Latest news with #HarrysLaw
BBC News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Children's Law Centre wants ban on isolation in schools
Shutting a child alone in a room in school should be banned immediately, MLAs have is according to Rachel Hogan from the Children's Law Centre (CLC).Ms Hogan gave evidence to Stormont's Education Committee into pupils being restrained or put in isolation in schools.A written submission from the CLC said that "seclusion should never be used as an intervention in an education setting". The DUP MLA, Peter Martin, said there were some "extremely harrowing examples" of what had happened in Northern Ireland."The majority of these cases are occurring in relation to children with disabilities, often non-verbal young boys," Ms Hogan had said."It's so draconian, it's not the way we do things today," she later continued."There has been a significant delay in bringing forward promised changes."Ms Hogan said that it had been parents who had "dragged this difficulty into the light". 'Harm can be long term and lasting' Deirdre Shakespeare's son Harry was "restrained unnecessarily" in a chair in his school, a report by the public services watchdog previously Public Services Ombudsman, Margaret Kelly, later told MLAs that her investigation found that Harry had been subject to a level of restraint that "caused real distress".Mrs Shakespeare and some other parents have campaigned for "Harry's Law" to make it compulsory for schools to report when they have isolated or restrained a child."Restrictive practices can be harmful and that harm can be long term and lasting," Ms Hogan 2023, the Department of Education (DE) published draft guidance, saying restraint and seclusion should only be used as a last resort, after calls for tougher laws on when a child could be physically restrained in new laws have not yet been introduced. 'We heard of a child being tethered to a fence' The committee's deputy chair, Sinn Féin MLA Pat Sheehan, said MLAs had previously heard of a child with autism who "had his hands tied to the chair with a schoolbag.""And more recently, we heard of a child being tethered to a fence," he continued."And his parents were totally unaware of that until they received the child's yearbook and there were photographs.""I can't even begin to process that, that is very shocking," Ms Hogan Hogan said that although DE had done a lot of work "there has been a significant delay in bringing forward promised changes"."How are we going to fix this if we don't reform the legislation that talks about force?" she asked."We need to make it easy for school leaders to know what to do."You should never use force in order to maintain discipline, particularly in relation to a disabled child."Use of any force to maintain order and discipline is just a whisker away from when we used to hit people at school, frankly." 'Inappropriate placements' causing difficulties Ms Hogan said that there was provision law for school staff to intervene if there was risk of "serious harm" to a pupil or member of said that teachers and school leaders should be thanked "for the difficult decisions they make every day".Ms Hogan also told MLAs that part of the difficulty was that the Education Authority (EA) was providing "inappropriate placements" in school for some children."A school has maybe said 'we can't meet the needs of this child,' and they're being placed anyway," she March, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) resigned from a taskforce set up by the department to look at the use of restraint and seclusion in schools. The RCN expressed serious concerns over the direction of travel by DE on the Department of Health had previously instructed that children and young people should never be shut in a room alone and prevented from Hilton has previously backed parents trying to toughen the law on restraint and seclusion in Northern Ireland's businesswoman has said she was placed in solitary confinement when at boarding school in the US as a teenager.
