"To bring about change, you must not be afraid to take the first step. We will fail when we fail to try"
Events this week:
November 18th- November 24th- Road Safety Week 2024
November 18th- November 24th- International Leadership Week 2024
November 19th- International Men’s Day 2024
November 19th- Odd Socks Day 2024
November 20th- World Children’s Day 2024
November 20th- Blue Wednesday 2024
November 21- World Pancreatic Cancer Day 2024
November 21- Carers Rights Day 2024
November 23rd- Survivors of Suicide Loss Day 2024
Legislation/Regulation of the week
The Care Act 2014
The Care Act 2014 is the law that sets out how adult social care in England should be provided. It requires local authorities to make sure that people who live in their areas:
receive services that prevent their care needs from becoming more serious or delay the impact of their needs
can get the information and advice they need to make good decisions about care and support
have a range of high quality, appropriate services to choose from
have more control over how their care and support is organised.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 30 mins)
Please remember to review this in your policy/legislation review workbook)
Videos of the week
My Life
Documentary series following the highs and lows of children across the world, each with a unique story to tell.
Watching this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 30 mins)
Event of the week/month
World Children’s Day 2024
Children and young people are disproportionately affected by some of the world’s hardest issues. Currently, an estimated 333 million children live in extreme poverty, without the food, sanitation, shelter, healthcare and education they need to survive and thrive.
From social media campaigns to debates between leaders and figureheads, UNICEF describes the day as a “day of action for children, by children”. You can get involved in International Children’s Day activities by campaigning for change and supporting children’s charities that focus on tackling child protection concerns.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 30 mins)
Safeguarding & ED & I
An Internet Young people can trust- Report
How are young people managing reliability and misleading content online? This research shines a light on how dealing with misleading content and contact has become a daily part of the online experience for many young people. It shows us how young people are thinking critically about what they see and taking responsibility for their actions online, but also facing emotional challenges and asking us to do more to build an internet they can trust.
The research highlights how many young people of all ages, from as young as 8, are regularly encountering misleading content and have experienced approaches, such as friend requests, from people they don’t know. It is vital that all of us involved in building an internet young people can trust consult young people to build a deeper understanding of what they are encountering, how it affects them emotionally and how they respond to it, so we can support them with the tools and skills they need to separate trustworthy from misleading content and to stay safe online.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 50 mins)
How Deepfakes Work & How to Protect Yourself Against them.
A deepfake is a video, image, or audio created by AI to imitate a real person. Over the last couple of years, AI services and products have reached mainstream usage, resulting in billions of pieces of AI generated content being created.
Using deep learning algorithms like GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks), computers can now generate shockingly realistic fake media. Think AI-generated Taylor Swift singing your favourite song—but it’s not Taylor Swift! And she’s not singing your favourite song. In fact, she’s not singing at all. With AI making deep fakes easier than ever to generate, the risk they pose to everyday people is on the rise.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 40 mins)
Online grooming crimes against children increase by 89% in six years
Online grooming crimes have reached record levels across the UK, with offences topping 7,000 for the first time, new data we've compiled reveals. The figures, provided by 45 UK police forces, show 7,062 Sexual Communication with a Child offences were recorded in 2023/24 – up 89% since 2017/18 when the offence first came into force.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 30 mins)
Providing better support for teenagers: an interview with Anne Longfield | NSPCC Learning Podcast
NSPCC Learning has published a podcast episode on safeguarding teenagers in the UK. The episode features an interview with Anne Longfield, Executive Chair of the Centre for Young Lives, about the support available to teenagers. Discussion points include: how to recognise the risks that teenagers face; improving access to early intervention and youth work services; and strengthening the child protection workforce.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 50 mins)
Supporting children and young people in care: the five good communication standards
People with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) often have difficulty expressing themselves and understanding what is being said to them. They can also have problems with social communication, that is knowing the right thing to say in the right way, and at the right time. A high proportion of children and young people in the care system experience communication difficulties that all too often go unrecognised.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 40 mins)
New safeguarding course to be launched soon
A new safeguarding course which will be core learning for civil servants across government is to be launched within weeks
Called Safeguarding, it has recently been piloted by around 160 civil servants from a cross-section of departments and is currently undergoing its final round of refinements following their feedback.
The course is designed to increase the cross-government awareness of safeguarding roles and responsibilities enabling individuals to identify situations where the safety and well-being of children, young people, adults and the unborn could be at risk. The training will support government organisations in the management of safeguarding activities and ensure that appropriate actions are taken when safeguarding concerns arise.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 20 mins)
Health & Safety
How to combat winter depression and increase your serotonin
Winter depression - also known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD) - affects around 2 million people in the UK. The lack of sunlight in winter causes a decrease in serotonin levels, the hormone that makes us feel happy. People with SAD can combat their depressive symptoms by following techniques that increase your serotonin.
The winter months can be a real struggle for people with 'winter depression' - otherwise known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD). While the lack of sunlight can get all of us down from time to time, those with SAD have symptoms of depression in a recurrent seasonal pattern.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 30 mins)
Do you need more sleep in winter?
Feeling sleepy and sluggish in the middle of winter? You're not alone. We ask two sleep experts whether you really need more rest on colder, shorter days.
