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Letter: On October 4, 10,000 people marched in London to demand that the government keep its promise to halve child poverty by 2010

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Letter: Jonathan Glancey is right to paint a gloomy picture of the prospects for architects but why does he end with such a defeatist conclusion?

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Thousands of 12- and 13-year-old girls will be lining up outside their school medical offices this term, some of them shivering, stomachs lurching, waiting for a jab in the arm that it is hoped will prevent them suffering cervical cancer - a particularly unpleasant form of the disease which kills more than 900 women a year in the UK.

There is every sign that takeup of the vaccine will not be universal. In a pilot study, 20% of parents did not give permission for their daughter to have the jab - whether from apathy or anxiety. Girls are being told that if they feel strongly, they can go to their GP and get vaccinated anyway, but that will surely be rare. And takeup will certainly slump for the boosters, months later.

In spite of a health service information campaign and assiduous marketing by the two firms who vied for the NHS contract - the British company GlaxoSmithKline (the winner) and Merck - many people seem to know little about the vaccine, and the usual worries have already surfaced. Is it safe? Does it have side-effects? The legacy of MMR will run for many years.

In the US, websites have started up and the anti-vaccine rumour machine has been grinding away for a while now. Some of the doubts are reasonable - we cannot know what the long-term effect of the jab will be, because it has been tested for less than seven years so far, though the chief worry is that the protection will wear off. Others, such as alarming side-effects, are not well substantiated.

But while Britain and the US are dithering and doubting, there is an urgent need for the vaccine. The real damage done by this horrible disease is in the developing world. There are about 500,000 cases worldwide every year, and more than half the women die. About 80% of the deaths are in poor countries.

These countries don’t have screening programmes. They don’t have the surgery and radiotherapy to treat cervical cancer, either. The women who die are often mothers and breadwinners, leaving struggling families. A simple vaccine - two or three injections for every girl - could transform their prospects.

But Merck charges $360 for the three-dose vaccine course, presumably needing to recoup the $100m it is said to have spent on marketing in the US on top of development costs. GlaxoSmithKline will have struck a deal at a lower price in Britain to win the NHS contract, but this is still out of reach for countries in Africa and Asia. Merck is not insensitive to this potentially damaging issue and has committed itself to giving away enough vaccine to immunise a million women in the developing world. But the anticipated demand, should an affordable vaccine become available, is for the immunisation of 58 million girls in 60 countries by 2020.

Enormous hopes were building right up until the end of last month. Gavi, the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation - set up with the help of Bill and Melinda Gates - was expected to support global rollout of the cervical cancer vaccine. It didn’t happen. In the face of global financial meltdown, there were nerves about the chances of raising enough money for a programme that will have to begin in schools - it can’t just be added to the infant immunisation schedule.

Gavi will return to the issue. It has negotiated a cost in principle from the drug companies of less than $10 a head, of which governments would pay just 30 cents. A big new funding campaign among donor countries would still be needed, even at this price. But when we are spending so much vaccinating girls whose risk of cancer is really pretty low, surely offering the same chance to girls whose lives could genuinely be saved is a no-brainer?

sarah.boseley@guardian.co.uk

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Council with one of the ‘highest rates of service improvement’ in London needs planners and experienced social workers

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Obituary: Historian of the Roman empire and authority on Polybius

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Response: Many students take work placements in Britain, earning money and gaining contacts, says Chris Ward

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When I came to Britain in my 20s after a few years in France, I was struck by the difference in the way French and English parents regarded their children, the latter with a kind of embarrassed “I don’t quite know what to do with them” attitude. The treatment of children in restaurants was another pointer, and I am still unable fully to fathom the practice (not quite as rife now) of sending children far away to boarding school, ensuring that they didn’t often see their parents. So I’ve always regarded English adults’ approach to children - not just their own - with some suspicion. Nevertheless, I was shocked by the alleged results of a poll carried out on behalf of the charity Barnardo’s, apparently revealing in adults a deep reservoir of fear, hatred, disgust and intolerance. In varying percentages, mainly in the 40s but reaching over 50, interviewees appeared to agree that children were animals, vermin, feral and dangerous.