Daily Mail
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Kathy Bates, 76, displays her incredible 100Ib weight loss at CBS curtain-raiser after revealing the moment that sparked her Ozempic journey
The results of an undeniably effective weight loss journey were evident as Kathy Bates attended a CBS television event in Los Angeles on Wednesday evening. The celebrated actress has lost more than 100Ib after turning to controversial diabetes jab Ozempic - now better known for its impact on tackling obesity. And the results were evident as she visited Paramount Studios ahead of the CBS fall schedule announcement. Dressed in a semi-sheer blouse, Bates, 76, looked notably slimmer as she mingled with guests during Wednesday's event. With a cinched waist, the actress's black pleated skirt drew further attention to her slender figure - the result of regular dietary jabs and an improved diet. Bates got serious about her health following her diagnosis for type 2 diabetes in 2017, but there was a moment six years prior that truly sparked her weight-loss journey. At the time, the Oscar winner was portraying sarcastic criminal defense attorney Harriet 'Harry' Korn in David E. Kelley's legal comedy Harry's Law, which aired for two seasons on NBC before being canceled in 2012. 'When I was so heavy in Harry's Law, I had to sit down in between every take, and it was awful,' Kathy recalled to People on Sunday. 'I'm ashamed to have put myself through that, to be honest.' Bates successfully shed 80lbs off her 5ft3in frame before hopping aboard the trendy Ozempic train and dropping an additional 20lbs, which made 'working a lot easier.' 'But now that I've been able to get really healthy, I can move, I can breathe, I can have fun, I'm not sore,' the Matlock producer-star - who also uses a treadmill - added. 'I get tired and realize I'm like an old lady, but even the kids get tired. But it's been a magnificent experience. I never expected to have this at my age, at the end of my career.' Bates previously told the outlet last October: 'Physically, I'm capable of doing this show. I don't have to sit down. I can stand up all day long and walk and move and breathe and do so many things that I couldn't before.' The actress - who survived ovarian cancer and breast cancer - has even seen an improvement in her lymphedema since shedding weight and she no longer has to wear compression sleeves on her arms. The celebrated actress has now ost more than 100Ib after turning to controversial diabetes jab Ozempic - now better known for its impact on tackling obesity In the last few years, more and more people have decided to take the type 2 diabetes drug, which allows them to easily shed weight they openly struggled with for decades but can cause yet-to-be-known long-term effects such as pancreatitis. Celebrities who have admitted to taking semaglutide drugs include Kelly Clarkson, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, Rebel Wilson, Chelsea Handler, Amy Schumer, Sharon Osbourne, Sheryl Underwood, Lauren Manzo, Dolores Catania, and Golnesa 'GG' Gharachedaghi. But for every celebrity who admits to Ozempic, there are many more who've remained suspiciously silent while slimming including Lizzo, Mindy Kaling, Melissa McCarthy, Khloe Kardashian, Lana Del Rey, Christina Aguilera, and Patricia Arquette. Obesity expert Dr. Andrew Kraftson said most people taking these medications will hit a plateau around the 18-month mark after starting treatment. 'You could tell someone that they're going to lose 15 percent of their weight, potentially, on Ozempic or Wegovy. 'But once they get to 15 percent, it is not like they're like, "Oh, now I'm satisfied, great,"' Kraftson told the New York Times in 2023. The truth behind new diet drug craze - Hollywood is hooked on it, and social media is fanning demand for the latest weight-loss 'miracle' Over the summer I was lucky enough to be invited to a 60th birthday at which the after-dinner entertainment was a private performance by one of the UK's leading male pop stars. More eye-popping than the actual show, though, was how incredible said star looked. He was a mere shadow of his former self, prancing around the stage in a silver catsuit. His secret? Semaglutide, or Ozempic as it is branded, a new diet drug that everybody – but everybody, darling, including one of the world's most famous supermodels – is apparently taking. Originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes, it is used off-label (for a purpose other than that for which it was licensed) in both the US and the UK to treat obesity. In research conducted by its billionaire manufacturer, the Danish-based pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, patients lost an average of 17 per cent of their overall body weight over 68 weeks. This compares with five to nine per cent for 'oldschool' anti-obesity drugs such as Metformin. Only available in the UK on the NHS if you have type 2 diabetes, Ozempic can be obtained through a private doctor, and if you are willing to take