Poverty and inequality are financial challenges for local authorities and threaten the cohesion of their communities.
The DfE has published a Green paper Schools that work for everyone (for consultation until 12 December 2016), which sets out the Government's ambition to create an education system which extends opportunity to everyone. This is the CSN briefing on the proposals
The government’s consultation on Closing the Public Sector Pay Gap, run by the Government Equalities Office, is seeking views on the introduction of mandatory gender pay gap reporting for large public sector bodies in England.
Scottish Government recently announced energy efficiency as a National Infrastructure Priority. This report reviews the policy drivers for energy efficiency action in Scotland, before assessing the efficiency schemes that assist householders to reduce energy bills and carbon emissions.
The DfE is consulting (until 22 September 2016) on funding arrangements for the new entitlement to free childcare for children aged 3 and 4-years old of eligible working parents. A new fair national funding system will be introduced for all childcare provision as a consequence. This CSN Briefing looks at the consultation.
A new report from the Child Poverty Action Group presents the evidence they've collected on the impact that the abolition of council tax benefit has had in London over the last three years, writes Alice Woudhuysen.
With child poverty set to rise, it will feature more prominently in local and national debate in the years ahead. This briefing reviews child poverty in Scotland, paying particular attention to the local dimension, in light of Scottish Government’s recent proposal to introduce a Child Poverty Bill for Scotland.
The Home Office with DfE support is consulting on whether practitioners, and their managers, working with children should be placed under a new statutory duty to report and act on children abuse and neglect. The consultation closes on 13 October 2016.
The Government regularly commissions surveys of the attitudes of young people enabling comparisons to be made over time. The Longitudinal study of young people in England: cohort 2, wave 2 publication shows that over ten years, young people have become more serious about school although the distress level of girls, but not boys, has increased.…
The DfE has published an independent report into children’s residential, that is provision commissioned mainly by local authorities for children in care outside the children’s home or foster care.A large number of recommendations covering obtaining better value for money and improved care from the commissioning process, relationship to fostering, closeness to home, the size of…
The Scotland Act 2016 devolves a range of social security powers to the Scottish Parliament, and this briefing summarises which powers are being devolved, how the Scottish Government plans to administer them, anticipated timescales and the implications for local agencies and service users.
