divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/5510?ns=guardianpageName=Society%3A+Ofsted%27s+child+abuse+report+was+misleadingch=Societyc3=The+Observerc4=Child+protection+%28Society%29%2COfsted%2CEducation%2CPolitics%2CUK+news%2CObserverc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CSchools+Education%2CChildren+Societyc6=Tracy+McVeigh%2CJamie+Dowardc7=2008_11_23c8=1122572c9=articlec10=GUc11=Societyc12=Child+protectionc13=c14=h2=GU%2FSociety%2FChild+protection" width="1" height="1" //divpA 'misleading' figure included in a major government watchdog report has led to a false and vastly inflated picture of the numbers of children who die from abuse in England./ppThe revelation comes as an Observer investigation today reveals there has been a huge surge in applications to place children into care since the furore over the Baby P case erupted earlier this month. Amid a public clamour for tougher child protection measures, nervous social workers are pressing for the removal of any child suspected of being at risk of abuse. /ppLast night the figures used to estimate the scale of child abuse in Britain were themselves under scrutiny. The annual report of education and children's service inspectors Ofsted, published last Wednesday, stated that 282 child deaths had been reported by local authorities across England over the 17-month period ending in August 2008. /ppAccording to government sources, Ofsted has now privately admitted this figure is 'misleading' and should have been explained or broken down. The figure of 282 is made up of all children who died while receiving any kind of local authority help - including terminally ill children receiving social care and accidental deaths of nursery age children. /ppIn fact, it is likely that the deaths of fewer than 100 children could be attributed to neglect or abuse./ppA spokesman for the Department of Children, Schools and Families said its records would suggest about one child dies through neglect or abuse in England each week, in line with previous estimates./pp'Since 1 April 2007, the department has had a database of the serious case reviews following the death or serious injury of a child, so we can confirm that, as of July 2008, serious case reviews were initiated following the deaths of 81 children who died during 2007,' the spokesman said. /ppThe NSPCC said the confusion over the Ofsted report was 'not helpful'. 'We keep statistics because it is important to monitor any changes,' a spokesman said. 'We were confused when we first read the report because it was so much higher than our statistics, which come from the government homicide statistics. But it seems they have put all child deaths together, not just ones that are linked to abuse, so it isn't really helpful.'/ppAn Ofsted spokesman said that the report may have been confusing for a lay person, but, while the figure was not wrong, the context 'wasn't made clear enough'./ppIn the wake of the Baby P case, staff working in the family courts report there has been as much as a three-fold increase in applications to place a child into care in the past fortnight. The Inner London Court would normally expect to receive between two and three applications a day for children to be placed in care. However, last week, staff said they were receiving between eight and 10 applications a day. /ppIn Leicestershire, there were nine applications for child protection orders over the past week, compared with an average two to three in a normal week. On Thursday, staff working at the family court in Colchester said they received three applications in just 24 hours, while staff in Leeds said they had nine cases in the last week, an 'unprecedented number', according to an insider. /ppFigures collected by Cafcass, which looks after the interests of children involved in family proceedings and is responsible to the government, confirm there has been a significant spike in the orders as the police and local authorities rush through cases to remove 'at risk' children./ppThe Cafcass figures reveal that, across England, there was a 26 per cent increase in applications for all forms of child protection orders made between 10 November and 20 November this year, compared with the same period in 2007./ppIn an article published on observer.co.uk today, Anthony Douglas, chief executive of Cafcass, acknowledges that the Baby P case appears to be having an effect on child protection policy. 'This is hardly surprising,' he writes. 'Negative publicity usually leads to institutional risk aversion.'/ppUnions warned a rise in child protection orders would impact on the child protection system. 'A dramatic increase will put additional pressure on Cafcass,' said Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, the family court union. 'Each report leads to the court appointing a Cafcass guardian to represent the child. Doubtless the agency will struggle to meet demand.'/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/childprotection"Child protection/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/ofsted"Ofsted/a/li/ul/divdiv class="guRssAdvert"a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yessite=Societycountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227399527220112300260553996"img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yessite=Societycountry=(none)spacedesc=rsssystem=rsstransactionID=1227399527220112300260553996" border="0" //a/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a

Bruce Sterling, sci-fi author / futurist / design critic extraordinaire, has posted his final Viridian note. He has lots of advice relevant for Makers. Some of my favorite:

Get excellent tools and appliances. Not a hundred bad, cheap, easy ones. Get the genuinely good ones. Work at it. Pay some attention here, do not neglect the issue by imagining yourself to be serenely "non-materialistic." There is nothing more "materialistic" than doing the same household job five times because your tools suck. Do not allow yourself to be trapped in time-sucking black holes of mechanical dysfunction. That is not civilized.

Now for a brief homily on tools and appliances of especial Viridian interest: the experimental ones. The world is full of complicated, time-sucking, partially-functional beta-rollout gizmos. Some are fun to mess with; fun in life is important. Others are whimsical; whimsy is okay. Eagerly collecting semifunctional gadgets because they are shiny-shiny, this activity is not the worst thing in the world. However, it can become a vice. If you are going to wrangle with unstable, poorly-defined, avant-garde tech objects, then you really need to wrangle them. Get good at doing it.

Good experiments are well-designed experiments. Real experiments need a theory. They need something to prove or disprove. Experiments need to be slotted into some larger context of research, and their results need to be communicated to other practitioners. That's what makes them true "experiments" instead of private fetishes.

If you're buying weird tech gizmos, you need to know what you are trying to prove by that. You also need to tell other people useful things about it. If you are truly experimenting, then you are doing something praiseworthy. You may be wasting some space and time, but you'll be saving space and time for others less adventurous. Good.

And, an exciting new project on which he can use your help:

This new effort of mine is a scholarly work exploring material culture, use-value, ethics, and the relationship between materiality and the imagination. However, since nobody's easily interested in that huge, grandiose topic, I'm disguising it as a nifty and attractive gadget book. I plan to call it "The User's Guide to Imaginary Gadgets." a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/the_last_viridian_note.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/the_last_viridian_note.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" / Permalink/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/the_last_viridian_note.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890#comments" /Comments/a | a href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/green/?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890" /Read more articles in Green/a | a href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F11%2Fthe_last_viridian_note.htmltitle=The%20last%20Viridian%20notebodytext=%20Bruce%20Sterling%2C%20sci-fi%20author%20%2F%20futurist%20%2F%20design%20critic%20extraordinaire%2C%20has%20posted%20his%20final%20Viridian%20note.%20He%20has%20lots%20of%20advice%20relevant%20for%20Makers.%20Some%20of%20my%20favorite%3A%20Get%20excellent%20tools%20and%20appliances.%20Not%20a%20hundred%20bad%2C%20cheap%2C%20easy...topic=tech_news" /Digg this!/a