The Deaths Of Another Five Children Bring Toll In Gaza to 318

Warning This Video Contains Footage of Murdered and Injured Children

Source: AlJazeeraEnglish

Israeli raid prompts intifada call

Above A wounded Girl awaits medical attention at the Shifa hospital

Khaled Meshaal, Hamas's political leader, has called for an uprising against Israel after an unprecedented attack on the Gaza Strip killed at least 220 Palestinians and wounded 700 more.

Israel launched Operation Cast Lead on Saturday, destroying Hamas police stations and interior ministry buildings.

It was the deadliest day in Gaza for decades, with Israel continuing to attack sites into the night and threatening that the operation would widen if necessary.

Ehud Olmert, the outgoing Israeli prime minister, described the assault as a war on Hamas, the Palestinian faction which took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Members of the Israeli cabinet say the attack is in response to an increase in the number of home-made rockets being fired into southern Israel since a ceasefire ended on December 19.

Carnage

Gaza witnesses reported heavy damage after more than 30 missiles were fired from helicopter gunships and fighter jets on about 40 different locations in the strip.

Many of the dead were police officers, including Tawfiq Jabber, the Gaza chief of police.

The toll is expected to rise further, with bodies still lying buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings. Hospitals, already suffering from shortages due to an 18-month blockade on the Gaza Strip, said they were struggling to cope with the number of injured, which included women and children.

Gaza is densely populated. Its 1.5 million residents area already experiencing shortages in power and basic supplies due to the siege which is widely condemned by human rights movements as a collective punishment.

In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Meshaal, who lives in exile in Syria, said: "I call upon you [Palestinians] to carry out a third intifada [uprising]."

He called for a "military intifada against the Zionist enemy", as well as "a peaceful intifada internally", in reference to Hamas's power struggle with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, whose government is based in the Israeli occupied West Bank.

Ugly massacre

Ismail Haniya, the Hamas leader in Gaza, called the assault Israel's "ugliest massacre".

"I call on Palestinians to remain united and together in the face of this crime, in the face of this massacre and continued aggression, targeting our soil and our citizens," he said.

Olmert, speaking in Tel Aviv on Saturday, said the operation would take time and called on Israelis to be "patient".

"The quiet we offered was answered with mayhem. Our desire for calm was answered with terror," he said.

"You are not our enemies. We do not fight against you," Olmert said in a direct address to Palestinians.

"[Terror organisations] are disastrous for both peoples. Israel is not fighting against the Palestinian people, and the targets attacked today were chosen with the intent of avoiding civilian casualties."

Long operation

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Jerusalam, said: "People have been forewarned about further operations of this intesnsity for many days to come, with more sorties flown by Israeli planes and helicopters and more targets in Gaza.

"In response, more than 50 rockets were fired into Israel today. Defence officials are warning that there could be as many as 200 rockets fired every day into Israel in the days to come."

One Israeli was killed in rocket fire on Saturday.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, condemned the attack and demanded an immediate cessation.

Many leaders added their voices to condemn the onslaught, including Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the UN, who called for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

Mousa Abu Morzouz, the deputy leader of Hamas, said: "Nobody in this world can accept what happened and the Israeli aggression ... [we expect] the international community to stand against this and say that it is not acceptable."

Mustafa Barghouthi, the former Palestinian information minister, said: "This is not an attack on Hamas. It is an attack on the whole population and the free will of the people of Gaza."

He accused Israel of committing "war crimes" and demanded that Abbas and his government stop all relations with Israel.

'Only just beginning'

The Israeli army released a statement on Saturday saying "terrorist installations" were hit and that all Israeli pilots returned unharmed.

Avi Benayahu, an Israeli military spokesman said: "The operation against Hamas is "only just beginning".

The air raids follow a breakdown of a six-month-old Israel-Hamas truce earlier this month.

The ceasefire expired on December 19, with Hamas arguing that Israel had violated the truce by preventing vital supplies from entering the Strip.

Egypt has opened the Rafah crossing with the Gaza Strip to receive injured people, Egyptian officials said. Ambulances have been sent to the crossing and two Egyptian hospitals emptied to take in the wounded.

Hamas won control of the Palestinian Legislative Council in elections in January 2005. The international community refused to accept a Hamas-led government, demanding that the faction recognise Israel and renounce violence. Economic sanctions by the EU and US followed.

Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after bloody street battles against its rival, Fatah.

