Foster Care Fortnight launches major recruitment shift

People with experience of health, caring and education or youth work are being recruited to a career in fostering with City of York Council.

Interested individuals, couples or those with families are being invited to meet local need for foster care for older children and young people who are unable to live with their own families.

Also, more experienced carers are being recruited to foster children and young people with additional needs such as learning or physical disabilities, for short breaks or the longer term.

Besides ongoing training and support for carers from the council’s team as well as from local foster carers, a financial package is provided that recognises the foster carer’s commitment and care and the level of need they support.
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New Community Wildlife Officer joins York

Providing better opportunities for people to participate in improving & enjoying the biodiversity of their local area is just one of the tasks York’s new Community Wildlife Officer will be undertake.

The new Community wildlife project is one of 15 different projects throughout the UK. The York based project is hosted in partnership between City Of York Council and the Conservation Volunteers (TCV) through a share of the national Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £725,200 awarded to TCV for their Natural Networks programme.

York’s new Community Wildlife Officer, Margaret Trigg, has been appointed through this partnership to help deliver this programme over a 12-month period to help enrich the biodiversity and enjoyment of green spaces within the city.

Margaret Trigg, Community Wildlife Officer, said: “I’m very fortunate to have conservation, protecting habitats and the welfare of communities at the centre of my working day. It’s fantastic to be listing the outcomes of projects as ‘some more birdsong’, or a ‘glimpse of a Speckled wood butterfly’, and to be measuring return on investment in terms of the increase in the feeling of wellbeing of local people.”

Margaret brings with her a wealth of experience, having worked for many years as a rural land manager and more recently having volunteered within various charities, including the Wildlife Trust and one of the RSPCA’s wildlife hospitals.
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Parents in York urged to have children vaccinated

City of York Council is calling on parents to ensure their children get all the appropriate vaccinations and is highlighting the potential risks being placed on children who are not vaccinated.

flu shotAlthough immunisation rates are generally good in York (92.3% had their full MMR vaccines – data: NHS England) recent research shows that “letting nature run its course” by allowing childhood infections to build immunity is a poor, and possibly unsafe choice.

Recent research has shown that a natural infection by measles in a child has the effect of resetting the immunity of the child back to that of a newborn infant.  All the immune memory, which we rely on to protect us, is destroyed.  The measles virus kills white blood cells that have a “memory” of past infections and therefore provide immunity to them.  It had been thought that these cells bounce back because new ones appear following recovery.  However, recent research in monkeys has shown that these new memory cells only remember measles itself.

In other research, a team analysed child mortality records from the UK, America and Denmark before and after the measles vaccination was available.  The data showed that the number of children who died of infectious diseases was linked to the number of measles cases there had been in the two or three years previously.  The duration of the so called “immune amnesia” is similar to the time it takes for new born babies to build up a natural immunity; this suggests that measles resets children’s immunity to that of a newborn.

City of York Council’s Interim Consultant in Public Health, Dr Sohail Bhatti said: “This research shows the importance of getting our children vaccinated and the implications if we don’t.  I would urge parents in York to do the best by their children and ensure they receive the MMR vaccine to protect them against measles, as well as mumps and rubella.

“If children are not vaccinated against measles they run a much higher chance of getting the disease which means their immune memory could be destroyed.  They are then more likely to get other diseases when the symptoms and consequences can be much more severe.”

For more information about measles and the MMR vaccine visit www.nhs.uk