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Children’s services leaders in England call for national ‘plan for childhood’
(www.theguardian.com)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Children’s services leaders have called for a national “plan for childhood” to transform the health, emotional wellbeing and life chances of a generation of youngsters scarred by austerity and the pandemic.
In a withering assessment of the government’s record over the past few years, they said ministers had presided over deepening child poverty, crumbling schools and an exploding health and wellbeing crisis in young people, with low-income families worst affected.
John Pearce, the ADCS president, said the nation was at a “pivotal moment” in its approach to children, after years in which the needs of young people had taken a back seat to public spending cuts, short-term policymaking and political instability.
The government had failed to deliver a comprehensive Covid recovery plan for schools and its modest ambitions in this respect were too narrowly focused on academic catch-up, he said.
A childhood Covid recovery plan would have invested in addressing wider wellbeing issues such as anxiety and mental health, the disruption caused by missing key life moments such as transition to secondary school, and the emotional impact of spending long periods away from family and friends during lockdowns, he said.
Deep-rooted inequalities in geography, race, health, educational attainment and income continued to widen, the ADCS said: “Every child deserves a happy, safe childhood in which they can thrive, not just survive, regardless of where they live or how much money their families earn.”
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