Source: Al Jazeera

Million poor pupils denied free meals

Schools lose out on funding through flaw in rules for subsidised lunches

A million children living below the poverty line do not receive free school meals as a result of flaws in the funding system, figures released in parliament show.

Half of pupils from families in poverty are not getting a free lunch because the income threshold to qualify is set lower than the current level used to define poverty. It means that a family of two adults and two children struggling to get by on £18,000 a year has to pay for school dinners, which now cost on average £1.70 a day per child. Children at schools in every local authority in England are affected.

Parent campaigners said the government was letting down some of the most vulnerable "working poor" families.

Headteachers said some schools were losing out on funding as a result of free school meals being too blunt a predictor of deprivation. Schools receive extra money for teaching disadvantaged pupils based on the number on free school meals. The measure is also embedded in the school accountability system.

The "contextually value-added" league tables rank schools according to how well they do, taking into consideration the relative economic hardship of their intakes. The tables are based partly on free school meals, which means that some schools where lots of pupils miss out on free lunches could be wrongly rated.

David Laws, the Lib Dem education spokesman, who obtained the figures through a parliamentary question, said: "For the most disadvantaged children, a school dinner can be the only hot meal they get. As times get tough, paying for school lunches is going to be a real struggle for more and more families."

Jackie Schneider, a parent and teacher who has campaigned about school dinners in south London, said: "The idea that you have children from homes on very tight budgets who don't get a free meal at school is despicable.

"You have to feed children to sustain them through the day. This system disadvantages the working poor."

The revelation, in a written answer seen by the Guardian, means that not only are around a million children slipping through the net, but also that their schools are being underfunded as a result.

Only children whose parents receive welfare payments or are below a £15,575 earnings threshold are eligible for free school meals. Other children whose parents earn just above that amount aren't entitled, the children's minister, Beverley Hughes, confirmed.

Labour has defined child poverty as any child living in a household with an income 60% below the average income before housing costs. That figure currently stands at around £18,000 for a two-parent home with two children, and around £14,000 for a single parent of two children. In 2006-07, the number of children living in poverty rose to 2.9 million - an increase of 100,000.

Kate Green, chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said: "That so few of those children [who] the government counts as poor are actually entitled to free school meals shows just how inadequate and mean the system is.

"Even of those entitled, the complexity and the stigma in the system means that one in five children who should get a free meal do not. For families in low-pay work, not having an entitlement to free school meals means that, too often, work does not pay and does not lift families out of poverty."

The government is piloting an expansion of free school meals in three areas of England. In two of the areas, all pupils will get free lunches, and in the third the proportion who qualify will be expanded. Scotland is introducing free meals for all in the first three years of primary school.

Hughes said: "We have invested to improve the quality of school meals, are taking action to increase uptake in deprived areas, and have already announced plans to trial extending free school meals to more low income families."

Source: The Guardian

Also see: Free School Meals Bill Blocked

Staff 'too timid' on child abuse

Professionals must not be too reluctant to remove children from abusive parents, a group of experts has said.

The call comes in a series of articles on child abuse published in the Lancet medical journal.

The studies also claim that 10% of children in wealthy countries suffer ill-treatment every year, but that neglect and abuse are under-reported.

The findings come as child protection services in the UK are stepped up in the wake of the Baby P case.

One study in the Lancet's Series on Child Maltreatment, says that one in 10 children in high income countries is maltreated - but that only a tenth of these are investigated and even fewer removed from danger.

The author says "it is estimated" that at least 15% of girls and 5% of boys have been exposed to sexual abuse of some kind by the age of 18, and that 5-10% of girls and 1-5% of boys are exposed to penetrative sexual abuse.

Child abuse is grossly under-reported - even by the schools and community health services that have continuous contact with children - another study says.

There is a reluctance by professionals to intervene when they suspect abuse for fear of doing more harm than good and being accused of breaking up families, according to the experts.

Professor Ruth Gilbert, a child health expert from University College London, said: "Scarce reporting to child-protection agencies is a cause for concern, and we need to find out whether maltreatment is being recognised and dealt with in other ways."

Dangerous environment

Professor Jane Barlow, professor of public health at Warwick University, says there is a strong argument for removing children from dangerous homes.

There is evidence that removing the child from the dangerous environment and placing them in care can be beneficial, she adds.

Professor Barlow insists: "We have to ensure we are taking children away from dangerous situations. Removing a child is likely to have better outcomes.

