Millions spent tackling childhood obesity has little effect

Full Story: http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/News_0855.htm

Millions of pounds spent on tackling obesity, smoking and alcohol misuse among children have had scarcely any effect on improving the health of the nations children and young people, a damning report on child well-being in England has found. The Annual Performance Assessment (APA) of childrens services, published by the childrens services inspectorate Ofsted, found there was little evidence of impact from a range of programmes intended to help improve the childrens health. The report concludes that some councils are finding a number of intractable problems in securing child welfare and are having little success in resolving them. The 306-page document will come as a huge embarrassment to the government at a time of heightened concern about the state of childhood in contemporary Britain. It follows a report today from the four childrens commissioners for the UK, which painted a bleak picture of childrens health and education services and reported widespread infringements of the childrens basic human rights. Overall, the APA report found a significant fall in the proportion of local authorities that successfully promoted good health among children in their area, from 90 per cent in 2006 to 81 per cent last year. It also concluded that 30 per cent of local authorities in England are failing to adequately protect children from harm and abuse or are providing only minimum protection, a deteriorating from last years figure of 27 per cent. In addition to slow progress in reducing obesity and smoking, the report highlights concern about the slow rate of progress in cutting teenage pregnancies. It expresses concern about the rising numbers of children placed on child protection registers and notes that children in care do worse on all measures of well-being.