Trafficked Women In UK Prisons Have No Support Or Protection, University Of Cambridge Report Finds

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Trafficking

Trafficked Women In UK Prisons Have No Support Or Protection, University Of Cambridge Report Finds

Women who have been trafficked into the country to work as prostitutes, drug mules or domestic servants can end up in UK prisons without any protection or support, while traffickers walk free, new research has found.

Many of the vulnerable women get none of the protection from UK authorities that they are entitled to under international law, with a police investigation into the traffickers launched in just one out of 40 cases.

Responding to the University of Cambridge study into trafficking, Prison Reform Trust director Juliet Lyon, said: “It is shameful that terrified women who have been repeatedly raped and abused could find no one at police stations, courts or jails that they could trust or turn to for help.”

There were 58 foreign women in prison or detention centres whose crimes are directly linked to what they were forced to do by traffickers, the report by Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe and Dr Liz Hales found. Forty-three were identified as victims of human trafficking, and five more who had entered the country independently had worked under “slavery like conditions.”

Nearly half – 20 – were forced to work in prostitution and 15 had been made to work in producing cannabis.

Eight had been forced into domestic service, two had travelled as drug mules and eight were involved in street robberies and the sale of fake goods.

Five of the women had been trafficked to the UK as children – and one had been trafficked from her home country twice, coming to the UK after she was deported from the first country her traffickers sent her to.

Of the trafficked women in prison, 24 women said they had experienced multiple rapes. For two of the women this was an on-going threat.

And some women asked prison doctors for help with severe abdominal pains, heavy bleeding and discharge following extensive rape and sexual abuse.

Prof Gelsthorpe, at Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology, said: “There should be renewed efforts to recognise that ‘offenders’ can also be ‘victims’, and to ensure that appropriate credence is given to women’s accounts of their own experience.

“This is important research in terms of access to justice. The message is clear – the powerlessness of these women in the hands of their traffickers is terrifyingly replicated within the criminal justice system.

“Yet the legitimacy of the criminal justice system stands or falls on the way in which we treat victims as well as offenders.”

There were 616 foreign national women in prison, as at the end of September, accounting for one in seven of the total female prison population.

Guidelines were introduced in 2009, the National Referral Mechanism, to identify victims of human trafficking and ensure they receive appropriate protection and support.

But just 11 women had been dealt with according to NRM advice.

The report’s findings will be debated on Wednesday by MPs and peers at a seminar in the House of Lords convened by the Prison Reform Trust.

Parliamentarians will consider recommendations for a national strategy on foreign national women in prison and better monitoring of the UK’s obligations under international law.

The UK Human Trafficking Centre, run by the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which works with first responders like police to implement the NRM, told HuffPost UK that they believe the guidelines are being successfully implemented, but it was up to individual forces to decide whether to use the guidelines when dealing with victims.

A Government spokesperson said: “We are working harder to identify victims of trafficking earlier.

“We are doing this by raising awareness of how to identify victims, providing expert training to law enforcement officers and providing £2 million a year to help and support victims, including those identified in either the Prison or Probation service.

“We try not to detain victims of trafficking. People who have been trafficked can find it very hard to talk about what has happened to them, which means that sometimes they may be detained for a short period before they are identified as victims.

“We must ensure they get every possible support, and that offenders of this sickening crime are brought to justice.”

What happened to the Chinese children brought to Britain for adoption in the 1960s?

What happened to the Chinese children brought to Britain for adoption in the 1960s?

Back in the 1960s, more than 100 children – mostly abandoned, mostly babies and mostly girls – were brought over from Hong Kong to be adopted by British families. The British colony simply couldn’t cope with the number of refugees fleeing communist China, the upshot of which was struggling families and overcrowded orphanages. But only one of them is known to have traced her birth family.

“I didn’t even think of myself as Chinese when I was growing up,” says Karen Moir, who is now 46 and lives in London. “When the boys at school used to dance around me making Kung Fu noises, part of me was quite attracted to it, but most of me thought, ‘I don’t know what on earth you’re doing.'”

In fact, it was only when she was a teenager that Karen met anyone else of Chinese origin. “Even then, it was in Chinese restaurants. I’d dread them speaking to me in Cantonese because I wouldn’t have a clue what they were talking about.”

Years later, when Karen read a magazine article about another woman in her situation, she could hardly believe her luck. “I had grown up thinking I was the only one. At times, that had felt very isolating. I wrote to her and when we met, it was profound. We finished each other’s sentences and we are still good friends.”