I just don’t believe those findings, partly because they are so exaggerated, and disproportionate to anything I’ve heard in real life. I looked more closely at the questions and found them wanting. To take one example, interviewees were not asked whether they regarded children as “feral”, let alone to nominate their own description. They were asked whether or not they agreed with the convoluted statement: “People refer to children as feral but I don’t think they behave this way.” That in itself would have been confusing. Moreover the word feral is not commonly used. Were the people - assuming they were able to follow the question - who disagreed with the statement really saying they thought children acted like wild animals? I doubt it.

Most adults have nasty tales about today’s youngsters ranging from their impoliteness, Michele Hanson’s story yesterday of feeling scared stiff, to awful examples of violence and death. They’re all true. The media, of course, is always ready to publicise the misbehaviour of youth. But the facts come nowhere near justifying the purported - but unreliable - results of the Barnardo’s poll. The charity is using the findings to launch a publicity drive telling the truth about today’s children - that the vast majority are law-abiding and unscary, that they are responsible for only 12% of criminal activity and not the 50% the public seems to believe, and that many of them need help. But I fear that the campaign will be counter-productive. The words feral and vermin will stick; the sentence “Most children are good” will be forgotten. I hope that doesn’t happen, because an excess of misinformation about youth risks harming the fundamental relationship between adults and children in our society. That would be serious.

There have been musicals about prostitutes, Irma la Douce and the The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, for instance, but they have been about happy, jolly whores; even the pimps and punters are charming. What a lot of fun we’re having, is the message. Prostitution is not like that, as I hardly need to tell Guardian readers. It’s a nasty, dangerous and drug-ridden world; the women are exploited financially and subjected to violence. Most degrading and perverted of all in that awful world is child prostitution - girls as young as 11 served up for the satisfaction of warped, vicious men. It exists, not just with young girls trafficked in from eastern Europe and Africa, but among home-grown girls in Britain. It’s not rare either.

Ask Kids Company, the charity dedicated to helping damaged and abused children in south London.

Rue Magique, now running at the King’s Head Theatre in London, is a musical about child prostitution in Camberwell. Yes, a musical. And that’s the issue. I should mention that my wife wrote the book and directed the play, but that’s beside the point I’m making. The show received some good and some bad reviews; it’s the bad ones I want to discuss, because they revealed something I’ve not encountered before. I’m not naming anyone because what interests me is a general reaction. Whether explicitly or more subtly, it was clear that what some critics were really unhappy about was the subject matter. Child prostitution was somehow beyond the pale, in bad taste, too unsettling, too disturbing to be a musical.

There was more than a hint, too, that the story couldn’t be true. It is more than true. The girls on whom the stories were based were in fact 11 when they were forced into prostitution, not 13. Two of them (now in their early 20s) came to see the musical; they were enraptured, and vouched for its authenticity.

Theatre reviewers are constantly bemoaning the lack of new plays on serious themes as well as the excess of indifferent feelgood musicals that depend on the rehashing of old tunes by bygone artists. So here’s a specially written musical on a serious social issue, and some critics object (or don’t come at all).

I am not of course saying that all reviewers should have liked the show. But why did some of them seem so scared of it? Yes, the trauma of young children is deeply upsetting; there are some who would like to believe that such things don’t happen; the subject does make you think; and one doesn’t normally associate that kind of misery with songs. But theatre reviewers ought to be beyond such considerations. It is precisely a musical that can best convey such a story, a story needing to be told.

This week Marcel saw Ivanov at the Wyndham’s Theatre, London: “One of the best Chekhov productions I’ve ever seen, which is saying something, because I’ve seen more Chekhov than any other playwright.” He went to the Francis Bacon exhibition at London’s Tate Britain, then, by boat, to the Rothko at Tate Modern: “Result: Rothko nine out of 10; Bacon, six and a half.”

