“Having private, for-profit care goes against all you are trying to achieve for children in care,” says Terry Dignan, a spokesperson for charities that run children’s homes.
Councils are reluctant to use the single-stage process because they take on more risk if something goes wrong, says Sinn Féin TD and housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin.
Girl (In Real Life) by Tamsin Winter is a great book about a girl called Eva.
Her parents have a YouTube channel where they share stuff about their lives. Eva hates this and wants them to stop.
Then, one day, they post something that taunts Eva and enrages her. And as well as that, people from her school are laughing at it.
With her new best friend, Eva tries to try to figure things out, while other YouTube channels make hateful remarks about her and her parents.
I really liked this book, but what I liked the most was the way that it addressed how not all social media is good – and that being a bit famous and well-known does not make you happier.
While the book was great, one thing that I didn’t really like was Eva’s parents: they acted nice but they weren’t actually good. Every time Eva asked them to stop filming, they would just ignore her and continue, like it was the most important thing in the world.
My favourite character was Eva’s grandmother. She was nice and kind and always listened to Eva’s problems. She also would not allow filming in her house, which Eva really liked.
I enjoyed the way this story was told because it was told in first person, which gives you a better chance of connecting with the main character and understanding how they felt. It was like you were actually in the story.
I would recommend this book for 9–13-year-olds because some of the content is a bit mature and suitable for more advanced readers. This book is well written and easily understood, so overall I would give it four and a half stars.
Nessa is a young writer (11) from Dublin. She enjoys writing stories, as well as performing and being on stage. She’d like to be a film director someday. Nessa absolutely hates bananas.
Sculpting through assemblies of objects is the main aspect of his practice, he says. A scarecrow-like figure wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, with cigarette butts, and a Madonna cassette, for example.
“Pitched as ‘avante hyperpop’, her music can sound like what Mariah Carey might cook up if she spent more hours hanging out in video arcades and reading radical literature.”