General Reports and Other Publications
EHRC: Evidence from an inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission shows that hundreds of thousands of disabled people regularly experience harassment or abuse but a culture of disbelief is preventing public authorities from tackling it effectively. The report, ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’, says that many disabled people have come to accept harassment – including verbal and physical abuse, theft and fraud, sexual harassment and bullying – as inevitable.
The inquiry sets out the serious and systemic failings in the way that public authorities have dealt with disability harassment, including a detailed examination of 10 cases of severe abuse, 9 of which resulted in the death of the victim. Further evidence indicates that perpetrators rarely face any consequences for their actions, while their victims continue to live in fear of harassment.
NLGN: Local Government Minister, Bob Neill MP, writing in a new essay collection from the New Local Government Network, states that government will be looking to local leaders to help deliver its decentralisation agenda. The publication, entitled The Next Question: The future of local leadership, includes a cross party collection of local government leaders who each contribute their thoughts on what the key challenges for council leaders will be in the future.
Civitas: Millions of pensioners will have their retirement incomes stripped of between 20% & 75% of their value, reveals a new Civitas report. You're on Your Own: How Policy Produced Britain's Pensions Crisis outlines how the collapse of defined benefit pension schemes, which guarantee savers a fixed annual retirement income, has resulted in less saving.
But it permitted new anti-consumer practices to emerge amongst pension providers. The authors give the example of a typical 1.5% management charge that costs just £15 in the year a pension scheme is opened, but £3,000 in its 40th year. Through compound charges, a typical pension can lose a third of its value as a result of what looks like a small charge at first. (p. 35)
CQC: A review of maternity services at University of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust has found that the trust is not meeting 6 essential standards.
CQC conducted the unannounced inspections jointly with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). The NMC have completed a separate investigation into the provision of supervision arrangements for midwives at the trust. Their report will be available in early October 2011.
HL: Around 60,000 adults facing multiple needs & exclusions are being let down by services, living chaotic lives and facing premature death because, as a society, we fail to understand & coordinate the support they need, say leading charities.
Revolving Doors Agency and the Making Every Adult Matter (MEAM) coalition - formed of Clinks, DrugScope, Homeless Link and Mind – have launched a vision paper setting out how the situation and its huge social & financial costs can be addressed and urging political leaders from all parties to take action. The paper sets out five building blocks on which the government can base this new approach.
UNICEF: New research by Ipsos MORI for UNICEF UK has shown that children in the UK feel trapped in a materialistic culture and don’t have enough time with their families. Following on from UNICEF’s pioneering report in 2007 that ranked the UK bottom in child well-being compared to other industrialised nations, the research released last week gives an in-depth comparison of over 250 children’s experiences of materialism and inequality across three developed countries, the UK, Sweden and Spain.
The research shows that parents in the UK are committed to their children but they lose out on time together as a family due in part to long working hours. They often try to make up for this by buying their children gadgets & branded clothes. Consumer culture in the UK contrasts starkly with Sweden & Spain, where family time is prioritised, children & families are under less pressure to own material goods and children have greater access to activities out of the home.
Press release & links ~ DfE response ~ Copies of research available on application
TWF: A new report published last week by the Big Innovation Centre calls on the government to focus on 5 areas with the greatest potential to generate new jobs in the UK economy. The next wave of innovation: Five areas that could pull Britain clear of recession argues that the government must deal with the fundamental issues that are holding back growth in these areas and outlines some of the specific policies that each of these areas of the economy needs.
PC&PE: The Commons Transport Committee has published its sixth special report of session 2010–12, Keeping the UK moving: The impact on transport of the winter weather in December 2010: Government Response
NAO: It will be difficult for government departments to achieve value for money from means-tested benefits unless government understands the impacts of means testing, learns from past experience & improves coordination between different benefits, the National Audit Office has reported.
In light of proposed & ongoing reforms to benefits and related programmes, the NAO notes the importance of departments sharing good practice and learning from past experiences in the design of means tests. There is a lack of coordination of, and overall accountability for, means testing across government. Departments are responsible for their own means-tested benefits and their impacts, but because means-tested benefits interact with each other it is important that there is coordination.
CII: A recent report by the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), entitled ‘Who cares?’, highlights that despite the recent Dilnot Commission, the public remains unaware of the real cost of long-term care and the necessity to make personal provision to meet this cost.
The current average long-term care bill is £26,000p.a. and the average length of stay in a care home is 2 years creating an average care bill of £52,000. The current average pension provides an income of only £10,000p.a., leaving a huge annual deficit.
NO: ‘The worst example I have seen, in nearly nine years as Parliamentary Ombudsman, of a government department getting things wrong and then repeatedly failing to put things right or learn from its mistakes.’ This is how Ann Abraham has described the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency’s treatment of a family who were interned by the Japanese during the Second World War.
In her report, Defending the Indefensible, the Ombudsman condemns the scheme devised by the MoD & the Agency to put right errors in an earlier compensation scheme for British groups interned by the Japanese. She describes the family’s treatment by the MoD and the Agency as ‘disgraceful’, ‘unfair’ & ‘extraordinarily insensitive’. The MoD has accepted all the recommendations and will launch its own review of what went wrong.
PC&PE: The Commons Science and Technology Select Committee has published its report on practical experiments in school science lessons and science field trips. It concludes that many students are receiving poor practical science experiences during their secondary school education.
The report says H&S concerns may be used as a convenient excuse for avoiding practicals and work outside the classroom, but the MPs found no credible evidence to support this frequently cited explanation for a decline in practicals & trips.
RIBA: New research (Case for Space) reveals how thousands of brand new houses are failing to provide the space families need. The average new 3-bedroom home currently being built by the UK’s top house builders is around 8% smaller than the basic recommended minimum size, leaving thousands of people across the country short-changed (the benchmark for comparison is the London Plan space standards for a 2 storey, 3 bedroom home big enough for 5 people).
This squeeze on size is depriving thousands of families the space needed for children to do homework, adults to work from home, guests to stay and for members of the household to relax together. The most common new 3-bedroom home is smaller still at 74m². At only 77% of the recommended size it is missing 22m² and therefore the space equivalent to two double bedrooms and all their contents.
NAO: Shortcomings must be addressed if value for money is to be secured in the future for users of social care ;personal budgets; once they are extended to all eligible users by April 2013, according to a report published by the National Audit Office.
Most people who use personal budgets to pay for their social care report improved wellbeing. But more needs to be done to ensure that care markets deliver a genuine choice of services to all users, that support is available to help them exercise choice, and that essential services relied on by vulnerable people continue to be provided in the event of the failure of a major provider.
DWP: The Department for Work and Pensions has published research which explores the recruitment practices of employers in SMEs, in particular how these relate to disabled people. The main uncertainties employers had around employing disabled people concerned their perception of the (un)suitability of the built environment, risks to productivity, negative impact on staff from any loss to productivity and the risk of harm to the disabled person, staff and/or customers.
Press release ~ DWP Research Report 754 ‘A Qualitative Study Exploring Employers’ Recruitment Behaviour and Decisions: Small & Medium Enterprises’
IISS: According to the latest Strategic Comment from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the financial & economic crisis afflicting the West for 3 years has entered a dangerous phase. Latest indicators on both sides of the Atlantic suggest economies are sliding back into recession.
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