Hundreds of frontline social workers are regularly stepping in to personally support people in crisis. New research by the Social Workers Union (SWU) suggests that the Government’s new Crisis and Resilience Fund may not be enough to prevent this.

Crisis support

Following a survey of the SWU’s members, many felt compelled to step in and personally fund basic items for people they support – from food to energy prepayment meter top-ups.

The Crisis and Resilience Fund, which is due to begin on 1 April, is intended to provide faster emergency support for households in hardship. It comes after reports of a looming social care crisis in 2024.

However, the SWU warns that the Fund may not go far enough to prevent social workers continuing to plug gaps themselves, particularly when crises arise suddenly or where systems remain slow and bureaucratic.

Survey findings

More than 380 social workers affected by the issue took part in the research last summer, with three in four (75%) saying they were unable to claim back the costs they incurred on behalf of service users.

The overwhelming majority had to buy food (87%), while others were compelled to pay for public transport (36%), clothing (26%), cleaning supplies (24%), and top-up energy prepayment meters (19%) to keep people warm.

Though over half of social workers affected (58%) described such payments as rare, more than a quarter (27%) said they were dipping into their own pockets every month, with nearly one in ten (9%) doing so even more regularly. Most contributions were under £25, but one in twenty social workers spent more than £100.

Over a third (36%) said helping clients put their own finances at risk, highlighting how the cost-of-living crisis is now affecting not just vulnerable families, but the very workers tasked with protecting them.

Despite 86% of social workers trying to secure support via foodbanks, council-run household support funds and local charities, seven in ten times (70%) they were faced with an emergency that left no time to navigate complex or slow bureaucratic systems.

A system in crisis

John McGowan, general secretary of the SWU, has warned the findings expose a “broken support system”:

It cannot be right that social workers are left to plug the gaps in a broken support system with their own money. While the new Crisis and Resilience Fund is a welcome step, it will not solve the problem on its own if support remains slow, complex or hard to access in an emergency.

The data paints a stark picture of a safety net riddled with delays and gaps. The true test of the new Fund moving forward will be to see if it means that local and national governments act urgently to ensure help is there when it is needed.

It is a claim backed up by the stories told by social workers themselves. Asked why they had resorted to providing direct financial support to service users, one social worker told researchers:

There are often several real forms to fill out to request financial support, which are declined anyhow by managers. To save time – something we don’t often have – I’ve paid for items myself.

Another claimed that their local authority “has restricted food bank vouchers to 3 per year”. Another stated that their “service user was unable to access the internet or navigate lengthy online forms.” One went so far as to say that there just was no longer any support left to apply for.

Featured image via the Canary

A US court has found that Meta and YouTube are deliberately getting kids addicted to their sites and causing them harm in the process. It’s the latest sign that the tide is turning against the sick US tech sector, which has enjoyed an ability to act without impunity for decades now.

A Los Angeles jury has ordered YouTube and Meta to pay $3 million to a woman who sued them, alleging that the negligence of both tech giants led her to get addicted to their platforms at a young age.

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) March 25, 2026

Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp; YouTube, meanwhile, is owned by Google.

Meta and YouTube causing harm

Variety summarised the case as follows:

A jury has ordered Meta and Google to pay $3M to a 20-year-old woman who alleged that she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child:

• Jurors found the companies liable for product design features that harmed her mental health
• The plaintiff, Kaley G.M., testified that the apps replaced her hobbies and contributed to anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia
• The case is the first of thousands targeting Big Tech over addiction to reach trial, a “bellwether” to assess how other claims could be resolved
• Meta was ordered to pay 70% of the damages, with Google responsible for the remaining 30%

The trial took place in Los Angeles over a period of six weeks, with jurors hearing testimony from executives, whistleblowers, and expert witnesses. As the Guardian reported, the plaintiff:

testified that she became addicted to YouTube at age six and Instagram at nine, which she said had deleterious effects on her wellbeing. By age 10, she said, she had become depressed and was engaging in self-harm as a result. Her social media use allegedly caused her to have strained relationships with her family and in school. When she was 13, KGM’s therapist diagnosed her with body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia, which KGM attributes to her use of Instagram and YouTube.

The Guardian compared the case to the 1990s legal action against cigarette manufacturers. Then, like now, it was argued that executives understood the harms caused by their products, but they chose to prioritise profits over public health.

Counters

It’s clear that social media is having a negative impact, but there’s also a simultaneous push to restrict certain freedoms online. According to groups like Reclaim the Net, this latest case could be used to further inhibit freedoms in a similar fashion to what we’ve seen in the UK via the Online Safety Act.

