I have followed the life of this desperate child as her life has been ruined by a bankrupt system

You’re a teenage girl and you’ve been locked in a bare hospital room for more than 15 months. Your bed is a platform attached to the floor. There’s a plastic toilet and a sink moulded into the wall. Your only human contact is through a hatch in the door. Sometimes you get to hold your mum’s hand through it.

You’ve tried to kill yourself multiple times, including trying to throw yourself off a bridge over the M6. That was after escaping being driven to an unregulated children’s home miles away from your family. You can’t understand why your mum’s not able to look after you, as she does with your two siblings.

A quarter of Britain’s children live below the poverty line. Near his Fife home, the former PM shows how charities help families and says this issue must be a priority for any government

• The Observer view: Labour must tackle this scourge
• Torsten Bell: We can end child poverty
• Archbishop urges Starmer to ditch ‘cruel’ benefit cap

Outside a warehouse squeezed between a waste recycling plant, an auto parts outlet and a scaffolding company in Lochgelly, Fife, a blur of figures in hi-vis jackets are busily ­packing boxes into headteacher Ailsa Swankie’s car. Not for the first time, she is taking delivery of household essentials, hygiene products and food from the area’s heaving “multibank” – an institution she describes as an “absolute lifeline”.

The specific items differ with each pick-up – sometimes ­toilet rolls, other times washing ­powder or hot water bottles, donated by local businesses or sourced cheaply. But the need for each trip is always the same: an increasing number of families at her school who have found themselves struggling to afford what should be basic products. “We do have a lot of working families who work very, very hard, but they’re still really struggling,” Swankie says. “If I took nappies back to school, they’d all be gone by 3pm.”

Growing up in a poor household is one of the biggest barriers to opportunity, yet it affects millions of children

• Gordon Brown on the UK’s child poverty scandal
• Torsten Bell: We can easily end child poverty
• Archbishop urges Starmer to ditch ‘cruel’ benefit cap

Almost one in three British children now live in relative poverty. Former prime minister Gordon Brown last week referred to this generation as “austerity’s children”: children who have known nothing but what it is to grow up in families where money concerns are a constant toxic stress, where a lack of a financial cushion means one adverse event can trigger a downward debt spiral, and where parents have to make tough choices about essentials such as food and heating. Rising rates of child poverty are a product of political choices; that we have a government that has enabled them is a stain on our national conscience.

The headline rate of child poverty is underpinned by other alarming trends. Two-thirds of children living in relative poverty, defined as 60% of median income, after housing costs, are in families where at least one adult works, a product of the number of low-paid jobs in the economy that do not allow parents to adequately provide for their children. Unsurprisingly, child poverty rates are higher in families where someone has a disability, and 58% of children from Pakistani and 67% of Bangladeshi backgrounds live in relative child poverty. Child homelessness is at record levels – more than 140,000 children in England are homeless, many living for years on end in temporary accommodation that does not meet the most basic of standards. One in six children live in families experiencing food insecurity, and one in 40 in a family that has had to access a food bank in the past 30 days.

Police were able to rescue child, who is in hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, before house caught fire with father still in it

A six-month-old baby is currently hospitalized after a man allegedly shot the infant several times during an armed home standoff in Surprise, Arizona, about 30 miles north-west of Phoenix.

At about 3am on Friday, the father of the child allegedly broke into the home where the child and mother lived, according to Surprise police. The child’s father did not live in the house, police said, adding that the man held the mother and child hostage for several hours before the mother managed to escape.

Ending this shortsighted and unfair policy would lift half a million children out of poverty immediately, says Martyn Snow

In Leicester, where I live and work as bishop, two in five children now live in poverty. That’s 12 pupils in every classroom struggling to focus. Some haven’t eaten breakfast. Others are no doubt worried about arguments they have overheard at home about money, and how to afford next year’s school uniform. When I visit our local schools, I hear of teachers bringing in food for pupils who would otherwise go hungry and schools covering the costs of trips to protect children from the shame of being left out. I’m hugely proud of all that our churches do to support those in need, whether it’s with holiday clubs or food hubs. But we cannot by ourselves reverse the trend of growing child poverty seen across the country. One policy change, however, could: ending the two-child benefit cap.

The limit restricts the child element of universal credit to two children per household, so that families lose about £3,200 a year for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017. This is a huge amount for any family trying to make ends meet: of the 1.5 million children affected in 2023, 1.1 million were living in poverty.

Children crying out for stability are paying the highest price for Britain’s chaotic and exploitative residential care

I’m a patron of a small local charity that helps struggling children to rebuild trust and connection. It’s called Sirona Therapeutic Horsemanship, and it works by bringing them together with rescued horses. The horses, like many of the children, arrive traumatised, anxious and frightened. They help each other to heal. Children who have lost their trust in humans can find it in horses, which neither threaten nor judge them, then build on that relationship gradually to reconnect with people.

It’s an astonishing, inspiring thing to witness, as the children begin to calm, uncurl and find purpose and hope. It can have life-changing results. But, though I can in no way speak on Sirona’s behalf, I’m painfully aware that such charities can help only a tiny fraction of the children in desperate need of stable relationships, trust and love.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

New Hampshire employees of day care arrested after six-month investigation and each face 10 charges of endangering children

Four New Hampshire daycare employees allegedly spiked children’s food with the sleep supplement melatonin and were arrested on Thursday.

The arrests stem from a November 2023 investigation at a daycare in Manchester, New Hampshire, about 30 minutes outside the state capital of Concord.

Enlarge / A child cools off under a water sprinkler. (credit: Getty | JASON SOUTH)

In 1989, a city in Utah upgraded its drinking water system, putting in a whole new system and repurposing the old one to supply cheap untreated water for irrigating lawns and putting out fires. That meant that the treated water suitable for drinking flowed from new spigots, while untreated water gushed from the old ones. Decades went by with no apparent confusion; residents seemed clear on the two different water sources. But, according to an investigation report published recently by state and county health officials, that local knowledge got diluted as new residents moved into the area. And last summer, the confusion over the conduits led to an outbreak of life-threatening illnesses among children.

In July and August of 2023, state and local health officials identified 13 children infected with Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) O157:H7. The children ranged in age from 1 to 15, with a median age of 4. Children are generally at high risk of severe infections with this pathogen, along with older people and those with compromised immune systems. Of the 13 infected children, seven were hospitalized and two developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a life-threatening complication that can lead to kidney failure.

Preliminary genetic analyses of STEC O157:H7 from two of the children suggested that the children's infections were linked to a common source. So, health officials quickly developed a questionnaire to narrow down the potential source. It soon became clear that the irrigation water—aka untreated, pressurized, municipal irrigation water (UPMIW)—was a commonality among the children. Twelve of 13 infected children reported exposure to it in some form: Two said they drank it; five played with UPMIW hoses; three used the water for inflatable water toys; two used it for a water table; and one ran through sprinklers. None reported eating fruits or vegetables from home (noncommercial) gardens irrigated with the UPMIW.

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