A report published today sets out the views of children and young people on the minimum standards of care they should receive. In it they call for respect between children and everyone living and working with them and say carers should do everything to keep children safe from harm.

The report, ‘Children on Care Standards’ has been produced by the Children’s Rights Director for England, Dr Roger Morgan. Its findings are based on the views of children and young people who were consulted at his annual conference.

Asked what action should be taken in cases where a child was not being looked after properly, the youngsters suggested the child should be moved elsewhere. They believe, too, that such problems should be resolved by the social services department responsible for placing the child in the first place and they stress that a child or young person should not be moved without their consent.

The more than 400 children who were consulted also said the new rules should recognise the importance of staff and carers in children’s lives but they said the people working with children had to be the right people, properly qualified and properly recruited and checked. Stability, they said, was essential for young people to achieve their potential so they wanted staff changes to be kept to a minimum.

Dr Morgan said, “The children and young people have told me that they want to be made aware of the National Minimum standards and how it applies to their settings and want to be treated fairly and with respect.”

When asked their views about what staff and carers looking after children should never do, the children listed swearing and shouting at children or belittling them. They also felt it was wrong to punish children by stopping them from seeing their families.

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A local government think-tank is calling for councils to do more to balance their economic policies with the need to do more to protect the environment. In a new pamphlet the Local Government Information Unit urges authorities to work to integrate policies on economic growth and development with those that promote environmental sustainability.

The new document looks towards councils having a greater role in economic development, in line with the proposals in the Lyons Review and set out in more detail by the Sub-National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration. At the same time, it says, they are also to have more responsibility for environmental sustainability because of the increasing focus on tackling climate change, highlighted by the Stern Report and the Climate Change Bill.

‘Greening Growth’ looks at this apparent conflict by defining the ‘elastic’ concept of sustainable development. Through a series of theories and examples it goes on to show that economic growth and environmental sustainability need not cancel each other out.

Its author, Andrew Jones, who is a policy analyst at the LGIU’s Centre for Local Sustainability, said, “It has become obvious that the economic development people are not talking to the sustainability people because of this idea that the two aims are opposed to one another and contradictory. But we know that they can be reconciled and are not mutually contradictory things. When we measure economic wealth we are not able to see how the environment supports growth and how the economy supports the environment. We cannot detract the economy from the environment because the two go hand in hand.”

He added that the Centre was concerned that councils might become driven by an entirely economic growth target but he argued that the cost of economic growth needed to be taken into account and there was a need for a good method of environmental accounting.

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By Sue Hutchinson

The main message from this report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development is that line managers need to be recognised as strategic partners of Human Resource professionals.

Read more on LINE MANAGERS IN REWARD, LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT…