A recent survey has found that, among 1,398 young people surveyed, more than half admitted to hurting themselves on a regular basis.

The survey also found that 86% of the respondents (the survey is not representative of the whole population) admitted to deliberately injuring themselves at some point in their lives and that depression was the main reason for doing so. They also admitted to hurting themselves as a way of ‘coping’.

Self-harm can be a way for a young person to show they are feeling a lot of pain and hurt. There are many reasons why young people might harm themselves – although the need to self-harm usually comes from emotions they find difficult to manage. The emotions could relate to any number of things, such as bullying or abuse, or indicate other child welfare concerns.

Young people self-harm as a way of releasing tension or anger. It’s a physical pain they can deal with, rather than an emotional feeling they find hard to manage. It is also a way of gaining control, especially when they feel other parts of their life are out of control.

Thousands of young people are sexually exploited, says Tim Loughton (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children), but local authorities are failing to measure problem.

“My strong sense is that this country is waking up to the fact young people are being sexually exploited not in the dozens or the hundreds, but very probably the thousands. For too long, child sexual exploitation has been a hidden issue.”

He said the government was “absolutely committed” to reducing the number of young people who fall victim to abuse, and was working closely with the sector to make progress with its action plan to tackle child sexual exploitation.

A new report by The Children’s Society, entitled “I don’t feel human”, has revealed alarmingly high levels of destitution among refugee, asylum-seeking and migrant children and young people.

Shockingly, young people are being left homeless and hungry.  They are sometimes forced to resort to desperate means to be able to survive. This can result in exploitation and many forms of abuse.

The Children’s Society is calling for immediate action to make sure that children and young people in the immigration system are not forced to live in destitution.

Cynthia Bower has resigned as head of the Care Quality Commission (CQC).  So who will taken on this difficult role next?

Since 2009 the CQC has taken on the combined regulation for health, mental health and social care.  With the huge and complex requirement to register every care provider, including dentists, hospitals, nursing homes, care agencies etc, there was a risk that something would drop through the net, which in hindsight now appears to have been routine inspections.

This has in turn lead to some high profile mistakes being aired in the media, including BBC’s Panorama programme, which exposed the CQC failure to follow up a whistleblower’s concerns about abuse of people with learning disabilities at a residential hospital near Bristol.

We’ve just released a new version of our Introduction to Child Protection training course, specifically aimed at schools and anyone involved with the education sector.

As well as including additional education specific content, the course has been tailored, so that all of the working examples and case studies are set in the context of a school environment.

To purchase the course, simply buy a normal Introduction to Child Protection course on our website and select the “Education” option at the start of the training.

The number of children being placed in care appears to be steadily rising.  It is predicted that 10,000 children will be placed in care this financial year.  Between April 2011 and Jan 2012, over 8000 applications had already been made.

So as a nation, is our level of parenting decreasing, leading to more cases of child abuse?  The more likely scenario is that we’re putting in better systems to detect abuse, especially since the Baby P case.

The problem is that the system is struggling to cope and putting children in care is complex and expensive.  Should we not be looking to tackle the problem earlier in the chain and assist parents, so that the child abuse doesn’t happen in the first place?  Surely this would be money well spent?

Statistics published by the NSPCC show that ChildLine answered nearly 50,000 calls for help from children.  That’s a huge number of calls and quite a scary statistic, however what makes it worse, is those calls were taken in just a 12 day period following Christmas Eve 2011.

Children were ringing in with a range of issues from family problems, to depression and self harm.  In 71 cases, the issue was so serious that the matter was referred to other agencies.

The total number of calls was up 19% compared with the same period in 2010.

If you’re having problems finding your Local Safeguarding Children Board website (or Child Protection Committee website in Scotland), we have a full list available on our website at:

www.childprotectioncompany.com/CPC/local-children-safeguarding-boards

These websites provide a wealth of child protection information, including who to contact if you’re worried about a child.

Did you know that every one of our child protection training certificates has a unique ID number which you can use to verify the certificate on our website?  Just click on the following link:

www.childprotectioncompany.com/verify

and enter the number and the system will tell you who the certificate is registered to and when it expires.

This feature allows our certificates to be portable, as it’s then very easy for any organisation to check a person’s certificate is valid.

A recent Guarding article has highlighted the issue of young girls posting explicit pictures of themselves on Facebook to attract older gang members.  For a lot of parents you might question what has this got to do with me, as gang culture is not prevalent around me?  However do you really know what your children are up to on Facebook and have you made sure your kids know what is and isn’t appropriate to post?

One tip is to make sure you know what your child’s password is for Facebook and every now and then logon to double check what’s going on.  Just the knowledge that you might logon at some point can make a child spend that little bit of extra time thinking about what they are posting.

Above all, talk to you kids and make sure they know to come and talk to you if they ever come across anything they are concerned about.