Then, when Karen’s job as a social worker led her to help people who had been adopted within the UK to search for their birth families, it got her thinking. “Very unusually for the group of us that was brought over here from Hong Kong, I didn’t come from an orphanage, so I knew I was in with some hope.”

Karen’s adoptive dad was in the army, she explains, and they’d been sent to Hong Kong. “My birth father was the handyman for his block of flats, while my birth mother became their housekeeper. When my birth mother became pregnant with me, she asked my adoptive mum to take me with them back to England because she was already struggling with four young girls living in one room.”

Karen wrote to the Hong Kong court that approved the adoption and quicker than she could have imagined, her birth parents were found. “I couldn’t believe it. I was told they were over the moon that I’d traced them and would be happy for me to write to them, which I did and that’s when I got my first letter back from one of my sisters. It transpired they had another girl, which initially made me quite envious, but I later learned that their situation was at its worst when I was born.”

By the time Karen boarded the plane to Hong Kong to meet them three years later, she’d seen photos (“It was so wonderful to finally look like someone”) and had a sense of them as a family (“hard-working, brave and close”). “They were all there waiting to meet me at the airport, full of tears. It was amazing, despite our language barriers. Having always wanted a brother or sister, I suddenly had five. Hong Kong itself became a special place for me and I’ve been back eight times since. The circle is completed for me now. Knowing who I am has made me more confident and certainly more content.”

The other people adopted from China during the 1960s haven’t been so lucky. “For the 86 per cent who weren’t relinquished but abandoned, contact with birth families is a no-go area,” explains Julia Feast, policy and research consultant for the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, who has spent the last four years heading up a study of 72 of them, the findings of which are launched tomorrow. “In fact, our study found very few have even thought about tracing. Maybe it’s a form of self-protection or perhaps it’s simply an acceptance that the door is shut and they know that they won’t find anything.”

But even by Feast’s own admission, that’s not entirely true. “We discovered that most of the women had no idea that some information was kept, so as a result of the study we now have many more people going back to adoption agencies to ask to see their files. Finding birth families will be almost impossible, but even getting records that fill in some gaps can make them feel as though they have more of a history.”

Chris Atkins, 50, who was abandoned as a baby in 1962, has managed to find the area of Hong Kong she’s from, what it would have looked like at the time of her birth and the actual place she was found. “That has been very moving for me, not least because it became clear to me that my mother left me somewhere, knowing that the police would find me and that I’d be safe.”

Tracing roots is not, however, the sole focus of the study, points out Feast. Indeed, it probably stands out most as being the only mid-life study of people who were adopted internationally from orphanages. “Many of the women started their lives in rooms with 29 other babies. We wanted to know what happens when such women are placed in families in other countries and cultures. What’s their life like? Are they able to have good family relationships and do well educationally?”

Overall, the findings are positive, says Feast. “The majority have loving relationships with their adoptive families, although the message isn’t that international adoption is plain sailing. Virtually all the women, who ranged from 42 to 53, experienced racism and some felt isolated at times. But despite all that, this group of people did much better than we predicted in terms of psychological and physical health, educationally and in life satisfaction and did just as well as people adopted domestically.”

But perhaps the most touching aspect of the study is what the women themselves say about it. “‘You’ve changed my life’ has been the most common comment from the participants, many of whom had never met another Chinese adopted person until they took part,” says Feast. “That’s been very satisfying, powerful and moving to watch. Quite a lot told us they feel they’ve found their sisters and, in many ways, their family.”

Trafficking girls in India

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abuse, Bangladesh, discrimination, girls, India, infanticide, Nepal, rape, Sexual Violence, stigma, support, Trafficking, young people

The BBC Radio 4 iplayer website currently has a podcast available on Trafficking girls in India

From the blurb:

In a major investigation, Natalia Antelava reports on the abduction of tens of thousands of young girls in India for forced marriages. Thousands more are sold as prostitutes and domestic servants. She follows the route of the traffickers, who take girls from destitute households in places like West Bengal to wealthier areas in Northern states, where a shortage of women is blamed by many on sex-selective abortions. It’s a problem the United Nations describes as of ‘genocidal proportions’. Natalia joins campaigners and police fighting the trade and hears the stories of the trafficked girls and from a trafficker himself.

Bringing up daughters: The new battlefield for parents

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advertising, alcohol, anorexia, anxiety, bulimia, daughters, Depression, Eating Disorders, family, media, mental health issues, parents, pressure, self-harm, social media, Teens

Bringing up daughters: The new battlefield for parents

It’s a freezing night in Bristol, and snow is forecast – but every seat at Colston Hall in the city centre was sold out weeks ago, and not only for Ronan Keating who’s playing in the main auditorium. Also packing them in is a 59-year-old, softly spoken Australian psychotherapist, who will take to the stage for 90 minutes with just a whiteboard and some ideas that will keep his audience on the edge of their seats.