In their summary of the above case, Reclaim the Net write:

The chain from these verdicts to surveillance architecture runs through a single word: “addiction.” Public health emergency follows from that classification. Emergency powers follow from the emergency. Age verification follows from emergency powers. OS-level ID checks follow from age verification. Each step is presented as protecting children. What gets built is a surveillance system for everyone unless we can get more people to wake up to it.

There’s obviously a line to be walked, but the grave harms caused by these companies cannot be ignored or pushed to one side. As the Guardian reported:

The jury’s verdict comes just one day after Meta was ordered to pay $375m in civil penalties in a separate lawsuit in New Mexico. In that case, the jury found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and enabled harm, including child sexual exploitation, against its users. The back-to-back verdicts are the first ever to find Meta liable for how its products affect young people.

The problem activists have is that the loss of online anonymity will feel like a lesser evil to many than the sexual exploitation of children. This is why any successful campaign needs to be clear that the status quo does need to change, and that greedy tech companies cannot be the ones in charge of our digital spaces due to the clear and evident harm to children.

Floodgates

As people have highlighted, this case could open the floodgates for more legal action:

Welp, it sounds like a lot of people can sue Meta and Google and make some good money 😂 https://t.co/0U1uXZ8Juz

— DeepHumor (@DeepHumor) March 25, 2026

The governor of California Gavin Newsom also spoke out following the verdict:

Big Tech is finally answering for the harm it has caused our children — after years of fighting against common sense regulations, today’s verdict shows that they can’t escape accountability.

California isn’t backing down. We’ve enacted the nation’s strongest protections, and… https://t.co/SqY3PtW3Ls

— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) March 25, 2026

Newsom is very much a weather vane politician; he’s also eyeing up a run at the presidency. The fact that he’s speaking out against big tech and Israel shows that some of the US’s biggest political excesses have become unviable for an ambitious politician:

The Democrats’ ranking political weather vane has spoken. California Gov. Gavin Newsom ventured onto what was for him new terrain, invoking the A-word—“apartheid”—to describe a nation that had once been the cynosure of American liberals’ eyes. https://t.co/EuLQompHJA pic.twitter.com/KyrwtkTg2Q

— The American Prospect (@TheProspect) March 4, 2026

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Of course, politicians like Newsom are also flip-floppers, so they can’t be trusted to enact the crucial change that needs to happen:

Governor Gavin Newsom: “I revere the state of Israel. I’m proud to support the state of Israel.

I deeply, deeply oppose Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership, his opposition to the two-state solution, and deeply oppose how he is indulging the far right…”
pic.twitter.com/q2kl7s2GNu

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 24, 2026

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What is “fricy” food?

What “swicy” foods can I try?

There’s some science behind it

1935: Winston Churchill (left) in the grounds of Chartwell with Ralph Wigram / Image by: Fremantle / Alamy

4 min read10 min

“One inch ahead is total darkness”: so goes the Japanese proverb. In times like now of global uncertainty, it seems a suitably appropriate dictum to caution the army of prophets, forecasters and poll interpreters, all ready to fire off a take, their visions of the future hedged in a string of qualifications and suitably Delphic in style.

The interesting question is whether any of this kind of activity, from the white-bearded biblical type or the hard-nosed corporate analyst (self-proclaimed or otherwise) in the internet age of total and instant connectivity, has any market or appeal at all.

A thought-provoking booklet appears, published by Haus Curiosities, which makes a valiant attempt to disentangle all the different types of futurology which surround us. From the lofty certainties to the entertaining guesses, and how on earth to evaluate them.

The author of this little volume, an academic and former defence analyst, Kenneth Weisbrode, employs the clever device of focusing on one very memorable instance when a person warned about oncoming world events in the 20th century – and one which, with hindsight, proved to be deadly and tragically right.

The name of this brave character was Ralph Wigram, a middle-ranking Foreign Office official who could see the huge conflagration ahead as Germany re-armed in the 1930s under the belligerent Nazi leaders, but with a generally complacent bien pensant outside world looking on and broadly assuming that it just could not happen again.

The information streams have all become avalanches

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How and why did he, among the growing noise of opinions, get heard? Answer: by supplying a flow of detailed and reliable facts (he had been in Berlin and had plenty of German friends and contacts) to a few carefully selected and influential individuals – who in turn had the ear of the public. Top of his list was none other than Winston Churchill.

To me, this makes Churchill as well as Wigram the real prophets in this classic 20th century compound of forecast and prophecy – eventually borne out in the full horror of a Second World War. Wigram peered ahead and saw the facts. Churchill was the magician with language, had the courage to speak out endlessly against prevailing wisdom (or worse, disinterest).

