All Editorial articles – Page 68
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IssuesLack of support for young carers
Awareness of the UK’s 700,000 young carers in the UK has grown considerably in recent years. A report by the Children’s Commissioner highlighted the plight of the 130,000 carers who are not known to their local council, and an even greater number not getting the support they need.
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IssuesOfsted downgrades Christian schools
Recently, Ofsted inspected ten independent Christian schools, nine of which were downgraded from their previous reports. All ten were linked to Christian Education Europe (CEE), an evangelical group which links 30 such schools and makes use of the Accelerated Christian Education system, developed in the USA but used here for many years. It offers an alternative to the national curriculum based on Christian principles. Ofsted’s previous assessment was clearly more positive but their recent visits led to critical reports and have brought such expressions of faith schools into question.
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IssuesQ&A: Father Dominic Howarth
The Catholic Youth Ministry Federation of England and Wales’ (CYMFed) Flame congress is the largest Catholic youth event in the UK. Building on two previous congresses, Flame 2017 will gather thousands of young people from across the UK in Wembley’s SEE arena on 11th March. Deputy editor Ruth Jackson caught up with Father Dominic Howarth, one of the event’s organisers
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Faith at homeA story for home: Elijah meets with God
Here is a story for you to tell at home, perhaps at bedtime or part of a God-time during your day. Enjoy pulling the different faces and making the sound effects together. You could also use this story during a children’s session, using the actions as they are written here, with everyone sitting down, or making the actions bigger, standing and / or walking around the room as you do them.
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Issues
Schools’ work: Emotional resilience
Dream: think strategically and with vision about our work in schools.
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Faith at homeForming faith rituals: Shabbat
We’ve been celebrating Shabbat as a family each Friday for the past nine years. We love it, and couldn’t imagine our week without it. If you’ve not come across Shabbat, it’s a Jewish ritual, a Friday night meal with prayers and blessings. Our two children, aged 4 and 5, join in with the songs, the actions and some of the Bible verses we say. We’ve shared it with lots of different people, Christian and otherwise, and we’ve adapted it as we’ve gone along to keep it accessible and relevant to everyone present.
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IssuesWhat are young people seeking help for?
Childline is a free private and confidential service helping anyone under 19 in the UK with any issue they’re going through. It was started in 1986 by Esther Rantzen and joined the NSPCC in 2006 in order to help reach more young people. In 2015-16, Childline carried out more than 300,000 counselling sessions, with 71 per cent of those taking place online.
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IssuesThe Lab: Pursuing relationships
Relationships are the bread and butter of youth work. They are the key ingredient on which the rest of our youth work activities are built. Relationships are central to all our lives; through relationships we learn the social skills that help us navigate the world around us. In youth work, we turn this relationship-building into a professional skill. Young people who have positive and trusted relationships with significant adults have been shown to do better in school, have better mental health and be less involved with risk-taking behaviours.
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IssuesWhat do you do when the parents want you out?
What do dogs, Indian food and parents have in common? They can all be your best friend, until they turn around and bite you. Managing your relationship with the parents of the children and young people in your group can be one of the trickiest tasks involved in ministry. Yet it’s also one of the areas we probably least prepare youth and children’s leaders for, whether they’re employed or volunteers. Parents can be your most important partners, particularly in the nurture of young people’s faith; parents can also be the most powerful obstruction to the success of your work. Investing time in them is an important part of your job which simply can’t be deprioritised or overlooked.
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Faith at homePushy parenting
Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield recently suggested that parents in the North of England should become ‘pushier’ in order to help their teenagers get better exam results. The Commissioner’s Growing up North research found that school leavers from London and the South-East are more likely to go to competitive universities than those in the North. Care for the Family’s Katharine Hill responds:
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Issues
Cambridge University to charge full £9,000 fees
The Cambridge working group is recommending a single rate of £9,000 for all ‘home’ and EU students regardless of the course or college they study at, but will offer ‘poorer students’ reductions of up to £3,000 per year, plus bursaries of up to £1,625.
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Issues40,000 children experience the death of a parent each year
In November last year, at the beginning of the first Children’s Grief Awareness Week, the Childhood Bereavement Network published the estimated number of children facing a parental bereavement each year.
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IssuesAlmost 1,000 pupils found with weapons in schools
Figures show that 981 school pupils had weapons confiscated in the last three years. The weapons included axes, a meat cleaver and a cut-throat razor, as well as 36 pupils who had an assortment of guns confiscated.
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IssuesChild Protection System failing up to 1.5 Million UK Children, Children’s Charity warns
Nine out of ten teachers, police officers and social workers regularly come into contact with children they suspect are suffering from neglect – yet as many as 40% feel powerless to intervene, according to a report published by children’s charity Action for Children.
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BlogAdaptable Meeting Guide: Care off creation - Ephesians 1-2
Meeting aim: To unpack predestination and focus on unity.
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Blog
Ready-to-use movie: The Hunger Games - Mockingjay part 1
The final instalment in The Hunger Games trilogy (but the penultimate film as the current trend of splitting the final book into two films continues) begins immediately as Catching Fire concludes.
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BlogAdaptable meeting guide #1: My Worth: Knowing God created me
This month’s meeting guides are all designed to help young people explore their self-worth. They can be used as stand alone sessions, or as a four-part series