The psychotherapist is Steve Biddulph, and most of the people queuing up to hear him are the mothers of teenage girls. A few years ago Biddulph toured Britain warning of a crisis facing boyhood: now he is back with a similar message about girlhood. And if the audience here is anything to go by, he’s definitely touched a nerve. “Parents of girls are seriously worried about their daughters,” says Saffia Farr, editor of Juno magazine and the organiser of the Bristol part of Biddulph’s country-wide tour. “They feel there’s this overwhelming tide of advertising that’s targeting their daughters, of inappropriate clothing being sold in the shops, of media messages that encourage their girls to grow up way, way before their time. And they want to know what they can do about it.”

Telling them what they can do about it is Biddulph’s mission. “A few years ago, boys were a disaster area – there was an epidemic of ADHD, they were underperforming in exams, they were drinking too much and getting involved in wild behaviour,” he says. “Back then, girls seemed to be doing just fine. But, about five years ago, that all changed – suddenly, girls’ mental health started to plummet. Everyone knew a girl, or had a girl themselves, who had an eating disorder or who was depressed or was self-harming. It was a huge change in a very short period; I started to investigate why this was happening.”

Biddulph lives and works in Australia, but the crisis he sees brewing for young girls seems to be echoed across the Western world – and, in Britain, the figures suggest it’s worse than in other countries. A few weeks ago, the charity Childline announced a 68 per cent increase in youngsters contacting them about self-harming, and said most of the increase was among girls. The problem also seemed to be affecting teenagers at a younger age, with 14-year-olds now likely to be among callers.

Anxiety and depression in teenage girls is also on the rise: research from the Nuffield Foundation last year found that the proportion of 15- and 16-year-olds reporting feeling frequently anxious or depressed has doubled in the last 30 years, and is more common in girls: it has jumped from one in 30 to two in 30 for boys, and from one in 10 to two in 10 for girls. Meanwhile, a report from the Department of Health found teenage girls in Britain are more likely to binge drink than teenage girls anywhere else in Europe; more than half of 15- and 16-year-olds admit they drink to excess at least once a month. A separate report in 2011 found that one in five girls in this age bracket who drink at least once a week have drunken sex and later regret it.

Anorexia and bulimia are also dramatically on the increase: official figures for hospital admissions released last October pinpointed a 16 per cent rise in hospital admissions for eating disorders, and showed that one in every 10 of these admissions was a 15-year-old girl.

“There’s plenty to be concerned about,” Biddulph says. “Everyone who has a teenage daughter right now sees this, in their child and among their child’s friends.” The people they blame, he says, are the advertising industry and the media. “They are driving girls’ sensibilities and making them miserable. The corporate world has identified them as a new market for products, and is preying on them.” During his talk, Biddulph describes teenage girls as being out in the wilderness, surrounded by hyenas: it’s starting to get dark, he tells his audience, but they are all alone out there.

His message, though, is one of empowerment: he encourages parents to get together, to challenge the advertising industry and to lobby the Government to impose more restrictions on advertisers.

“Take the drinks industry – about 30 per cent of the market is sales to underage drinkers,” he says. “Alcohol companies are extremely powerful – but parents are powerful, too, and they have to stand against this and stop the marketing of alcopops and push for a higher drinking age.”

But the battle needs to be fought on a domestic as well as a policy front. “What we need to do is re-evaluate how we think of teenage girls: the current philosophy is that they’re growing older, so they need us less. But I believe that teenage girls go through a kind of second babyhood, and they in fact need their parents more than ever. We have to spend time with our daughters at this age: talk to them, listen to them, keep in touch with them. Staying connected to their parents makes all the difference to how they cope with the pressures they’re up against.”

Case study

Lindsay Julian, 51, lives in Salisbury. She has three daughters: Emily is 24, Olivia is 14, and Amelia is 11. She also has a son, Alexander, 28

“Emily got into drinking when she was about 15, and she started taking drugs fairly soon after that. It was a real roller-coaster time for all of us: sometimes she’d drink a lot and run off, and we’d have no idea where she was. One time, she didn’t come back all night, and we ended up calling the police. They were difficult times.

“There are so many pressures on young girls today – you’re very aware of that as a mother of daughters. So when my younger girls got close to the age where things got difficult with Emily, I thought: we’re going to do things differently this time round. I sent them to a Steiner school, where I think the pressures are lessened: the philosophy is holistic, it’s not all about exam results, which I think can be very stressful for young girls.

