The charity reported that the number of cases of suspected child neglect has increased by 81%
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The number of serious child abuse cases referred to police or social services by the NSPCC reached an all-time high last year, the children’s charity says.
NSPCC counsellors referred 16,385 serious cases to police or social services in 2010/11, which is 37% higher than the previous year.
More than one in three of these cases involved families previously unknown to local authorities.
The charity attributed the rise to better public awareness of child abuse.
Head of the NSPCC Helpline John Cameron said that more effective intervention in child cruelty cases was needed and he urged people to report swiftly any concerns about a child being maltreated.
“We must pick up on children’s problems as early as we can to stop their abuse. Social workers cannot be in the community all the time. But members of the public can be their eyes and ears,” he said.
“The increase in referrals over the last year shows more people want to play their part in keeping children safe.”
The number of cases of suspected child neglect increased by 81%, up from 3,562 to 6,438 cases, the NSPCC added.
A further 4,113 cases of reported physical abuse, 1,520 cases of sexual abuse and 2,932 cases of emotional abuse were also referred to police or social services, the figures showed.
A total of 46% of those who contacted the helpline had their concerns passed on to the authorities, up from 39% the previous year.
The figures follow a recent NSPCC survey of 2,275 children aged 11-17 which found that one in five said they had been seriously physically or sexually abused or neglected at some point during childhood.
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Campaigners say less than 10% of problem drinkers are receiving any form of treatment
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More than 80,000 people are claiming incapacity benefits because they are addicted to alcohol and drugs or are obese, according to government figures.
The Department for Work and Pensions, which wants to re-assess the UK’s 2m claimants, said more than a quarter of the 80,000 had not worked for a decade.
Ministers said people must not get “trapped” on welfare.
Campaigners said they had “serious doubts” about whether there was enough support to help people back into work.
The figures released by the DWP are a snapshot of incapacity benefit claimants in August 2010.
Since February this year, no new claims have been accepted and the government wants to re-assess all current incapacity benefit claimants by 2014.
Pilot projects have already taken place in several areas of the UK to determine whether people are fit to work immediately, whether they can begin the process of looking for work with the right support or whether they need constant care and are unable to work.
As part of this process, the government has released details of the 81,670 people it says are claiming incapacity benefit – and its successor, employment and support allowance – as a direct result of alcohol, drug and obesity problems.
“We have already started reassessing everyone on incapacity benefit and will support people with addictions to help them back to work”
Chris Grayling Employment ministerQ&A: Incapacity benefit crackdown
As of last August, there were 42,360 claimants with alcohol addiction, 37,480 with drug dependency and 1,800 battling obesity, officials said.
The DWP figures indicate that 12,800 alcoholics and 9,200 drug addicts have been claiming the benefit for more than a decade, as well as about 600 people considered obese.
Employment minister Chris Grayling said the problem needed to be addressed, both for the sake of those with such illnesses and society as a whole.
“It is not fair on anyone for this situation to continue,” he said. “Far from being the safety net it should be, the benefits system has trapped thousands of people in a cycle of addiction and welfare dependency with no prospect of getting back to work.
“We have already started reassessing everyone on incapacity benefit and will support people with addictions to help them back to work.”
Ministers launched what they said was the largest back-to-work programme in modern history earlier this month as part of a root-and-branch reform of welfare designed to make work pay and simplify the benefits system.
Campaigners for those with alcohol problems said they welcomed the government’s intention to help people to give up alcohol and get back into employment.
However, they said there was a real risk that removing benefits from vulnerable people could make their situation even worse.
“We have serious doubts about whether the DWP are committed to investing in the infrastructure needed to support dependent drinkers back into work and if it actually just wants to cut the welfare benefits bill,” said Don Shenker, chief executive of Alcohol Concern.
“Welfare benefit advisers have not been very good in the past at supporting dependent drinkers to access treatment and support and there is a huge shortage of treatment facilities to support dependent drinkers.”
Mr Shenker said reformed alcoholics should be encouraged, in the first place, to find voluntary work. While some might appear physically able to work, he said, those with psychological addictions to alcohol might find this difficult and not all employers would be sympathetic to their past problems.
“Cutting benefits for problem drinkers is simply going to cost the state more in the long run as problem drinkers get more desperate, become homeless and beg for money,” he added. “It would be better and cheaper to support them with benefits than to take this safety net away.”
Labour said the government’s economic policy was self-defeating since spending cuts would increase unemployment levels and push up the benefits bill by £12bn.