Could any of this most celebrated saga have occurred in today’s information-soaked world?

I reckon not. The information streams have all become avalanches. The iPad and the mobile have connected billions and turned most people into mini-authors and home-made prophets. The cult of transparency, lauded by accountability crusaders, has left little in free societies to expose. The hunters after the truth have found their paths blocked by crowds of truth-seekers with their own different truths. Uncertainty is everywhere and there is talk of people turning back en masse to mysteries larger than the human mind and akin to new religions.

Are eye-catching prophesies and predictions therefore now to be left to who will win the 3.30 at Cheltenham or to financial stock pickers?

No, I think there will always be a market for the most plausible and original analysis – the cautious wisdom that sees just a few inches ahead, even if the message from the future is not a cheerful one, or all that clear.

The overwhelming message which Britain needs today is for a new national story, a sense of direction, articulated with colour, humour and history, but also with deep-rooted awareness and wisdom about the way power on the planet is shifting. That is the kind of prophecy realism which reassures, not a rehash of old ideologies which frighten. Its articulation must reach all, be noticed by all and unify all – or anyway, most.

Is the individual who can lead in performing this miracle of rallying and purpose – who can perceive the world trends and give them a prophet’s coherence and momentum – already in the political forum, or at least just there in the wings? Who knows? It is, after all, an age of deep uncertainty. Radio gurus are telling us every morning that the digital and AI age has rewired our brains as well as our emotions. It looks as though today’s prophets need to do some rewiring, too.

Lord Howell of Guildford is a Conservative peer

Prophecy in Politics: Or, the Wigram Aspect

By: Kenneth Weisbrode

Publisher: Haus Publishing

Feryal Clark was parliamentary under-secretary for AI and digital government until September 2025 (Alamy)

6 min read51 min

Clark, who served as AI minister until the ministerial reshuffle in September 2025, is co-chair of the Digital Creators All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) alongside Conservative peer Ed Vaizey. This week, the group launched an inquiry into how creator-led content can support young people’s education and personal development, as the debate continues in Westminster over online harms and youth access to digital platforms.

In January, the government announced a consultation on the impact of mobile phones and social media on children, following a ban on large social media platforms for under-16s in Australia at the end of last year.

On Wednesday evening, peers voted for the second time in support of an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to ban social media for under-16s, put down by Conservative peer Lord John Nash after wider pressure from campaigners and some politicians for tougher safeguards. It is the second time peers have defeated the government over the proposal, with the bill now set to return to the Commons.

Opinion polls have found that a ban on social media for under-16s is popular with the public, and Labour MPs have reported receiving a large number of emails from constituents pushing for them to support a ban. Recent outrage over X’s AI tool, Grok, being used to produce non-consensual sexualised images of adults and children, fuelled calls for the Labour government to regulate childrens’ exposure to the internet.

However, there is scepticism among cabinet ministers about how it would work in practice, with an early Whitehall assessment of Australia’s ban identifying problems like young people moving to other unregulated platforms and being allowed to use their parents’ social media accounts. The House magazine reported in January that Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall all believe the UK should wait to see how it plays out in Australia before making a decision.

Speaking to PoliticsHome before the Lords vote on Wednesday, Clark said she found the Nash amendment “unhelpful” and argued that the government and MPs needed to listen to the voices of children and families, but also of digital creators who share educational content for children.

“I really value the input, the contribution and the educational content,” she said.

The former minister said she first became aware of the importance of digital creators while serving in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology between 2024 and 2025.

“When I was in the department, when we were looking at the AI copyright bill, I just couldn’t see their voice anywhere, considering they contribute hugely to our economy and employ thousands of people,” she said.

Clark said that while concerns about the “full impact” of addictive algorithms on children were valid, policymakers risked overlooking the benefits of online educational content.

“I am concerned that we’re lumping everything together,” she said, adding that digital platforms can help address inequalities in access to education. At a session with the APPG on Wednesday morning, a group of digital creators told PoliticsHome that long-form education content on platforms such as YouTube should be treated differently from short-form videos on platforms like TikTok.

Clark added that she wanted to consider “some of the really important uses of technology that have been instrumental in bridging that gap in society for those young people who don’t have access to tutors, who don’t have parents at home all the time who can help them with their homework, who need that additional help”.

Clark echoed concerns by other MPs, including Labour MP Josh Dean, who have pointed out that plans to expand the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds must be factored into the government’s consultation on a potential ban on social media for under-16s.

Educational creators told the APPG that their videos are already playing a significant role in the classroom, with schools and teachers actively recommending their content for revision and learning, despite barriers to forming formal partnerships with education providers.

