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No record kept of criminals convicted abroad
Hundreds of serious criminals convicted abroad - including killers and rapists - were left off the police national computer because their details were never passed on by the Home Office, MPs were told yesterday.
The extraordinary blunder means they may have been cleared to work with children and other vulnerable people or obtained jobs without their employers knowing of their background. As their details were not entered on to the computer they would not have shown up on checks carried out by the Criminal Records Bureau. .
UK online centre projects to demonstrate social impact of ICT
Thousands of socially excluded people will get the chance to change their lives and reconnect with their communities by connecting with ICT, thanks to 20 new projects to be run by UK online centres across England.
The projects will support the areas identified in last year's Social Exclusion Action Plan - families in poverty, teenage parents, adults with mental illnesses and those supporting children in care. Some projects will also support older people, who form a significant proportion of those at both a social and digital disadvantage.
UK online centres were encouraged to bid for their share in the £2million of Social Impact Demonstrators grant funding, provided by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). The top 20 projects were picked by a panel of judges, including private and voluntary sector stakeholders.
Heading up the panel was Helen Milner, Managing Director of UK online centres. She said: "We were looking for projects which demonstrated creative use of ICT and innovation in engaging with key audiences. The winning bids are all designed to make a deep impact on specific groups, getting some of the hardest to reach people online for the first time, learning new skills, connecting with their communities and interacting with public services.
"The projects will explore the links between social and digital exclusion, and how ICT and the skills to use it can benefit individuals, families, communities and society itself. I'm excited about the potential of these projects to make a real difference to people's lives, and a difference to how we look at and address digital and social exclusion in the future."
More than 150 UK online centres will be involved in delivering the 20 projects. Each project will receive up to £100,000, and run for between six and 15 months. Some will help disadvantaged people with free or loaned home computers and internet access - others are using blogs, video diaries and digital media to collect stories and record how ICT can change lives. From outreach activities to community websites, the successful projects will all bring together local voluntary and community organisations to engage and support the people they're targeting.
One of the successful bids came from the Harold Tomlins Centre in Chester, run by Chester Aid to the Homeless (CATH). Chief Executive Robert Bisset explained: "The Social Impact Demonstrators funding will help us embed ICT into the work we already do to support homeless people. The project will see the introduction of a new 'Living and Learning' programme which will target older homeless people and those clients with mental health problems, and which will have technology at its heart.
"The fact is computers are key to everyday life now - in terms of employment and even communication. An email account is a real lifeline if you don't have a fixed address, and we've found ICT can be a real 'hook' for people. Once they're in front of a monitor, we'll introduce different elements of the programme, including living strategies and job skills, courses and qualifications. We'll also integrate housing services and work or volunteer experience by building on existing partnerships with the council and with local businesses.
"At CATH, we work with some very vulnerable and troubled people, for whom homelessness is often just one of many problems. Our job is to help them progress their lives - finding confidence, stability, accommodation and work. I'm excited about the potential of this project to help even more people make that journey."
Helen concluded: "Like Robert, I believe ICT really does have the potential to offer people new opportunities and new choices. I also believe UK online centres have a role to play in ensuring socially excluded people are able to take advantage of them. The results of these projects will help us demonstrate the clear link between social and digital exclusion, and help shape future activity to ensure we're reaching those who need us most."
Ends
For more information on UK online centres and the Social Impact Demonstrators projects, please contact Abi Stevens on 0790 987 5890.
Notes to editors
UK online centres engage with adults who have low or no skills in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), or who do not have access to ICT at home or at work.
Home Office has known of foreign crimes scandal for three years
Home Office ministers knew as long as three years ago that UK offenders who committed crimes overseas were not being recorded on police computers, David Davis has revealed. Referring to a National Audit Office report published early in 2004, the Shadow Home Secretary accused the Government of "utter incompetence" - just as Tony Blair defended Home Secretary John Reid's handling of the current shambles, in which hundreds of Britons guilty of foreign crimes - including rape and murder - have had the opportunity to seek jobs involving children and the elderly without any official checks. Mr Davis protested: "It now emerges that Ministers knew there was a problem with the records of overseas convictions three years ago. This report clearly shows that the system was not working and that the Government knew that organisations that worked with youngsters including sports organisations were having problems.