"We currently attempt to reunite 50-75% of children that have been removed. Up to half end up back in foster care."

But she warns that social services would be overwhelmed by demand.

"If you lower the threshold, the number of children being removed is going to increase considerably and social services will be overrun."

Another of the studies' authors, Professor Cathy Spatz Widom, of the City University of New York, says: "There's a perception by the public and by some professionals and policy makers that placing children in foster care is a bad thing.

"By looking at the empirical evidence, it's a more complicated story. We should not just dismiss foster care."

Professor Gilbert said there would have to be certainty that a child was being maltreated before taking them out of their home.

John Simmonds, of the British Association for Adoption & Fostering, said there was a danger of going too far.

"Most certainly some children are better off separated from their parents, and this probably isn't happening as much as it needs to be. Baby P was one example of that.

"But foster care is not a perfect solution. There is such an atmosphere or blame and recrimination at the moment, with social workers and parents watching their backs.

"I do worry about the consequences and things swinging too far the other way."

Dr Patricia Hamilton, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said: "It is sometimes extremely hard to make judgements in child abuse cases.

"Our society has to accept that child abuse happens and that paediatricians and social workers have a duty to act when they suspect any forms of maltreatment."

Baby P died with multiple injuries, despite receiving 60 visits from welfare professionals.

Last month, the 17 month old's mother, her boyfriend and a lodger were found guilty of causing the child's death.

Source: BBC

Abused Kids: Their Own Stories

The Baby P case has again highlighted the plight of 'at risk' children. So what is it like to for a young person who has been abused or is in care? Kitty Logan has been speaking to two young victims. Their identities have been protected.

Watch video report

Source: Sky News

Thousands more children at risk

Huge crackdown on children’s services after Baby P inquiry as 28 councils are named and shamed over failed care.

Thousands of Britain's most vulnerable children are at risk because councils are failing to move swiftly enough to protect them from abuse, it emerged last night.

Dozens of local authorities are taking inadequate action to avoid repetition of serious abuse cases, warned the head of the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted).

As the Government announced an unprecedented crackdown on children's services in an attempt to avoid another tragedy like that involving Baby P, the watchdog published a list of 28 councils where internal inquiries into serious injuries or child deaths caused by abuse were judged "inadequate".

Ofsted said that 38 of the 92 case reviews it investigated were carried out inadequately. In addition, one in four local authorities had not carried out reviews – possibly, said Ofsted, because they did not realise they had to. Christine Gilbert, the Ofsted chief executive who is also the chief inspector of schools, said: "The latest figures show many children's services are failing to learn fast enough from the most serious cases. Too many opportunities are missed and too many vulnerable children are still being let down."

In the case of four councils – Birmingham, Cornwall, Northamptonshire and Surrey – Ofsted judged that three inquiries into child abuse cases were carried out inadequately. The revelations came after Ofsted's report into Haringey Council's handling of the Baby P case revealed a devastating catalogue of blunders.

The Children's Secretary, Ed Balls, called for the removal from office of Haringey's director of children's services, Sharon Shoesmith. The Council leader, George Meehan, and Liz Santry, the councillor responsible for children's services, resigned. Baby P, aged 17 months, died in August after receiving more than 50 injuries from his abusive mother, her boyfriend and her lodger.

Ms Gilbert told The Independent that the circumstances in Haringey were "exceptional but not unique" and there was still resistance by some directors of children's services to tackling inadequacies. "One said to me 'but this is only one case'," she added. Mr Balls said Ofsted's findings about the shortcomings of social services were "devastating", and announced that every council in the country would face an annual "spot check" on the delivery of care. Every children's board which carried out a case review judged inadequate has been told to convene an independent panel to reconsider the verdict. Yesterday, Ofsted published the results of an investigation of 50 of the 92 reviews it had received, showing that 21 involved children under the age of one – 16 of whom had died (in 14 of these cases, a parent or partner was suspected or found guilty of abuse or neglect). "In five cases, the baby was found dead after sleeping with a parent," the report said. "In all these, there was evidence of, or suspected, drug and/or alcohol abuse by the parent sleeping with the baby. Of the nine children in the one-to-10 age group, three were from large families known to agencies, where signs of serious and chronic abuse or neglect had not been appropriately assessed or addressed.

"One child died in a house fire, another due to scalding, another suffered abuse and neglect. A feature of these cases was that agencies failed to understand, accept or assess the impact of domestic violence. In three cases, domestic violence was known about and adults dealt with by police without consideration of impact on the children."