it without medical supervision – not recommended by doctors (see panel) – you can get it online through various weight-loss programmes. It is sometimes taken in tablet form but more commonly as an injection. Predictably, Hollywood has been aware of Ozempic for a lot longer than us – Variety magazine recently quipped that the drug deserved its own thank-you speech at the Emmys, as so many stars on the podium had obviously been taking it. Elon Musk raved about its more powerful sister drug, Wegovy, on Twitter; Kim Kardashian, it is hotly rumoured, used semaglutide to lose 16lb in order to fit into Marilyn Monroe's dress for the Met Ball. On TikTok the hashtag #ozempic has had more than 285 million views. Thanks to the hype, there has been a surge in demand, causing shortages on both sides of the Atlantic, with a backlash against influencers and celebrities hogging supplies ahead of desperate diabetes sufferers. Predictably, Big Pharma has come up with an alternative – tirzepatide (brand name Mounjaro), manufactured by Eli Lilly – but it has yet to be approved by the US Food & Drug Administration for weight loss. Novo Nordisk has issued a statement to say its supplies will be replenished by the end of the year, but it hasn't quelled anxiety. At least two middle-aged male friends of mine who started using it in September are getting themselves in a twist about being caught short before the holidays. As one private London GP remarked to me: 'It's like the H RT panic last spring.' So what exactly is this drug? Semaglutide belongs to a class called GLP-1 agonists, which not only regulate blood sugar but, as was discovered about a decade ago, also mimic the gut hormones that regulate our appetites – the ones that tell the brain when we are hungry or full. There are, of course, side effects: acid reflux, nausea, exacerbation of IBS symptoms and fatigue (but much less so than in earlier GLP-1 agonists such as Saxenda), as well as pancreatitis, gallstones and, in very high doses, it has caused thyroid tumours in rats. Meanwhile, when you stop using it the effect wears off immediately and in some cases it won't work at all. 'I would describe semaglutide as an example of very smart science,' says leading consultant endocrinologist Dr Efthimia Karra from her private practice off London's Harley Street. 'But it is not a panacea for everyone. Around a fifth of users do not respond to it. This is because the human body favours weight gain, thus when you lose weight the body will do anything to revert to its highest BMI. The heavier you are the harder it is to lose weight. If a patient has made no progress in three months, I will take them off it.' Banker's wife Laura, a native New Yorker in her mid-50s who had hovered between decades, started using it in January. 'The Paleo diet, 5:2, CBT, NLP, bootcamp, diet delivery services – I've tried them all,' she says from the family home in Hampshire, 'and I've always yo-yoed right back. After my last annual checkup I seriously contemplated giving up. Then my doctor suggested semaglutide.' After only a month she noticed her clothes had become looser. From then on, the weight started dropping off. 'The strange thing was, I wasn't eating anything different. I just couldn't physically have seconds any more, and the idea of pudding after a full meal had lost its allure.' Three months on, she is two stone lighter ‒ though occasionally she suffers heartburn if she eats too late at night or drinks alcohol ‒ and when we spoke in autumn, she was looking forward to losing another stone by Christmas. 'There is a niggling voice that tells me it is both risky and lazy to take a drug to lose weight, and I worry that it will all pile on again if I stop taking it. But if it does, I will seriously consider taking it indefinitely.' Private London GP Dr Martin Galy has been prescribing semaglutide for about a year to clients who cannot lose the weight they gained in menopause. He has seen it have a transformational effect, too, on much younger women who suffer polycystic ovary syndrome. 'PCOS sufferers are difficult to treat, and you can imagine how body image plays a very important part when it comes to self-esteem.' But according to Tom Sanders, professor of nutrition and dietetics at King's College London, it is not a magic bullet. Commenting on a study on semaglutide published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2021, he says, 'The challenge post-weight loss is to prevent a regain in weight,' he wrote. It may prove to be useful in the short term, but 'public health measures that encourage behavioural changes such as regular physical activity and moderating dietary energy intake are still needed'. That said, given our rising national obesity statistics and the escalation in accompanying health issues such as heart failure, cancer and obstructive sleep apnoea clogging up hospital beds, we're going to need something. Semaglutide may be the rich person's drug today, but might it be approved for more widespread use? Only time will tell.
