughters organs have since been used to give life to four children. Mackenzy Woolfsmith was rushed from a day home on Elgin Heath S.E. in Calgary last Wednesday after reports she had fallen down the [...]

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In 2008, my husband and I moved from Vancouver to France. Our younger daughter, Claire, was a toddler and my elder daughter, Sophie, was four, just about to turn five. Before we moved to France, they were what I thought of as typical North American children; they had a beige food diet, largely consisting of [...]

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Friends have invited us (and our two-year old) to stay with them for the weekend. They are suggesting we go out for dinner, but I know from experience that our son will go berserk if he wakes to find a baby-sitter there. I’d rather stay in, but don’t want to be a) an overprotective mother [...]

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Almost half of abused or neglected children who return home from care suffer further harm, the NSPCC is warning. The charity claims that many returned children are finding their trust in adults shattered by their experiences, as documented in its report Returning Home From Care, published on Monday. Last year, more than 90,000 children were [...]

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The dilemma One of my best friends, who is also a work colleague, had a baby around the same time as me, almost two years ago. We both decided to go back to work part-time and made arrangements to job share. On the days we split between us we look after each other’s children, which [...]

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Neil Sinclair has spent six years in the commandos. He has survived winters in Arctic Norway, cleared minefields in Iraq and tracked drug traffickers in the jungles of Belize. He has guarded the British mission to the United Nations in New York. But he has never felt so panic-stricken as when he was facing a howling two-month-old at 3am. [...]

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I try not to judge you, the parents, but I can’t help it. When you interviewed me, you talked about how you and your partner like the children to eat healthily. Arriving at work, I find them eating chocolate biscuits at 7am. There are tears and tantrums over breakfast, with you begging them, unsuccessfully, to [...]

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The post of nanny to David and Samantha Cameron would probably have been enough even for Mary Poppins. The family of Sammi Strange, the attractive Australian who has just won the job, wonder, however, if this may not lead to even greater things.   David Strange, her father, says she enchanted her new employers in [...]

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Nurseries have been told to provide camp beds so staff can sleep over at work to ensure a service for working parents during the Olympics. Managers warned that whole nurseries will be forced to shut if Tube delays make childcare staff late for work. June O’Sullivan, chief executive of the London Early Years Foundation, is [...]

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Middle class children are adversely affected by time spent in childcare, a study claims. They suffer ‘significant declines’ in their development, health and standards of behaviour, researchers found. The poorest youngsters benefit from being in nurseries or with childminders, and wealthy parents can afford the highest quality childcare. But youngsters in the middle – the [...]

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Families who pay a nanny in cash are to be targeted by the taxman. The news will come as another blow to affluent families who were hit by an announcement in the budget – which means higher earners would lose £1,000-a-year in child benefits. HM Revenue and Customs will try to claw back tens of [...]

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A daycare center owner allegedly locked a six-month-old baby girl under the floor so a health inspector would not spot that that she was overcapacity. Catalina Reyes, 54, was arrested when the baby, who was inside the crawlspace in the basement for four hours without out any food or drink, started to cry. Reyes runs [...]

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Life-changing decisions about the care of thousands of children are routinely being made on flawed evidence from poorly qualified ‘experts’ in the family courts, a damning study reveals. More than a fifth of these vital reports are being produced by people who are completely unqualified, the Channel 4 News investigation found. ‘Experts’ used in hundreds [...]

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Taking a flight with a screaming child in tow is the part of a holiday most mothers and fathers dread the most. Now a new website promises to ease the situation, at least for parents, if not for fellow travellers. Nanny In The Clouds aims to pair families with a childcarer who is booked on [...]

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Stella McCartney, daughter of Paul, pal of Gwynnie and award-winning fashion designer should, by rights, be lost among the starry orbs after which she is named. But absolute proof that she is not came recently in a simple statement about her childcare: “I have a nanny but I find that word jarring. I tell her: [...]

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We are walking across the bright, airy atrium of a newly refurbished Victorian primary in south London. A little girl reading with a parent volunteer looks up and waves enthusiastically; the headteacher, my tour guide, grins and waves back. The school’s positive atmosphere belies the difficulties that some of its pupils face. Half of students [...]

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The head of ChildLine has blamed social networking sites such as Facebook for fuelling what the charity claims is a huge rise in the number of children who deliberately harm themselves. Sue Minto said the internet and mobile phones meant young  people were being exposed to cyber-bullying 24 hours a day. Launching a self-harm awareness [...]

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Britain is facing a childcare crisis with fewer than half of all councils able to provide adequate help for working parents, a damning report will reveal this week. As childcare costs reach an all-time high, just 46 per cent of local authorities in England have facilities to support all parents working full time. In Wales, [...]

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Childcare bills are outstripping mortgage payments for growing numbers of families, a survey has revealed. It found childcare costs have risen faster than inflation for the tenth successive year, with fees soaring as high as £2,000 a month. And it said that while mortgage payments have largely held steady, nursery costs have risen 5.8 per [...]

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Working parents are spending up to £15,000 a year on childcare as costs rise and fewer families receive help with the financial burden. Nursery costs have risen by nearly 6% in a year, while 44,000 fewer families are getting help with childcare bills since the April tax credit cut, figures compiled by the Daycare Trust [...]

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Scottish parents are facing some of the highest childcare costs in Britain, according to two children’s charities. The Scottish Childcare Lottery report found some local authorities were charging twice as much as others for daycare. Nursery prices in some areas were as high as southern England, with 25 hours of care over 50 weeks at [...]