The Easy Way to Make Money on eBay
(ARA) - For a mom working from home, a part-time second job, or as a hobby that pays, you can make extra money selling on eBay. All you need is a computer and a few hours.Ruth G., a homemaker in Rexburg, Idaho, who's been an eBay seller for some time says, "I have a 17-month-old son and another baby on the way, so [making] a real financial contribution to our family budget AND [being] at home as a mom is very important to me. In just a couple of hours a week, I am able to meet our financial goals, leaving me plenty of time to do the things that are really important to me in life."Many folks out there are curious about eBay. How do you build up your buying score? How does PayPal work? What is involved in the auction process? These are just a few questions about getting started as an auctioneer, and they all get answered in "eBay Tips For Dummies," just part of the Auction Success Kit.
Killers cleared to work with our children
HUNDREDS of murderers, rapists and other serious offenders could be working with children or vulnerable people because of a shocking Home Office blunder.
Almost 28,000 documents detailing convictions of Britons abroad have been handed to the Home Office since 1999 but most have not been transferred to the police national computer.
They include 25 rapists, 29 child abusers and five murderers and most of the documents were left gathering dust in box files in a Home Office unit.
Because they were not on the national computer, the convictions would not show up during any employment-vetting check.
Police have now taken over the system and launched an urgent review of the 525 most serious cases to see if any have landed jobs they should not be in.
How to Escort Prisoners Back Home on Train 1.0
For some people, preparing for a train journey is either fun, part of their job or sheer hard work. But very few could have worked as painstakingly as Wang Qing did last week. Wang is head of a Beijing prison guard team. He was to lead 24 prison guards to escort 88 prisoners back to their places of birth in Central China's Hubei and Hunan provinces, according to a report in the Beijing Times.
Fourty-six were to be handed over to police at Wuhan railway station, and the rest at Changsha Railway Station, to serve out their sentences in the provinces where they were born.
Though Wang had been leading such tours for four years, he had to do his homework meticulously.
After the usual meeting with the other guards, he fell back on the computer for the minutest details of seating arrangements, treating the prisoners separately according to the nature of the crimes, how best to guard them, etc.
BIRDING IN THE NEW YEAR
To celebrate dawn of a new year, try something new. For extra points, make it something difficult. That's why I decided to finally utilize the Upland Bird Game stamp on my hunting license to go after quail. I've learned it's best not to fling my little curly tail into a whole new activity without first absorbing some mentoring. For that, I enlisted a friend, John Kleinfelter, from Groveland in the Sierra foothills. Kleinfelter, 47, grew up in the Central Valley and has been a professional wildlife biologist for the past 14 years. He has hunted upland birds for the past six. His particular fascination is for quail, a pursuit which he terms an "obsession." And he boasts one other key attribute: a dog.
"Quail hunting without a dog is like dancing without music," claimed Starker Leopold in a seminal work, "The California Quail," published in 1977.
Sixers Notes | Staying focused is key to road trip
MINNEAPOLIS - A road trip that began on Christmas Day and wound its way through seven cities ended for the 76ers last night and to say players were eager to get home was an understatement.
Sixers coach Maurice Cheeks has been around long enough, however, to know how dangerous the final game of a long road trip can be as the players' minds drift to all that they have to do once they get home instead of concentrating on the game at hand.
"We talked about it," Cheeks said last night before the Sixers played the Minnesota Timberwolves. "Typically, this is the toughest game of a trip because we realize going home is a priority. But again, we're going home anyway so you might as well focus on the things that you have to do."
Last night, Chris Webber missed his ninth game of the Sixers' last 12 with a bruised right foot, and Cheeks said he is being careful not to rush Webber back before his injury has healed.