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Letters: How disappointing it was to read your article on the NHS medical research plan, which appeared to reject proposed changes to the present situation

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What is the NHS Institute?

A small organisation, part of the NHS, which helps the NHS to find and deploy innovative solutions to the most pressing needs of the service.

Why does it matter?

Whilst the NHS is improving and bears comparison with any other healthcare system in the world, care needs to be more consistent; safer and more cost effective.

What are its goals?

To develop with frontline staff, solutions that can be taken by organisations and clinical teams and applied in their settings.

Which projects have been successful?

Successes include Releasing Time to Care (or The Productive Ward) and Delivering Through Improvement (a network of hospital chief executives supported to transform care for patients with stroke and hip fracture) and many more.

What is the Productive Ward?

It is a bottom up initiative. Wards involved in piloting modules increase the proportion of a nurse’s time spent in direct patient care.

How are good ideas translated to trusts?

We find many of the good ideas in trusts, but also in other healthcare systems and industries.

Is there partnership work involved?

A great deal of partnership work is involved within the NHS. We do a lot of work with academic and international partners.

How do you foster a ‘people-centred service’?

Wrapping services around the needs of patients and measuring the resultant patient experience is central to our work.

What feedback do you get?

Generally enthusiastic, particularly for the best known of our products.

What are the main obstacles to success?

Finding the best channels to raise awareness can be a challenge. Many frontline staff find it hard to step back from their schedules and try something new, so we work hard at ways of helping them.

What is your role in the organisation?

It’s helping to position the organisation with the NHS and the Department of Health and to help us develop at a fast pace.

Does your previous experience impact on your approach?

I’ve been a practising clinician, a researcher, a public health doctor as well as a chief executive and a patient. All of these have been really relevant.

Name a management no no.

Don’t do things because they will make you popular; do them because they are right.

• For more on the NHS Institute go to institute.nhs.uk

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Read the full article (Mary O’Hara)

We like our art dangerous. We want to be provoked, shocked, teased. We like our public art big, brash and spectacular. But, it turns out, no one told the artists that “dangerous” was a metaphorical term. When councils all over Britain called up sculptors and said “surprise us”, they didn’t mean “drop steel spikes from a great height”.

Not that anyone has actually been injured by Thomas Heatherwick’s gigantic steel starburst, The B of the Bang, which is next to the City of Manchester stadium. But serious safety problems have led to Heatherwick’s studio agreeing to pay Manchester city council £1.7m in an out-of-court settlement. It may mark the end of an era, the moment when public art’s wave broke.

Britain’s passion for big art has become the single most imposing fact about our visual culture in the past decade. Yet modern art deliberately flouts health and saftety regulations. Visit Roger Hiorns’ brilliant installation Seizure in south London, and you are given rubber gloves and boots before being allowed in a bedsit coated with copper sulphate crystals. Not that this stops people wanting to touch the crystals. Just as people couldn’t resist putting their feet into the crack at Tate Modern last year, with some minor injuries as a result. Like I say - we want our art dangerous.

It is the flirtation with risk, the frisson of the truly unpredictable, that makes conceptual art popular. In a world of tedious regulations and rational constraints, art is the last walk on the wild side. Of course, the Heatherwick settlement is a paradox. If you pay someone to create a huge metal image of an explosion, how can you then act as if any hint of physical danger was unacceptable?

And yet the tragedy that took place in County Durham in summer 2006, when an inflatable art installation by Maurice Agis floated off the ground and two people were killed, had no effect on the appetite for ambitious art. So why does the Heatherwick payout mark the end of an age? Because it points to public art’s expense. We like danger. But, in difficult economic times, will councils still consider public art worth the risk?

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Read the full article (Jonathan Jones)