Safe search for kids and families

4+ min ago (470+ words) A council has revealed an updated strategy to support thousands of residents in poverty." Durham County Council cabinet members will next week discuss the latest work being done by the local authority to support people affected by poverty across the region." More than 112,000 County Durham residents currently live in absolute poverty after housing costs, around one in five people. Fuel poverty remains a persistent issue, affecting an estimated 26,600 households, with many struggling to afford adequate heating and energy." The refreshed strategy is set to be structured around five strategic pillars: Prevention, Protection, Pathways, Participation, and Partnerships. Consideration will also be given to the potential renaming of the strategy, recognising that the term "poverty" can carry stigma for individuals and communities, the council added." A council report states: "The refreshed strategic approach focuses on creating clear pathways out of poverty by…...

16+ min ago (784+ words) NHS and No 10 advice differs on wearing masks if you have flu symptoms. What is best practice for prevention and protection? An NHS leader has said people who are unwell with flu "must wear" a mask in public. A UK government official has said if you need to go out while sick, you should only "consider" wearing a mask. So what is the official advice, how serious is the threat posed by flu, and what should you do if have symptoms? Speaking to Times Radio, Daniel Elkeles, the chief executive of NHS Providers which represents NHS trusts, said the UK was seeing a "very nasty strain of flu" and people experiencing flu or cold symptoms "must wear" a mask in public. "When you were talking about anything like Covid, I think we need to get back into the habit that…...

17+ min ago (578+ words) Less homework and more kindness all around, please and thank you. Four smiling children sitting together, arms around each other. Perhaps that's why an elementary school in Ireland decided to do something radical: ditch all homework for the month of December and assign kids "acts of kindness" instead. In the weeks leading up to the holidays in 2019, kids at Gaelscoil Mh'ch'l U' Choile'in, Clonakilty were given a kindness task for each weekday. It broke down like this: Students were asked to keep track of their kind deeds in a Kindness Diary. The school also created a Kindness Bucket, where students could write down and deposit positive observations and affirmations to boost the self-esteem of their schoolmates. On Friday mornings, random selections of the notes were read aloud for everyone to hear. In addition, each class cooperated in a collective act…...

17+ min ago (1838+ words) I'm so upset because we have a nation of kids that are expecting to get paid and live their life just for showing up and it's not real." Left: Teacher Diane Tirado. Right: The note she left for students after being fired. If you're of the mind that kids today are being coddled and not properly prepared for the real world, well, you might want to buckle up for this one. The story out of a public school in Florida has parents and teachers alike up in arms. She got fired for it. The lowest possible grade that teachers can give students is a 50, even if they don't turn anything in. That means that an extremely poorly completed assignment is worth the same number of points as no assignment at all. Hardly seems fair, right? Westgate is far from the…...

20+ min ago (256+ words) Children with a high genetic risk for type 2 diabetes who were also exposed to maternal gestational diabetes are more likely to develop impaired glucose tolerance and type 2 diabetes, according to a speaker. "Type 2 diabetes in youth is a very complex, multifactorial disease," Dieguez said during a presentation at the World Congress on Insulin Resistance, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease. "It's important to acknowledge the modifiable and nonmodifiable factors that contribute to its progression, pathogenesis and disparities in health." Dieguez said two of the factors contributing to type 2 diabetes in children are genetic risk and intrauterine exposures, and she discussed a study published in Diabetes Care that examined the impact of both of those factors on type 2 diabetes incidence. Dieguez said several factors could contribute to the link between maternal hyperglycemia and IGT risk for offspring with a high genetic risk for…...

29+ min ago (27+ words) Australia's teen social media ban has been likened to restrictions on smoking in public places in terms of how long it will take for attitudes to shift....

44+ min ago (511+ words) What's actually going on in a teenager's head? What happens in peoples' brains as they transform from children into adults? What makes young brains so quick to pick up, say, instruments or languages? And why on Earth do teenagers make some of the absurd choices they make? What were they even thinking?! In our latest series from Unexplainable, Vox's science podcast, we've picked several researchers' brains to understand what we know " and what we are still trying to figure out " about teen brains and how best to study them. And a little over a decade ago, the National Institutes of Health wanted to figure out what kind of risk factors lead kids down the road to substance abuse. It was a question that Raul Gonzalez Jr., a professor of psychology at Florida International University, had been studying for years at…...

44+ min ago (833+ words) Australian Prime Minister'Anthony Albanese'welcomed a world-first'social media ban'for children younger than 16 that took effect Wednesday as families taking back power from tech giants but warned the implementation would be difficult. Many children posted farewell messages, while parents reported distraught children discovering they'd been shut out of platforms as the'landmark law'took effect. Some young children reported fooling the platforms' age estimation technology by drawing on facial hair. Parents and older siblings are also expected to help some children circumvent the restrictions. "This is the day when Australian families are taking back power from these big tech companies and they're asserting the right of kids to be kids and for parents to have greater peace of mind," Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of up to $32.9 million from Wednesday…...

57+ min ago (131+ words) Peter Kyle says Nigel Farage is on Jimmy Savile's side Source: Sky News Here's what happened when porn sites introduced UK age checks - Mandatory age verification for adult content sites in the UK, enforced from 25 July under the Online Safety Act, has resulted in a sharp and immediate fall in visits to popular online porn sites. - Ofcom's annual Online Nation report indicated that Pornhub, the most visited adult content provider, saw a 1.5 million viewer drop year-on-year. - Other major sites have also experienced significant percentage decreases in unique visitors. - Following the age verification mandate, VPN (virtual private network) usage in the UK more than doubled, peaking at over 1.4 million daily users. - Ofcom suggests that may be due to users' unwillingness or inability to complete age assurance checks....

1+ hour, 1+ min ago (462+ words) Australia's ban on social media for users under the age of 16 has taken effect, causing millions of children and teenagers to lose access to their accounts. Several teens were reportedly "distressed" and also claimed it was a "pretty bad idea" as they adjusted to a life without social media, including Snapchat, X and Instagram, among 10 other platforms. Social media platforms that do not comply risk fines of up to $33 million, according to a report by Reuters. Starting Tuesday, 10 December midnight (1300 GMT),10 of the largest platforms were ordered to block children or face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($33 million):1. TikTok 5. X (formerly Twitter) Parents of children affected by Australia"s new under-16 social media ban voiced mixed reactions, with some welcoming the move and others warning it risks isolating teenagers and pushing them toward rule-breaking. Many of the estimated…...