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Research by the Daycare Trust claims spiralling childcare costs, patchy provision and changes to the tax credit system are hitting working parents like never before. The charity suggests 44,000 fewer families are getting help with childcare costs since the government introduced changes to tax credits, while nursery costs have risen by nearly 6%. The government [...]

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I’ve attended one funeral in my life. It was for a man who’d spent most of his life in care. Some of it with me. As an adult he became a residential social worker and worked in the same institution – questionably called an assessment centre -that once imprisoned both of us. His suicide was [...]

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Quick Pitch: Find a babysitter through your friends and others’ recommendations. Genius Idea: As any parent well knows, locking down a babysitter isn’t easy. Finding a babysitter in the first place is difficult, frequently leaving parents to trust their kids with strangers that were referred by friends, or friends of friends. And that babysitter won’t [...]

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More must be done by government to help prevent young refugees and asylum seekers from falling into destitution, a children’s charity has warned. The Children’s Society says it has seen a “noticeable rise” in the numbers of child migrants seeking its help. It is behind a report suggesting more children are suffering homelessness and hunger [...]

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Many parents in the capital could be prevented from working because of high childcare costs, the London Assembly has warned. Londoners spend a higher proportion of their income on childcare compared with the rest of the UK, the Tackling Childcare Affordability report said. Childcare in the capital costs an average of £119 per week for [...]

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Earlier this month, David Cameron posed on the edge of the Baltic Sea in wintry Stockholm and wondered what Britain could learn from countries like Sweden to promote the number of British women in top jobs. As an expat on my second maternity leave in Sweden, I admire Cameron’s ambitions but question whether Britain is [...]

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These are the scenes of squalor which greeted police when they arrived to rescue a young girl from neglectful and abusive parents. Teesside Crown Court heard how police were called after the girl tearfully told teachers her mother had kicked her leg three times, and showed them bruises on her hip. When police visited the [...]

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A naked 12-year-old girl was spotted eating food out of trash cans in California Thursday after neighbours said they saw her wandering the streets with only a car mat covering her. The girl’s mother, 40-year-old Tracy Lynn Betts was said to have taken her daughter’s shoes and clothes in an effort to keep her from [...]

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Polly Toynbee states that when in power the Labour government introduced “free nurseries for three- and four-year-olds” (A strategy for growth must have childcare for all, 14 February). This was not quite the case. Under Labour’s free early-years entitlement (as it became known) many pre-schools and day nurseries provided free childcare places. Unfortunately experience has [...]

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A report into the role of social workers and health care staff in the case of murdered toddler Declan Hainey says things “could, and should have been done differently”. Drug addict Kimberley Hainey, 37, was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years for killing her son at their Paisley home. Renfrewshire Council and the NHS [...]

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The Children’s Commissioner for England is to review how trafficked children are looked after when they are rescued in the UK, the Home Office has said. The government had argued guardians were not needed but minister Lord Henley backed down and asked the commissioner to advise the government. The retreat came in the face of [...]

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The under-used House of Commons nursery has been turning away children whose parents work at Parliament but are not MPs, it emerged today. The facility, opened by Speaker John Bercow 18 months ago, has room for 40 children, but new figures show only 15 attend on a regular basis. Information obtained under the Freedom of [...]

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A deaf and mute girl allegedly kept in a cellar, repeatedly raped and treated as a virtual slave has told a court of years of beatings and cruelty. The victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, told the jury of almost a decade of alleged abuse after being trafficked into the UK from Pakistan [...]

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Social workers took nearly 10,000 children into care in England alone last year and in extreme cases a child can be removed from their home immediately. But what circumstances can lead to such drastic action? A scream echoed down the stairwell of a block of flats in Bristol. “Leave my baby,” wailed a woman’s voice [...]

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Eagle Dad: He Liesheng with his son Tide, who he has nicknamed Duo Duo, Chinese for ‘more more’. He hopes to raise the child to be a genius It showed a crying three-year-old Chinese boy forced to exercise in the snow in just his underpants. Posted on the internet by his father, the video of [...]

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The number of children referred into local authority care in England reached a record high last month. For the first time councils made more than 900 applications to seek protection for young people suffering from abuse or neglect. The figure has been steadily rising since the public outcry surrounding the case of Peter Connelly, known [...]

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The number of children taken into care in England has hit a record high. Numbers have been rising since late 2008 and the infamous Baby P case involving the death of a young child while on the at-risk register in London. Last month, local authorities made 903 applications to protect youngsters from abuse or neglect [...]

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The number of children taken from their parents by social workers is poised to hit a record 10,000 this year. The flood of children into state care has more than doubled over four years in the wake of the scandal after the killing of Baby P. Social work chiefs have clearly concluded that they were [...]

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Parents should be able to borrow money from the government to cover childcare costs to make it more financially viable for them to return to work, a thinktank has suggested. The Social Market Foundation (SMF) has proposed a National Childcare Contribution Scheme which would allow parents to borrow up to £10,000 to pay for childcare, [...]

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UK parents should be able to spread the cost of childcare over as many as 20 years, according to a think tank. The Social Market Foundation wants the government to offer up to £10,000 up front, which families would pay back in monthly contributions. All working parents with children under school age would be eligible. [...]

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Parents struggling to cope with childcare costs could borrow up to £10,000 in a scheme being considered by Downing Street. The plan, backed by senior figures in the Treasury, would take the form of a loan similar to those offered to students. Independent think-tank, the Social Market Foundation (SMF), put forward the proposal today to [...]

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A £750,000 creche in parliament has been branded ‘a grotesque waste of public money’ after it emerged that just 15 children use it. The nursery, which opened 18 months ago to make parliament more ‘family friendly’, has a capacity for 40 children of MPs, peers and others who work on the parliamentary estate, but new [...]

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