Latest news with #SocialServices
ITV News
a day ago
- Business
- ITV News
Terminally ill man proud of move to make access to benefits easier but says it is too late for him
A Jersey man says he is proud that new regulations have been passed by the States, allowing those with terminal illnesses to automatically qualify for the highest rate of personal care benefits. However, he admits it has come too late to help him. ITV News spoke to Wayne Lawson last December after he was made redundant just a week following his terminal cancer diagnosis. At the time, he said he felt as though he had "fallen through the cracks of bureaucracy" as it took him seven weeks to receive any kind of income support from Social Services. Despite making immediate applications for income support and impairment, it was almost two months before either claim was accepted. Politicians have now unanimously approved an amendment put forward by the Social Security Minister, meaning those who have been assessed by a medical professional and are not expected to live more than 12 months can automatically access the highest level of personal care support available, worth £9,901 per year. It also allows a family member, who is acting as a full-time carer, to claim Home Carers Allowance, which is £14,717 a year. Previously, terminally ill islanders had to go through the standard process for claiming benefits. Wayne has welcomed the move but says it came too late to remove the "panic" he faced trying to get much-needed support from Social Services. He adds: "You need all your strength just to battle with the chemo. It gets that in your head where you think, 'I've got four months to live. I might as well do myself in now'. "You're fighting the chemo, the illness. You could do without another fight. "That could definitely push somebody over the edge." Jersey's Social Security Minister, Deputy Lyndsay Feltham, says she brought forward the changes after becoming aware of individual cases like Wayne's. She explains: "There were some cases that I was aware of where things seemed a bit more bureaucratic than they needed to be given a terminal diagnosis, so I did ask the team to look at ways that we could improve our processes." When asked about what she would say to those, like Wayne, who had gone through significant stress and lost time trying to access financial support from Social Services, the minister adds: "We'll always work as hard as we possibly can to rectify things. "I think it's really important that we look to how we can continually improve our processes and that's something I'm very keen to do as minister." Tess Watson, a nurse who helps people with terminally ill family, says the law change could not come quickly enough. She adds: "Like most of the things in our government, sadly, it's taken a long time to adapt. "We ought to take on a new way of doing things to help the general public. "Nobody really knows until they actually experience it themselves and at that moment where you experience it yourself, it's almost too late."
4 days ago
Sweden faces call to halt international adoptions after inquiry finds abuses, fraud
STOCKHOLM -- A Swedish commission recommended Monday that international adoptions be stopped after an investigation found a series of abuses and fraud dating back decades. Sweden is the latest country to examine its international adoption policies after allegations of unethical practices, particularly in South Korea, The commission was formed in 2021 following a report by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter detailing the Scandinavian country's problematic international adoption system. Monday's recommendations were sent to Minister of Social Services Camilla Waltersson Grönvall. 'The assignment was to investigate whether there had been irregularities that the Swedish actors knew about, could have done and actually did,' Anna Singer, a legal expert and the head of the commission, told a press conference. 'And actors include everyone who has had anything to do with international adoption activities. "It includes the government, the supervisory authority, organization, municipalities and courts. The conclusion is that there have been irregularities in the international adoptions to Sweden.' The commission called on the government to formally apologize to adoptees and their families. Investigators found confirmed cases of child trafficking in every decade from the 1970s to the 2000s, including from Sri Lanka, Colombia, Poland and China. Singer said a public apology, besides being important for those who are personally affected, can help raise awareness about the violations because there is a tendency to download the existence and significance of the abuses. An Associated Press investigation, also documented by Frontline (PBS), last year reported dubious child-gathering practices and fraudulent paperwork involving South Korea's foreign adoption program, which peaked in the 1970s and `80s amid huge Western demands for babies. The AP and Frontline spoke with more than 80 adoptees in the U.S., Australia and Europe and examined thousands of pages of documents to reveal evidence of kidnapped or missing children ending up abroad, fabricated child origins, babies switched with one another and parents told their newborns were gravely sick or dead, only to discover decades later they'd been sent to new parents overseas. The findings are challenging the international adoption industry, which was built on the model created in South Korea. The Netherlands last year announced it would no longer allow its citizens to adopt from abroad. Denmark's only international adoption agency said it was shutting down and Switzerland apologized for failing to prevent illegal adoptions. France released a scathing assessment of its own culpability. South Korea sent around 200,000 children to the West for adoptions in the past six decades, with more than half of them placed in the U.S. Along with France and Denmark, Sweden was a major European destination of South Korean children, adopting nearly 10,000 of them since the 1960s.
