A boy looks on as he sits atop cushions and mattresses loaded in the back of an animal-drawn cart led by a man as they evacuate from Sheikh Zayed in the northern Gaza Strip [AFP]
Take a few minutes to read the heart-wrenching story of Becky, a 14 year old child chewed up by a social career system that is by turns cruel, ineffective & run for the profit of investors.
The callousness of the state has become ever more obvious recently (although the problem is not new, of course).
How has it come to this?
In a word: austerity.
There are other factors but in the end the corrosion of system has been wrought by Tory defunding!
At least eight people, including women and children, have been reported killed and 10 were wounded after Israeli artillery shelling targeted a group of Palestinians filling water containers in the al-Faluja area, west of Jabalia camp, in northern Gaza today.
George Monbiot on the role of profit in (children's) social care:
'two Northamptonshire councils revealed they are paying an average of £281,000 a year for each residential placement, or £5,400 a week. A direct comparison cannot be made, because many children in care have complex needs, but just by way of reference Eton’s eye-watering fees are £46,000 a year'!
So, much of tax payers money is supporting investors not those needing care!
“The hospital system in Gaza has all but collapsed. We have paediatricians in field hospitals in Gaza who said that they are seeing cases of malnutrition. They are seeing hepatitis, jaundice, gastroenteritis. These are horrific challenges facing children. And we just do not have supplies or enough personnel to deal with this.”
Alexandra Saieh, head of humanitarian policy and advocacy at Save the Children International
A child under five years old has died of measles in Ontario, according to the provincial public health agency — the first such death in the province since 1989, when tracking began.
Since the war on Gaza began, all of the enclave’s schools have closed, leaving hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children without formal schooling or a safe place to stay.
For children already traumatised by war, losing out on education during key years of their development is another devastating blow.
Children play in a charred van in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 12, 2024 [AFP]