In one case, a report said: "A further visit was made following a referral from neighbours. The mother was reluctant to speak to the police or let them into the property. They spoke to her at the door ... neither mother nor child appeared injured. There is no indication that the child was examined (it had in fact been severely injured)."

Ofsted's inspectors added: "More often, reports noted that the child was not seen, that there was no record of when, or if, the child was ever seen alone, no record of how they looked and what they said, and no account was taken of their wishes and feelings."

'Inadequate action' Child abuse reviews

The 28 local authorities where serious case reviews into child abuse were judged to be "inadequate".

*Councils where three reviews were carried out inadequately:

Birmingham, Cornwall, Northamptonshire, Surrey

*Two inadequate reviews:

Devon, Rotherham.

*One inadequate review:

Barnsley, Bolton, Bristol, Derbyshire, Doncaster, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Lambeth, Lincolnshire, Manchester, Middlesbrough, North East Lincolnshire, Nottingham City, Peterborough, Portsmouth, Sandwell, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Stockport, Suffolk, Thurrock.

Source: The Independent

Closer watch on children's care

Children's services in England are to be monitored more closely in an attempt to avoid a repeat of the failings in the Baby P case in Haringey.

Child protection officers will now face unannounced inspections.

Three senior staff at Haringey Council have been suspended after a critical report into the authority's handling of the Baby P case.

The abused 17-month-old boy died, despite receiving 60 visits from welfare professionals.

The suspended staff include Haringey's head of children's services Sharon Shoesmith. The council's leader and another councillor have also resigned.

Suspended

Children's Secretary Ed Balls said he had directed that Ms Shoesmith be removed with immediate effect. He does not have the power to sack her.

He has ordered every council in England to review its child protection policies.

Mr Balls said the report into the Baby P, who was on the Child Protection Register, was "damning".

The boy's mother has pleaded guilty and her boyfriend and a lodger have been convicted of charges relating to his death. They are awaiting sentence.

Ofsted, who compiled the report together with other independent agencies, called for changes to the system of investigating the most serious incidents of abuse.

They believe about a third of case reviews carried out after a child dies or is badly injured are inadequate.

Haringey Council confirmed that as well as Ms Shoesmith, Cecilia Hitchen, deputy director of children and families, and Clive Preece, head of children in need and safeguarding services, had been suspended on full pay.

Council leader George Meehan and the councillor supervising the authority's children's services department, Liz Santry, have quit.

The positions of three other staff - Gillie Christou, Maria Ward and Sylvia Henry – are subject to review and they are not undertaking child protection duties pending further investigation, the council said.

Mr Balls said the report delivered a "damning verdict on the current management of safeguarding children in Haringey".

Mistakes

One of the factors that was most troubling, Mr Balls added, was the "failure to talk directly to children at risk".

The key failings highlighted include:

• Agencies acting in isolation from one another without effective co-ordination
• Poor gathering, recording and sharing of information
• Insufficient supervision by senior management

Action to be taken includes:

• A new serious case review to be undertaken into the death of Baby P, with an executive summary to be published by the end of March
• Watchdog Ofsted to carry out unannounced annual inspections of children's services across the country
• More action to be taken at those authorities in England which have had "inadequate" serious case reviews, to see if they have made improvements.

Mr Balls announced new leadership would be introduced in Haringey's social services, with Hampshire County Council's John Coughlan immediately replacing Ms Shoesmith.

Mr Meehan and Ms Santry expressed deep sadness at the death of Baby P, acknowledging their responsibility in the case.

Mr Meehan said: "The reasons for my resignation are matters of personal honour and local responsibility."

Ms Santry said: "I am the accountable lead member and I accept that accountability and take my full share of responsibility."

Councillor Lorna Reith, deputy leader of Haringey Council, said the change in leadership was necessary and it showed how seriously the council was taking the report's recommendations.

Mr Balls ordered the investigation two weeks ago, after saying it was clear mistakes had been made and that those responsible would be held accountable.

The inspectors have been examining why the toddler was not taken into care despite numerous injuries including broken ribs and eventually a broken back.

Ed BallsDamning verdict over Baby P case and other Video:

Closer watch on children's care

Ofsted inspector on Haringey Council

Residents speak out over Baby P

''I take my full share of responsibility"

Council leader quits over Baby P case

Baby P: 'We did not do enough'

'Questions still remain' says MP

Source: BBC