“When you’ve got schools and teachers directing their students to this content, where they see the value of it, we then have to ask ourselves a question of why are we looking to put something in place that will cut off these young people from it?” Clark said.

She was also critical of attempts to legislate via amendments, including the Nash amendment aimed at curbing under-16s’ access to social media.

“Legislating on such an important area shouldn’t be done just through an amendment,” she said.

“It just really irritates me. I find it really unhelpful. If you want an issue to be killed off, the best way to do it is that way. We need to understand the evidence, we need to make the best laws. It is the issue of our era, and we’ve got to get it right.”

Content creators themselves told the APPG that their work is filling gaps left by the formal education system. Katie Estruch, who has more than 100,000 subscribers producing biology revision content, said students and parents turn to her videos when they feel that the provisions from their schools are inadequate.

“They might have a teacher who is long-term sick, or they think they haven’t got a good teacher compared to someone else, or their school can’t afford to pay for practicals that a private school might be able to do multiple times,” she said.

She described her videos as a “resource for free that helps to bridge that gap”, adding that they are particularly valuable for neurodivergent students who can find classroom environments overstimulating.

Dr Tom Crawford, who teaches at Cambridge and Oxford and has built a large online following, said digital content can be transformative for students outside mainstream education.

Describing one student who had been homeschooled after experiencing bullying, he said that the student had passed his entire GCSEs and A-levels by watching YouTube videos.

“That’s obviously one specific case, but imagine someone who can’t go to school for various reasons: without that, he wouldn’t have passed these GCSEs, and obviously wouldn’t now be studying Maths at Cambridge,” he said. 

“There are going to be quite a lot of individual stories like that with our audiences, and just generally across the country, where this is actually how they learn, or how they get excited about learning.”

Dr Lauren Bull, safeguarding lead at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust and TedxNHS speaker, wrote in The House that a ban was necessary to safeguard children from online harm.

“Delaying exposure to highly polarised, adult ideological content gives young people the time to develop the cognitive and emotional capacity required to critically evaluate what they encounter,” she said.

Bull argued that Louis Theroux’s recent “manosphere” documentary had “brought into view what many of us working on the frontline have been witnessing for years”.

“For doctors, teachers, and youth workers, this is not a sudden crisis. It is a predictable outcome,” she wrote.

Misnahar and newborn son, Sarid. (Credit: UNICEF/2025/Saikat Mojumder)

4 min read18 min

Her son, Sarid, had arrived far too early – weighing just 900 grams, and immediately showing signs of respiratory distress. Health workers rushed him to the Special Care Newborn Unit, placing him on oxygen and surrounding his tiny body with tubes and wires. For the first 24 hours, Misnahar could only wait and watch through the glass.  

Today, Sarid weights 1.5 kilograms and is growing stronger. He survived because skilled care was there when he needed it, enabled by sustained investment – from governments, partners and organisations like UNICEF. It is proof that we know how to save children’s lives. The question is whether the UK will continue to help fund it.  

Last week, the UN released its most comprehensive picture of annual child mortality globally. The findings are sobering. In 2024, 4.9 million children died before their fifth birthday – nearly half in their very first month of life.  

Child mortality has more than halved since 2000, but that momentum has flatlined. In 2020, 5 million children died before their fifth birthday; in 2024, that figure had barely shifted. These are not inevitable deaths. The leading killers of children under five – preterm birth complications, malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, malnutrition – are largely preventable with proven, low-cost interventions. Immunisation. Skilled care at birth. Quality antenatal services. The tools exist. Yet the past few years have seen the gradual erosion of the political commitment and investment required to reach every child.  

We know that investing in children delivers some of the highest returns on investment. Children who are vaccinated, well-nourished, educated are more likely to grow into adults who support their communities, strengthen their economies and contribute to a more stable world. That is why UNICEF UK has repeatedly warned that last year’s decision to slash the Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget by 40 per cent would have devastating consequences for the world’s most vulnerable children. Last Thursday’s aid allocation offered the first glimpse of what this will mean in practice. 

The consequences for children are stark. Multilateral commitments to global health will be reduced by 23 per cent, while regional bilateral aid to African countries – where the majority of child deaths occur – will collapse by 56 per cent. Funding to safeguarding programmes is disproportionately reducing, putting children’s safety further at risk. Support for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative has been cut entirely, just as the world was on the verge of eliminating a deadly yet preventable disease for good.  