“Some of my daughters’ friends spend a lot of time on social media, texting and on Facebook – but I’m careful to limit those things for my girls, and it does make a difference. They watch TV but I monitor it – in some homes, TV seems like a third parent, and I don’t want it to be like that in our house. A lot of teenage girls never switch off, they’re constantly connected, and that puts them under pressure from one another as well as from advertisers.

“We’ve got friends where you can see that their 14-year-olds are more like adults; the wanting to drink, to go to parties all the time.

“Emily is fine now: things turned around for her eventually, and she now works as a researcher and has written a book. She’s a rock for her younger sisters and I’m very proud of her. I know you could say that she was OK in the end, but I don’t think it’s an experience I’d want to go through with my younger daughters. I think their adolescence could be happier, and less fraught, than Emily’s was.”

Bed, shelter, home, refuge. Why children are taking a bus journey with no destination

Bed, shelter, home, refuge. Why children are taking a bus journey with no destination

A group of teenagers huddles under the grey London sky. It is 4pm and the light is just beginning to fade. The group is well dressed – in Nike, Adidas, Sean John – and they mutter to each other in a language barely intelligible to any adult. Occasionally, they all bellow with laughter and furiously flick their fingers, in an acknowledgement of one member landing an especially ingenious insult on another.

They constantly check their phones, all BlackBerries (BlackBerry Messenger keeps them in touch free of charge), and type furiously. By 11pm their number has swelled considerably.

“What do you think they are all waiting for?” I ask one of them, Kieran, and he shrugs. “Life, to start, man. Do you know what I mean? I mean this wasn’t the f******* way it was supposed to be. This wasn’t on anyone’s wish list.”

But this group is waiting for something: a bus. For these boys, it is not really a means of transportation. Tonight it’s a bed, a shelter, a home, a refuge. “Bussing” is becoming a phenomenon in Britain, a grim choice for kids who, while not exactly homeless, are mostly not allowed or are too scared to go home very often.

Unknown quantities of teenagers are spending their nights on buses, which are cheap (less than £5 on an Oyster card will get you around all night), instead of in a warm bed.

Official statistics on bussing do not exist. But children’s charities are aware of the extreme measures that exiled teenagers are taking to stay off the street, particularly at night.

“There are so many teenagers in peril,” said one charity worker, “that the ones who have an Oyster card, a jacket, even a place to go for a few hours in the day to change or sleep, won’t be seen as a priority by the Government, social workers or, indeed, charities.”

I heard about bussing from several kids I encountered while teaching and was interested in learning more. But it’s a difficult world for an adult woman to penetrate. The young people who do it don’t trust adults, and to just jump on board and try to chat would be foolhardy.

I met Kieran through a professional acquaintance. He is a tightly wound, intimidating young man who moves like a feral cat and has a look that could melt lead. However, once he warms to you, which takes a while, he reveals a very different side: bright, funny, articulate – charming, even.

I asked him to be my bussing guide for two reasons. First, he is very much representative of the teenagers often portrayed so negatively: no GCSEs, few job prospects, somewhat alienated from society and arguably in danger of turning to crime. He is one of many young people for whom education is no longer even a potential route out of the grinding poverty of our inner cities. As he sees it, education is just not an option.

Second, he is scary. He is easily the most streetwise of this relatively young group (they are all under 18). When I ask him what happens when they encounter older groups – the ones who have succumbed to much harder crimes, drugs and lives – he gives me “that look” and says: “We mostly don’t. We know the routes really well.” The others all nod, their faces a combination of fear and aggression.

I have promised to keep their route secret, a condition I don’t quite understand at first, but it’s a complex and busy path that is often aborted or changed at the drop of a hat – the hat being variously police, zealous transport workers or, most dangerous of all, other lost, roaming teenagers deemed to be foes rather than friends.

We board in North-west London on a regular bus, with the intention of heading into the heart of the capital, where there is a much greater choice of night buses when it gets later and colder. By now the teenagers seem to have fully accepted my presence and are keen to tell me about their lives. The most pressing question I have is: why? Why would you eschew safety and warmth and comfort for this? It turns out that, while a couple of kids might be along for the ride, for most this is their only option.

A boy with huge brown eyes, so small he barely looks older than 12, tells me: “I’m allowed home in early mornings to have some food and change my clothes, but I have to be gone by the time my mum wakes up.” When I ask him why, he shrugs, as if the answer is forgotten or irrelevant.

Another tells me that if he stays at home he “gets into more trouble”. I ask him how so and he seems reluctant to answer. Kieran looks up from his phone and says, not without compassion: “His brother is really bad news. Because Rob has such a baby face, his brother is always trying to get him to hold stuff or pick up stuff for him, because he’s less likely to get lifted.” Rob nods, looking embarrassed.

