The British Medical Journal has published (behind a payment firewall) a report saying that suicide is promoted on the web. There are the usual calls for Internet Service Providers to "pursue strategies that would maximise the likelihood that sites aimed at preventing suicide are sourced first." Paul Canning has written Read more
I’ve come across this lovely little research project from the Violence Research Group at Cardiff University. Basically, academics investigating youth crime involved some of the young offenders themselves, getting them interviewing the academics who study the phenomenon and film it. I’ll let them explain. As far as we are aware, Read more
Some children’s hospital wards are decorated with ‘fun’ images of clowns. This is supposed to cheer up the patients and help healing, etc. Then someone thought of actually asking the young people what they thought. It turns out that they thought clowns were sinister and odd. And really, who doesn’t? Read more
We’ve been talking with Sheffield City Council for a few months about running LifeSwap. During National Care Leavers Week on October 24th 2007 five Care Leavers from Sheffield and five senior officers and members from the council will take a photo every hour on a mobile phone camera and send Read more
I saw an old friend at the weekend and got very excited when I heard about her new job. I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to this absolutely brilliant project by the BBC. It’s called School Report, and Year 8 students (12/13 year olds) got the chance to make their Read more
Following on from a previous post about building risk into playgrounds I see a new formal inquiry into "lost childhood" has been announced. Ultimately it is down to parents to ensure that their children have the right childhood, but it is interesting to see the article refer to the "red Read more
It’s the most common question asked in I’m a Councillor. And, of course, a lot of the time, where teenagers don’t have anything to do, they hang around in the street and get into trouble. Even if they aren’t making any trouble adults are often intimidated by them, because our Read more
We’ve been pretty horrified by the UNICEF report on child well-being. Despite our relative affluence, it seems this is the worst country in the developed world to be a child in. Partly this is down to the large rich-poor gap – 16% of UK children are living in relative poverty Read more
One of the nice things about travelling by train is the opportunity to meet new people. Last year I ended up sitting next to an old house mate from 10 years previously who now has a couple of pubs in Bath. Last week I sat down opposite a fellow called Read more
Cllr Martin Mullaney from Moseley and Kings Heath Ward, Birmingham has a thing with taggers. He has recently made a film about the tagging on a sports pavilion in his ward and posted it to YouTube. Amazingly it has had over 2000 views and over 200 comments mostly from taggers Read more