Time of India
4 days ago
- Time of India
Sweden faces call to halt international adoptions after inquiry finds abuses and fraud
Sweden faces call to halt international adoptions after inquiry finds abuses and fraud STOCKHOLM: A Swedish commission recommended Monday that international adoptions be stopped after an investigation found a series of abuses and fraud dating back decades. Sweden is the latest country to examine its international adoption policies after allegations of unethical practices, particularly in South Korea, The commission was formed in 2021 following a report by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter detailing the Scandinavian country's problematic international adoption system. Monday's recommendations were sent to Minister of Social Services Camilla Waltersson Grönvall. 'The assignment was to investigate whether there had been irregularities that the Swedish actors knew about, could have done and actually did,' Anna Singer, a legal expert and the head of the commission, told a press conference. 'And actors include everyone who has had anything to do with international adoption activities. "It includes the government, the supervisory authority, organization, municipalities and courts. The conclusion is that there have been irregularities in the international adoptions to Sweden.' The commission called on the government to formally apologize to adoptees and their families. Investigators found confirmed cases of child trafficking in every decade from the 1970s to the 2000s, including from Sri Lanka, Colombia, Poland and China. Singer said a public apology, besides being important for those who are personally affected, can help raise awareness about the violations because there is a tendency to download the existence and significance of the abuses. An Associated Press investigation, also documented by Frontline (PBS), last year reported dubious child-gathering practices and fraudulent paperwork involving South Korea's foreign adoption program, which peaked in the 1970s and `80s amid huge Western demands for babies. The AP and Frontline spoke with more than 80 adoptees in the US, Australia and Europe and examined thousands of pages of documents to reveal evidence of kidnapped or missing children ending up abroad, fabricated child origins, babies switched with one another and parents told their newborns were gravely sick or dead, only to discover decades later they'd been sent to new parents overseas. The findings are challenging the international adoption industry, which was built on the model created in South Korea. The Netherlands last year announced it would no longer allow its citizens to adopt from abroad. Denmark's only international adoption agency said it was shutting down and Switzerland apologized for failing to prevent illegal adoptions. France released a scathing assessment of its own culpability. South Korea sent around 200,000 children to the West for adoptions in the past six decades, with more than half of them placed in the US. Along with France and Denmark, Sweden was a major European destination of South Korean children, adopting nearly 10,000 of them since the 1960s.
Washington Post
4 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
Sweden faces call to halt international adoptions after inquiry finds abuses and fraud
STOCKHOLM — A Swedish commission recommended Monday that international adoptions be stopped after an investigation found a series of abuses and fraud dating back decades. Sweden is the latest country to examine its international adoption policies after allegations of unethical practices, particularly in South Korea, The commission was formed in 2021 following a report by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter detailing the Scandinavian country's problematic international adoption system. Monday's recommendations were sent to Minister of Social Services Camilla Waltersson Grönvall.
Business Insider
25-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- Business Insider
I used to buy my kids expensive clothes out of mom guilt. Now, I only shop for them at consignment shops to save money.
When I became pregnant with my first kid back in 2019, I was set on only buying new clothes for her. It had to be clothing made with the Earth in mind and of the highest quality — sustainably-sourced materials and 100% cotton. My babylist consisted of pricey garments, mimicking that of any momfluencer's list of newborn must-haves, a point of pride for someone raised on welfare. I wanted my daughter to have the life and childhood I couldn't have growing up, and I thought expensive clothing would give her just that. I was wrong. Growing up, I knew that 'free' came with a price: shame My mother was 16 and my father was 18 when they wed at the courthouse, and, a year later, they had me. Because of their lack of experience and education, we lived paycheck to paycheck and had regular appointments at Social Services or the Health Department. On rare occasions — like my birthday, Easter, or Christmas — I received a new dress and "church" shoes. I would bathe in the outfit's new smell, floral patterns, and crisp fabrics, stealing away whiffs of the department store from whence they came and trying on the get-up in a full-length mirror. As our family grew from three to seven, my siblings and I received less and less new clothing. I don't remember us complaining much, but I do remember thinking in adolescence how I'd start working as soon as I could, so that I could buy the clothes that I wanted without burdening my parents. I started working at 14 at a Greek family restaurant across the street from my high school. After my first paycheck, I took myself to the mall and bought a brand new pair of jeans and a T-shirt that were on sale at Hollister. From that point on, I became unstoppable, working up to four jobs at a time while I pursued undergraduate and graduate degrees. In 2009, I got married and moved away from home to earn a better living. Although it pained me to leave my family behind, I felt powerful knowing that I'd halted the cycle of poverty. And when I had my kids, I wanted to assuage any mom guilt by keeping my kids out of poverty. Becoming a mother opened old childhood wounds When I became a mother at the height of COVID in Manhattan, I hadn't anticipated the dramatic shift in identity that I felt in postpartum. With every cry, feed, or wake of my baby, buried childhood wounds began to surface, and I realized that I could no longer ignore their existence. I had to confront them in order to be the mother that I wanted to be. The standards I had set for my baby, my husband, and myself were too high. Over time, I quickly realized the impracticality of buying new clothes, new toys — new everything — for my daughter. By her first birthday, my mindset had radically shifted. Kids are messy. They destroy their garments from daily play, so my own emotional need to purchase expensive clothing for my child became an absurd and unreasonable habit, particularly as a stay-at-home mother who was no longer an active contributor to our household income. Painstakingly, I learned what I really needed to do was to work on healing my inner child. This actualization occurred after I gave birth to my second daughter, 20 months after I had my first. It was when I found myself home with two under 2 and what seemed like a never-ending factory line of rolling tasks that I did the hard work of finding the right therapist. I allowed myself to buy used clothing for my kids While I set out on my own healing journey, I started my search for gently used clothing and shoes at secondhand stores, just like my mom did when I was a kid. I discovered local shops that carried the brands that I'd once gawked over via social media ads and began visiting these stores regularly. I'd often find pieces in my daughters' sizes (or a size or two above) at more than half the price of retail. My daughters are now 3 and 5, and I still almost exclusively shop at these stores, and even encourage my children's grandparents to do the same. Without a doubt, therapy has been pivotal in maintaining my emotional well-being and has helped me become a more clear-headed, less self-critical mother. I've also learned that it's OK to alter the original plan. It doesn't mean that I'm a failure of a mother, and it doesn't mean that my mom was a failure either. It shows that I'm still learning and that my mom was making the best choices she could given her difficult situation.