What about your parents, I ask. The question is instantly met with a cacophony of teeth-kissing and cursing and other noises to suggest that their parents aren’t exactly fulfilling their roles satisfactorily. I ask if they feel part of a family, keeping each other safe. Everyone nods. “No one gives a f*** about us but we look out for each other,” says the little one. “Shut up, man,” says Kieran, but he is sort of smiling.

Suddenly, for reasons unclear to me, we have to get off the bus. When we have boarded another, I ask why. They spotted another bussing group with whom they have “beef” and thought they might board.

I ask how common bussing is. They all clamour to answer, yelling over each other, and I make out “Loads!”, “But we started it!”, “F****** Polish, man!” This is the first of many negative references to the Polish (I think they more broadly mean eastern Europeans). The eastern European presence on what they consider to be “their territory” makes them very uneasy.

“Shut up!” thunders Kieran and they all do, ever deferential to him. “Loads,” he tells me. “Loads. And it’s being taken over by loads of other groups.” But he is either unable or unwilling to tell me who these others might be.

I ask why so many people are riding night buses. They all start bellowing again, keen to share their theories, but it’s the small, brown-eyed boy who has the most compelling one. “It’s legit, man. If you are in a shopping centre or even the f****** street, you can be moved on by anyone. But if you have an Oyster you’ve got a right to be here. No one can say s***.”

They also feel safer. Kieran says: “From here you can see trouble coming. You’re less of a mug.” The notion of the bus as a watchtower both amuses and saddens me.

So do girls ever join them? Their shrieky answers suggest that they probably do, but despite their outrageous “playa” boasts, these boys are still at an age where, really, they are a bit scared of talking to girls.

When I ask how many of them feel they messed up at school, most admit to it immediately and express regret. It’s a heartbreaking paradox that teachers and parents will recognise: so many kids get it just that little bit too late.

A few talk half-heartedly about doing something at college, but the very small boy says: “What’s the point? There are kids coming out of school with 11 A*s and not being able to find a job. Who’s going to give us a job?” None of them can remember what they wanted to be when they were little.

Suddenly, there is much shrieking and the boys clamber to get a look. They bang the window and hoot. After a few hours of bussing, we have found ourselves near King’s Cross, still home to street prostitutes. “That’s nasty, man,” says one. “Can you ever imagine being that desperate?”

I ask if they’d consider a visit to the job centre. They all shout with laughter and flick their fingers. “My friend says he knows someone who caught HIV from the job centre. It’s a nasty place, man!” cries one of them. When the hilarity has died down, Kieran, still attached to his phone, says: “I’ve got more chance of meeting Elvis than getting a job there.” “Who’s Elvis?” asks his friend. “Some dead brother,” says another. Kieran kisses his teeth. “Elvis was white, he just sounded black. Like Eminem.”

It’s getting on for 3am and Kieran announces they will be getting off in a bit to “take care of something”. I don’t care to find out what he means but it reminds me to ask about crime.

There are vague, reluctant murmurs, with the vociferous defence that “crime is becoming the only option”. I ask about the London riots and most get a look on their faces, like old hippies do when asked about Woodstock. The small one says angrily: “That was three f****** nights of the year my mum made me stay in!”

Doctors are refusing to carry out ‘pointless’ tests for dementia, warns Jeremy Hunt

Tags

Alzheimer's, dementia, diagnosis

Doctors are refusing to carry out ‘pointless’ tests for dementia, warns Jeremy Hunt

Doctors are refusing to carry out tests for dementia as they believe it is pointless as there is no effective cure available, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said.

Mr Hunt said the country should be “ashamed” that so many people were being denied treatment which could stave off the condition for years.

His comments came as the Alzheimer’s Society warned dementia sufferers were facing a postcode lottery of diagnosis rates.

It released data suggesting that in some areas of the UK, as few as one in three people suffering from the condition will receive a formal diagnosis, while in other areas three quarters of sufferers will be told by a doctor about their condition.

Across the UK just 46% of sufferers were diagnosed in 2012, the society said.

Mr Hunt said that attitudes in the NHS and in wider society had to change.

“As with cancer in the past, too many health and care professionals are not aware of the symptoms,” he wrote in an article for telegraph.co.uk.

“Some even believe that without effective cure there’s no point putting people through the anxiety of a memory test – even though drugs can help stave off the condition for several years.

“It is this grim fatalism that we need to shake off. Not just within our health service but across society as a whole.

