Positive thinking

Children's services in "perilous state", children's charity warns More than half of councils in England are planning to slash costs by cutting spending on services for children. These measures include closing children’s centres, reducing support for disabled children and cutting child protection teams. Analysis of council financing by the Bureau reveals a local government crisis as the costs of supporting vulnerable children pushes almost all councils over budget. This has prompted cuts to services. Across all, nine out of ten councils will spend more money than they bring in by the end of March this year - with one overspending by £14m. The Bureau has scrutinised hundreds of financial forecasts published by local authorities and analysed their historical spending records during a four-month investigation.  In budget plans for the coming year published by 101 councils responsible for children’s services, the Bureau found 57 planning to make cu...

   Mandy Pierlejewski, Leeds Beckett University We know that when it comes to brain development, it continues throughout most of our lives – from infancy to adulthood. But unlike other more obvious signs of growing up, many parents underestimate how much a child’s brain changes from year to year. Research shows that during early childhood, the links within the brain are busy forming – this is a time when children are learning to learn. And their brains are gradually forming connections that enable them to organise their thoughts. For children to be able to learn new information, they need to relate the new learning to previous learning. They need to develop an awareness of their own thinking and to monitor their thoughts, emotions and actions. And these capacities develop best through play. Psychologist Pam Jarvis explains this in her blog The Psychological Historian , using an analogy of trying to put clothes into a wardrobe with insufficient hangers. T...

Gil B. Manzon Jr., Boston College “If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets.” Actor and comedian Chris Rock made this astute statement during a 2014 interview with New York magazine, referring to the yawning gap between rich and poor. In so doing, he stumbled upon a key challenge in the study of inequality. What’s the best way to measure it? Most inequality studies have focused on income – measures of which are widely available . However, being rich is not about a single year of earnings but rather about the accumulation of wealth over time. In the past, quantifying that has been tricky. The wealthy would probably prefer we stay in the dark about how rich they are, presumably to avoid the aforementioned riots. People like me who study the topic, however, are always looking for more data and better and more accurate ways to measure the rich-poor gap. And while I’m not one to promote violence in the streets, I do believe it’...

   Martin Cohen, University of Hertfordshire The “obesity epidemic” deserves much more serious attention than it is getting. It is, after all, thought to be killing nearly 3m people a year worldwide. It is putting huge pressure on health services, yet the public policy response in developed countries such as the US and UK is pitiful, largely confined to finger-wagging at children’s sugary treats. The story that has not been getting out is that there is a clear and extraordinary correlation between obesity and social inequality. Obesity is invariably presented as a diet issue for nutritionists, whereas social inequality is deemed the domain of sociologists and economists. Put another way, even as the inequality gap becomes more and more obvious there’s been a medicalisation of a social problem. Yet obesity is not just a matter for nutritionists: rather, it is a product of social inequality and requires a collective social response. This failure to face up ...

   Paul Gorczynski, University of Portsmouth In the past few years, a lot of attention has been devoted to mental health on university campuses. Primarily explored from the perspective of students, poor mental health has been reported widely all around the world – it seems university students are not mentally well. Studies show a large proportion of students experience high levels of depressive symptoms. In the UK, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Students – a forum established for MPs and their peers to discuss issues that affect students in higher education – found 33% of students had experienced suicidal thoughts in the past academic year . Poor mental health at university is a big problem, not only because it affects how students learn , but because it also impacts whether they actually finish their degrees . Ultimately, symptoms of poor mental health affect the career potential and overall lives of students greatly. Most research has pointed to...