The UK government’s decision to use the aid budget to cover refugee costs at home is a significant part of the problem. In 2026/27, £2.2 billion – significantly more than all multilateral spending combined – will be spent in the UK rather than reaching the children who need it most. When that forces a choice between funding polio eradication and other life-saving programmes for children, it is hard to argue that UK aid is still serving its original purpose – protecting the world’s most vulnerable people.  

The progress of the past 25 years – child mortality more than halved, diseases driven back, millions of live saved – was built on global partnership and sustained investment. The UK has been a major part of that. To step back now, when that progress is most fragile, would be a betrayal of the children who still need it most.  

UNICEF UK is calling on the UK government to commit at least 25 per cent of the UK aid budget to children – the investment needed to protect immunisation and nutrition programmes and to train the frontline health workers who make these life-saving services possible. Next month’s Global Partnerships Conference offers the government a key opportunity to show that children are central to its new vision for development. 

Misnahar’s dream for Sarid is simple: that he grows up to become a doctor or nurse. “The people here saved my baby’s life,” she said. “Maybe one day he can save others.” That future is possible – for Sarid and other newborns like him – if the support systems that saved him are still standing.  

Dr Philip Goodwin is chief executive of UNICEF UK

Daniel Herring is Researcher for Fiscal and Economic Policy at the Centre Policy Studies.

The UK government’s financial position was precarious even before war in the Middle East blew up Treasury borrowing forecasts.

We have not run a budget surplus in over 25 years and debt is now approaching 100 per cent of GDP. But the situation is even worse than it looks on the surface, not least because of a big hidden debt on the government balance sheet: public sector pensions, which add £1.4 trillion – equivalent to 45 per cent of GDP – to the national debt.

Thankfully, there are some politicians and public figures who are taking action.

The Pensions Schemes Bill is currently being taken through Parliament, and the Lords have voted in favour of an amendment by Conservative Peer Baroness Neville-Rolfe that would require the government to conduct and publish a review of public sector pensions. This is an excellent amendment as a review of public sector pensions is urgently needed.

Public sector pensions are incredibly generous. Most private sector workers have defined contribution schemes, where the employee carries the risk and must manage their retirement pot throughout their retirement. In contrast, public sector pensions are defined benefit schemes, meaning a guaranteed, inflation-protected retirement income for as long as someone lives. And unlike private sector pensions, where you might get as little as 3 per cent of your salary as an employer contribution, public sector workers usually get 25-30 per cent from the government.

However, the main problem is not the generosity, but the fact that these pensions are entirely unfunded. Unlike a private sector defined benefit scheme, where the money is set aside in a managed fund to pay for future costs, no money is set aside for public sector pensions. This means that contributions made for employees’ future pension provision are spent on current pensioners.

The numbers are big. The pension schemes cover three million active members in the civil service, NHS, schools and the armed Forces (local government employees are in a separate funded scheme). There are also 2.2 million deferred members and 2.8 million pensioners. Contributions to the scheme are currently £57.3 billion and pensions paid are £56.8 billion.

It’s not helped by the obscure (some might say dishonest) way this is presented in the public accounts. A quick look at the OBR’s website will tell you that net public service pension payments are in surplus.

Nothing to worry about then!

Not so fast – ‘surplus’ just means that the employer and employee contributions are larger than what is being paid out to retired public sector workers.

This is perverse – it means that if the government were to vastly increase the size of its workforce, current contributions would increase, and the surplus would grow. This might look better today, but it would create a much larger bill for future taxpayers. This is already happening – increased contributions since 2020 have been driven in part by a growing NHS workforce.

This is irresponsible: like the national debt, future taxpayers are being forced to pay for our choices today. In contrast, our goal should be that each generation of taxpayers pays for its own choices.

There’s plenty of challenges to reforming the system. The biggest fiscal challenge is that moving public servants onto autoenrollment will mean the government continues to pay for current pensioners and make an employer contribution for current employees. That will be costly in the short-term, so the government would have to find savings elsewhere.

The second challenge is how to convince employees and trade unions of the reform. It is undoubtedly true that many public servants work hard and deserve fair compensation. However, public sector workers are paid, on average, similar wages to private sector workers (before their employer pension contribution is taken into account).

For many public servants, a promise for a pension in 30 or 40 years’ time is just not worth that much, and they might prefer a higher salary today so that they could afford a house or start a family. We could increase take-home pay for public servants and still save the government money in the long run.

Reform will be hard and should not be rushed. But a review that sets out the actual costs to future taxpayers is a good place to start.

We need an open debate about how much these pensions are costing the taxpayer, otherwise our children and grandchildren – probably on far less generous pension schemes themselves – will pay the price for £1.4 trillion worth of political convenience today.