“It can be a total nightmare getting a diagnosis – and the result is that, shockingly, only 46% of all dementia cases are identified.

“Yet with access to the right drugs and support for a partner, someone can live happily and healthily at home for much longer. We should be ashamed that we deny this to so many people in today’s NHS.”

The charity said that while the latest figure is an improvement on the previous year, there are still thought to be 428,500 people in the UK who have the condition but have not been diagnosed.

This means they are going without the support, benefits and the medical treatments that can help them live with the condition, charity chief executive Jeremy Hughes said.

Diagnosis rates were best in Scotland where 64.4% of of suffers were told about their condition. In Wales, just 38.5% of sufferers formally received a diagnosis in 2012.

And 44.2% of people with the condition in England were diagnosed compared with 63% in Northern Ireland.

Belfast Health and Social Care Trust provided the best diagnosis rates in 2012, with 75.5% of patients being diagnosed.

But in the East Riding of Yorkshire Primary Care Trust, just 31.6% of patients received a formal diagnosis, according to figures produced from data generated by the Government’s qualities and outcomes framework.

The charity has produced an interactive map highlighting the variation in dementia diagnosis across the UK.

It said that the new data also suggests that the average waiting time for an appointment at a specialist memory clinic is 32.5 working days – more than the recommended four to six weeks. Some memory clinics reported waiting times of up to 9 months.

Mr Hughes said: “It’s disgraceful that more than half of all people with dementia are not receiving a diagnosis, and disappointing to see such a disparity in diagnosis rates in different regions of the UK.

“This goes against best clinical practice and is preventing people with dementia from accessing the support, benefits and the medical treatments that can help them live well with the condition.

“Studies show that an early diagnosis can save the taxpayer thousands of pounds, because it can delay someone needing care outside of their own home.

“The NHS has already made a commitment to improving diagnosis rates but more needs to be done to ensure people with dementia are able to live as well as possible with the disease.”

The Alzheimer’s Society estimates that 800,000 people in the UK have a form of dementia and more than half have Alzheimer’s disease. The figure is estimated to rise to a million by 2021.

Initial signs of the dementia, which is caused by diseases of the brain, may include short-term memory loss that affects every day life, problems with thinking or reasoning, or unexplained anxiety, anger or depression.

Is this the loneliest generation?

Is this the loneliest generation?

Government officials have been ordered to find out exactly how lonely Britain’s population is, amid concerns that “the most isolated generation ever” will overwhelm the NHS.

The Department of Health is attempting to measure the extent of “social isolation” in the UK, after warnings that it has sparked spiralling levels of illnesses including heart disease, high blood pressure, dementia and depression.

Research has revealed that loneliness is a growing problem in the UK – particularly among the elderly – with one in three admitting that they sometimes feel lonely. Among older people, more than half live alone, 17 per cent are in contact with family, friends and neighbours less than once a week, and almost five million say the television is their main form of company.

However, the trend is expected to worsen in the coming years. The Office for National Statistics disclosed last year that the number of Britons living alone has risen to a record 7.6 million – one million more than in 1996 and amounting to almost one in three households.

But beyond the personal problems the “loneliness epidemic” presents, ministers have been put on alert over its wider impact – and financial costs. Loneliness is blamed for piling more pressure on to health and social care services, because it can increase the risk of complaints including heart disease and blood clots. Experts also believe it encourages people to exercise less and drink more – and ultimately go to hospital more often and move into residential care at an earlier stage.

The Government’s attempts to measure social isolation among people using health and social care will increase the pressure on the NHS and councils to tackle the problem now – to slash millions from their spending on the effects of loneliness in the future.

The care and support minister, Norman Lamb, said: “For the first time, we will be aiming to define the extent of the problem by introducing a national measure for loneliness. We will be encouraging local authorities, NHS organisations and others to get better at measuring the issue in their communities. Once they have this information, they can then come up with the right solutions to address loneliness and isolation.”

It is the latest in a number of attempts to gauge, and change, the national mood: Tony Blair appointed the LSE academic Lord Layard as his “happiness tsar”, while David Cameron has previously tried to measure people’s well-being. In each case, the driving aim was to cut health and social welfare costs by making people feel better about their lot.

An official guide on combating isolation, issued to local authorities by the organisation Campaign to End Loneliness, says: “Tackling loneliness will reduce the demand for costly health care and, by reconnecting individuals to their communities, it will give renewed access to older people’s economic and social capital.” The guide points out that a scheme in Essex where lonely people were “befriended” by volunteers cost £80 per person but produced annual savings of £300 per person. Another project directing older people to local services cost £480 but realised savings of £900 per person.