When the alarm rings in the morning, and it's still pitch dark and cold outside, many of us find it hard to get out of bed. The long winter months can make us feel weary, and staying energised might be more difficult. Factors such as temperature, and the amount of light we receive during the day in this season may play an important role.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 20 mins)
School trust fined after pupil injured
A school trust in Surrey has been fined after part of a pupil’s finger was amputated.
The five-year-old boy, a Year 1 pupil at Danetree Primary School in Epsom, had been leaving the toilet on 15 June 2022 when his right hand slipped and went into the hinge side of a door.
There was no door guard installed and he trapped his right hand in the door.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 20 mins)
Wider Curriculum
Tips for spotting fake news online
There are so many stories and pieces of information flying around on the internet that it can be hard to know what’s real and what’s fake. Don’t let fake news fool you – use these four tips to check anything you read online that you are not sure about:
The story – what are they trying to say? Is it an ad or a joke? Look to see if you can find the same story somewhere else
The author – is it someone’s opinion or a fact? Real news will most likely have a link to the writer’s details, but if there’s no author, dig deeper
The website – are there spelling or grammar mistakes? What’s the URL? Check the address bar at the top – most trusted URLs end with “.com”, “.co.uk”, “.net”, “.gov”, “.org”, “.mil” and “.edu”
The date – is the story recent or old? It could be outdated or a copy of something that happened years ago. Computer programs called bots post anytime and often, so be wary of this.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 30 mins)
The healthiest generation of children ever: A roadmap for the health system
Babies, children and young people make up around 25% of the population, yet they only account for 11% of NHS expenditure. Children have their own developmental and health needs, separate from those of adults, that are met through a distinct set of services, staffed by a specialised workforce and underpinned by specific legislation. Yet they have never been treated equitably in national or local decision-making.
We must have leadership from the very top that prioritises childhood. The first step will be making babies, children and young people a central pillar of the Health Mission and the forthcoming Ten Year Plan. This must be followed by a greater and more equitable share of health service funding being allocated to children in the multi-year Spending Review in the Spring. Nothing less than this will do.
(Watching this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 30 mins)
Budget will lead to cuts and job losses, say social workers
Social workers believe the Budget will bring cuts and job losses for the sector, a Community Care poll has found. On 30 October, chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Budget allocated £600m in grant funding for social care in 2025-26 as part of a £1.3bn package for councils.
Combined with other revenue increases, this would see local authorities’ available budgets rise by around 3.2% in real terms next year. However, Reeves also announced a 6.7% rise in the national living wage and an increase in employer national insurance contributions. Sector leaders have warned that these tax and wage hikes risk swallowing up the extra grant funding, leaving little or nothing to address spending pressures.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 20 mins)
Apprentices among the most likely to own a home in their early 20s
Apprentices in the North of England, Scotland’s Central Belt and South Wales may be more likely to be able to afford their own home by the age of 21 than any other parts of the country, according to new analysis of average earnings and house prices.
The study, undertaken by BAE Systems, mapped average apprenticeship salaries against regional house prices to reveal the most affordable places in Great Britain to get on the property ladder for non-graduates.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 20 mins)
Sustainability
Five Ways to Make Cities More Sustainable
The pollution we have been pumping into our shared atmosphere over the last decades presents us with an enormous challenge: we need to halve emissions within 5 years to have even a chance of remaining within the 1.5°C average global temperature rise agreed under the Paris Agreement in 2015. This calls for the rapid phaseout of fossil fuels, and cities – where more than half of humanity lives and 75% of the world’s energy is consumed – are in a position to dramatically reduce demand. One year on from COP28, which saw the historic agreement from countries to “transition away” from fossil fuels, here are my top five recommended actions for accelerating the transition in your city, and what we need to see from national governments at COP29.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 30 mins)
Climate hub launches to help 'positive action'
A new climate hub has been created to teach people about the environment and sustainability.
Charity Climate Hub Bath and North East Somerset opened the centre on Saturday in the city's old bus station's ticket office. The charity aims for it to be a grassroots space where people can learn more about and engage with the difficult challenges of climate change and nature loss.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 20 mins)
100 best sustainability tips for greener living
For many of us, leading a more environmentally sustainable life is something we try to achieve on a daily basis. We might make an effort to reduce the amount of single use items we use, recycle as much as we can, eat less meat and dairy, buy locally produced food in season or simply walk instead of taking the car when we can. And Good Housekeeping readers are no exception.
In a recent poll, 86% of GH readers told us that they are worried about environmental issues such as climate change, deforestation, plastic pollution and increasing levels of waste.
(Reading this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 20 mins)
An Idiot’s guide to change the world- Oceans: Seaweed will save us
In ‘An Idiot’s Guide to Saving the World’, Gail Gallie and Loyiso Madinga will take you on a journey across the globe to meet the people on the frontline; those who are affected and those making a difference. They demystify the gloomy narrative and harness some optimism to leave you feeling empowered and armed with ideas. No finger-wagging, crusading or catastrophising, but a fun and fascinating dive into how we can play our own parts in saving the world. In this episode, Loyiso and Gail take a deep dive into Goal 14 by exploring the impact of rising sea levels, who are being affected and what we can do to protect them. Joining our hosts will be Shauna Aminath, Sabra Noordeen, Bren Smith and Dr. Emma Camp.
(Watching this can be counted towards your 20% off the Job learning if it links to the knowledge, skills, and behaviours in your apprenticeship standard – Approx. 60 mins)
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