“The real problem now is the Tories’ decision to cut too far and too fast has meant that unemployment is set to increase every year,” said shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne. “With five people now chasing every job, what we need to get people off benefits and paying tax is more jobs.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Misrata hospital received more than 100 casualties on Wednesday
The UN’s aid chief has warned against blurring the lines between military operations and relief work in Libya.
Valerie Amos said there was no need yet to accept an EU offer of military escorts to protect aid deliveries.
Meanwhile, Oscar-nominated Tim Hetherington was one of two Western photojournalists killed in a mortar attack in the besieged city of Misrata.
Libya’s rebels have rejected a ceasefire offer from the government of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.
Inspired by uprisings in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt, they have been fighting Col Gaddafi’s forces since February.
Based in Benghazi, the rebels hold much of the east, while Col Gaddafi’s forces remain in control of Tripoli and most of the west.
Ms Amos spoke after Britain, France and Italy said they would send small teams of military advisors to rebels fighting to topple Col Gaddafi.
“Our responsibility, all the time, is to ensure that our aid is offered on an impartial basis,” she said.
Military escorts could put aid workers and the delivery of their aid at risk, she said.
“We have to be extremely careful about that and make sure the lines are not blurred.”
At the scene
A survivor of the attack on the journalists said they were on the front line on Tripoli Street. It was relatively quiet. They had decided to withdraw and it was when they were pulling back that they came under fire.
It appears to have been a direct hit on the group. Tim Hetherington lost his life.
He had gone back and forth several times to Afghanistan making a documentary, so he knew about the dangers of working on front lines. Last night on his own Twitter feed he had posted a statement: “In Misrata, indiscriminate shelling, no sign of Nato.”
His family said he would be forever missed, remembered for his amazing images and his documentaries.
They said he had been in Libya to show humanitarian suffering in times of conflict.
Humanitarian supplies were reaching both sides in the conflict, she said.
Speaking at the UN in New York after a trip to Libya, she said the Libyan authorities had agreed to secure aid workers in conflict zones and ensure they got through government roadblocks.
But without agreement on a ceasefire, access to places such as Misrata would be determined by the intensity of the fighting, she said.
If the security situation became impossible, Ms Amos said, then the UN would call on the EU for military support for its aid deliveries.
She did not directly address the decisions by Britain, France and Italy to send teams of about 10 military advisors each to the rebels.
The British team will provide logistics and intelligence training in Benghazi. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said it complied with the UN mandate authorising “all necessary measures short of occupation” to protect civilians.
UN Security Council resolution 1973 authorised Nato to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and launch air strikes on government forces attacking rebels.
Late on Wednesday, Libya’s official Allibiya TV reported that Nato forces fired several missiles at the Khallat al-Farjan district of the capital, Tripoli.
Ms Amos’s comments came as fighting continued to rage in Misrata, the only major rebel-held city in western Libya.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the reported use of cluster bombs by Col Gaddafi’s forces trying to retake the city “could amount to international crimes”.
The BBC’s Orla Guerin, in Misrata, said the city’s hospital had received more than 100 casualties on Wednesday, the vast majority of them civilians.
The hospital said five civilians had been killed.
British journalist James Hider in Misrata: “The rebels say they will fight until they die” (This video footage cannot be verified independently for authenticity)
Ms Pillay said there were reports of a cluster bomb exploding “just a few hundred metres from Misrata hospital, and other reports suggest at least two medical clinics have been hit by mortars or sniper fire”.
One doctor at Misrata hospital told our correspondent that he and his colleagues were exhausted by death and by blood, and asked where the international community was.
As rebels fought government forces along the front line along Tripoli Street, a group of Western journalists in the area was caught in a mortar attack.
Tim Hetherington, 41, a photojournalist and Oscar-nominated filmmaker who had dual British and American nationality, was killed in the attack. He had covered a number of conflicts, including the war in Afghanistan.
Reports suggested Chris Hondros, an American photographer for Getty Images, died several hours later.
A spokesman for the rebel Transitional National Council based in Benghazi, said they had rejected the government’s latest offer of a ceasefire.
A spokesman for the council, Abdul Hafeez Ghoga, said Col Gaddafi wanted a ceasefire because his forces were being destroyed by Nato air strikes.
Mr Ghoga said a suggestion that there could be a political solution which would allow Col Gaddafi and his family to remain “on the scene” was an impossibility, reports the BBC’s Peter Biles in Benghazi.
On Tuesday, Libyan Foreign Minister Abdul Ati al-Obeidi had said there should be a ceasefire followed by an interim period of maybe six months to discuss democracy and constitutional reforms, and prepare for an election that would be supervised by the UN – a proposal initially made by the African Union.
He said the presence of foreign military personnel would be a “step backwards”.
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This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