Anne Hayden, a Dorset GP, saved more than £80,000 in costs for six patients who were “high users of NHS services” with a befriending scheme to boost their emotional well-being. David McCullough, chief executive of the WRVS (formerly the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service), said: “It’s to the benefit of not only the patient, but also the NHS as a whole, that GPs spot the early warning signs of isolation and refer patients to services such as befriending or community centres.”

Case study

Win Noble was a nurse who had to give up work to care for her husband after he had a stroke and heart attack.

“It’s not until you’re on your own that you feel miserable. My husband died in 2001. I had nursed him for 20 years.

“In 2005, my next-to-oldest daughter died and then so did my youngest daughter. I was on my own because the rest of the family don’t live in the area and I’m partially disabled, so I can’t really socialise. One of my other daughters is housebound, one lives in Rhyl and one in Skegness and my only son is in Sleaford. I hadn’t seen my son for five years but he rings me and came down this week.

“I don’t see the others. I used to read a lot of books, from the mobile library, and I do a lot of puzzles just to keep occupied.

“Age Concern contacted me and suggested a craft class. After a few weeks they started to get a group together to play games like Scrabble and have quizzes. I got really involved and really enjoyed it. I became a volunteer and people needed me again.”

Rachael Bentham

One in five women are victims of sexual offences

One in five women are victims of sexual offences

Nearly one in five of all women in England and Wales report that they have been the victim of a sexual offence since the age of 16, according to a new official analysis.

The study says there are about 473,000 adult victims of sex crimes every year and, while most involve unwanted touching and indecent exposure, they include 60,000 to 95,000 victims of rape.

The first joint statistical overview of sexual offending in England and Wales by the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and Office of National Statistics confirms that only a very small proportion of sexual offences lead to a conviction. In the last three years court statistics show an average of 5,620 offenders convicted each year for all types of sexual offences, with 1,070 convicted for rape.

The estimate that there are 473,000 victims of sexual offences every year, of whom 400,000 are women, is drawn from the Crime Survey for England and Wales. It estimates that there were 97,000 victims of the most serious sexual offences last year, of which there were around 69,000 female victims of rape. The analysis adds that 90% of such victims knew the perpetrator.

But the official statisticians say they no longer regard as accurate widely quoted previous estimates that only 6% of allegations of rape reported to the police result in a conviction for rape. “They were ballpark estimates of what the likely figure is which we no longer regard as accurate,” said one. The statisticians say that they are in the early stages of establishing a more authoritative figure but face severe difficulties in comparing victim surveys with recorded offences and the number of convictions of offenders.

The new official analysis follows an inquiry into rape reporting by Lady Stern which concluded that a misleading focus on the conviction rate left victims’ needs neglected and stopped women coming forward. Campaigners such as Women Against Rape criticised this, saying it let the criminal justice system off the hook while women were still receiving “shocking” treatment.

The new analysis confirms that on a more usual definition of conviction rate – the proportion of cases prosecuted in the courts – 62.5% of rape cases ended in a conviction, eight points higher than in 2005. The 1,200 convictions for rape in 2011 compare with 800 in 2005.

It also shows that 95% of convicted rapists are jailed, and for increasingly long sentences. In 2011, the average sentence for rape was eight years and six months, 20 months longer than in 2005. The 19 rapists who received a caution in 2011 included 16 under 18 years old.

The statistical analysis does show that rape and other sexual offences remain under-reported to the police compared with many other crimes. Only 15% of women said they reported the offence to the police. Their reasons for not going to the police included “embarrassing”, “didn’t think the police could do much to help”, “too trivial/not worth reporting”, and “private/family matter”.

The study also confirms that it takes far longer to complete a rape case than nearly all other criminal cases, taking an average of 675 days from the date of the offence to completion of the case in 2011. This compares with 162 days for cases of violence against the person and an average of 154 days for all criminal cases.

Martin Hewitt of the Association of Chief Police Officers said police had been working hard to improve recording and reporting practices to encourage victims to report sexual offences.

Americans ‘are sicker and die younger’ than people in other wealthy nations

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physical health

Americans ‘are sicker and die younger’ than people in other wealthy nations

America may be one of the richest countries in the world, but its people are less healthy and more likely to die early from disease or accidents than those in any other affluent country, a damning official US report has found.

Even the best-off Americans – those who have health insurance, a college education, a high income and healthy behaviour – are sicker than their peers in comparable countries, says the report by the US National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.

“We were struck by the gravity of these findings,” said Steven H Woolf, professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and chair of the panel that wrote the report. “Americans are dying and suffering at rates that we know are unnecessary because people in other high-income countries are living longer lives and enjoying better health. What really concerns our panel is why, for decades, we have been slipping behind.” The report, US Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health, was commissioned by the National Institutes of Health. It compares the US with 16 affluent democracies, including Australia, Canada and Japan and many in Europe including Britain. There have been similar findings from the Commonwealth Fund over some years, but they have compared the US with only a handful of nations.

The new report looked in detail at data from the late 1990s to 2008. “Over this time period, we uncovered a strikingly consistent and pervasive pattern of higher mortality and inferior health in the United States, beginning at birth,” it said.

For many years, Americans have had a shorter life expectancy than people in almost all the comparator countries and for the past three decades the gap has been widening, particularly for women.

The US does badly in nine specific areas. It has the highest infant mortality rate of any wealthy country and also does poorly on other birth outcomes, such as low weight babies.

Deaths from injuries and homicides are far higher than elsewhere and a leading cause of death in children, adolescents and young adults. US adolescents have had the highest rate of pregnancies of affluent countries since the 1990s and are more likely to acquire sexually transmitted infections. The US has the second highest HIV rate and the highest incidence of Aids among the 17 countries.

Even taking out drunk driving, Americans lose more years of life to alcohol and other drugs than people in other affluent countries. The US has the highest obesity rate and, from age 20, one of the highest levels of type 2 diabetes. The death rate from heart disease is the second highest in the 17 countries. There is more lung disease and more deaths from it than in Europe and older people report more arthritis and other limitations on their activity than in Europe or Japan.

The US is, however, good at looking after the health of the most elderly. People who reach 75 are more likely to live longer, have lower death rates from stroke and cancer, better-controlled blood pressure and cholesterol levels and lower rates of smoking than elsewhere.

But death and disease take a huge toll on the younger American population, even though the US spends more on healthcare per capita than almost any other country in the world. Poverty, inequality, racial and ethnic differences and lack of health insurance are part of the story but not all. Even non-Hispanic white people with money and insurance who are not smokers or obese do less well than those in other countries.

Unless action is taken, the report says, the health of Americans will probably continue to fall behind. “The tragedy is not that the United States is losing a contest with other countries but that Americans are dying and suffering from illness and injury at rates that are demonstrably unnecessary. Superior health outcomes in other nations show that Americans also can enjoy better health,” says the report.

The US public is unaware of the issues, says the report. “I don’t think most parents know, on average, infants, children, and adolescents in the US die younger and have greater rates of illness and injury than youth in other countries,” said Woolf.

The report says the situation will not improve unless Americans wake up to the truth about their health and a public debate begins.

Nearly Half Of Unemployed Young People ‘Depressed’, Says Prince’s Youth Trust

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Depression, employment, mental health issues, support, young people

Nearly Half Of Unemployed Young People ‘Depressed’, Says Prince’s Youth Trust

Nearly half of unemployed young people are “always” or “often” depressed, while more than a quarter are depressed regardless of employment, the Prince of Wales’ charity has revealed.

The Prince’s Youth Trust research on the happiness of young people found 27% in work reported feeling down or depressed “always” or “often” increasing to 48% amongst those who are not in employment, education or training (Neets).

The survey findings, based on interviews with 2,136 16-to-25-year-olds in the UK, showed that one in 10 feels unable to cope with day-to-day life with those classified as Neets twice as likely to feel this way as their peers.

The trust’s fifth annual Youth Index gauged young people’s happiness across a range of areas from family life to physical and mental health.

More than one in five, or 22%, said they did not have someone to talk to about their problems while they were growing up, with Neets significantly less likely to have had someone to confide in.

Martina Milburn, chief executive of The Prince’s Trust, said: “A frightening number of unemployed young people feel unable to cope – and it is particularly tough for those who don’t have a support network in place.

“We know at The Prince’s Trust that it is often those from the most vulnerable backgrounds who end up furthest from the job market.

“Life can become a demoralising downward spiral – from a challenging childhood into life as a jobless adult. But, with the right support, we can help get these lives on track.”

Richard Parish, chief executive of the Royal Society of Public Health, said the recession has eroded young people’s confidence and ambitions.

“The Youth Index clearly shows a worrying discrepancy between young people who are in work and those who are not,” he said.

“These unemployed young people need support to regain their self-worth and, ultimately, get them back in the workplace.

“With recent record-breaking youth unemployment – the work of charities like The Prince’s Trust with vulnerable young people is more critical than ever.”

The Prince’s Trust, founded by the Prince of Wales in 1976, helps young people into jobs through measures such as personal development programmes and mentoring. The charity launched extra help for young people with mental health needs on its team programme four years ago.