A mental health body hopes to gain greater financial freedom to help it deliver a better service to patients. Bosses of Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Trust in Chester are consulting over Foundation Trust plans. However, the proposal to become one of the first mental health Trusts to achieve increased autonomy comes at a difficult time because of a financial squeeze from the Government and locally within the NHS.
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Soaring numbers of Northern Ireland families are registering as homeless, it has emerged. Numbers on the list jumped by around 20% to over 5,000 prompting sharp criticism of the Government for not accelerating public house building quickly enough. Family disputes or unsatisfactory accommodation was responsible for most of the cases. Homeless charity Shelter accused housing authorities of neglecting society`s most vulnerable people.
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A teenager died after abusing a can of fabric freshener which her family thought she sprayed to hide the smell of cigarettes, a coroner ruled today. The distraught mother of Helen Coffey thought her daughter was using the aerosol to mask the smell of tobacco on her clothes. The 14-year-old was taken to hospital when she was found collapsed and “smelling of furniture polish” by her sister. She died a week later on April 19 last year from brain damage.
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A council which told a couple they would have to live apart after 68 years of marriage has backed down. Sydney Rowley, 91, of Bollington, Cheshire, and wife Blanche, 90, had not spent a night apart since he returned from fighting in Burma in 1946. But she was taken to a residential home after suffering a stroke and her husband was not allowed to join her. Cheshire County Council said it had reconsidered the decision as the Rowleys were “an exceptional case”.
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Mental health services were found yesterday to have failed to assess the risk of discharging a man with a serious personality disorder who carried out a murder on the London Underground. Stephen Soans-Wade, a drug addict with a long history of mental health problems, could not have been clearer in the warning he gave to psychiatrists before pushing a stranger to his death under a fast-moving tube train at Mile End station in east London.
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A two-year-old child has died after contracting the E.coli O157 infection. The girl, from Ballantrae, in South Ayrshire, died at the weekend after being taken to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow. A health board spokeswoman said two children in the Dumfries and Galloway area, who had been in contact with the girl, had also tested positive. A 20-month-old and a child of three were admitted to hospital at the weekend but have since been released.
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A pioneering welfare-to-work scheme is proving so successful in getting people off benefit and back into the workplace that yesterday it was decided to up its target for 2010 to 40,000 from 30,000. Glasgow Welfare to Work Forum has the chance of a slice of £5m and inclusion in the government’s new Cities Strategy scheme.It is aimed at allowing local areas to deliver tailormade solutions to getting people back into work rather than being served with rigid diktats from Whitehall.
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The family of a three-year-old girl sexually assaulted by the paedophile Craig Sweeney said last night that they would begin a civil action against South Wales Police “for their failure to protect our child against this known and dangerous molester”. Earlier, Barbara Wilding, the chief constable of South Wales, apologised to the child after criticism of the force by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
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Young men throughout the world have higher death rates than women because of their riskier lifestyles, researchers said on Tuesday. Accidents and suicide are the leading killers in men aged 15 to 34 while deaths from illnesses such as heart disease, cancer and chronic liver disease rise sharply in 35- to 44-year-olds. “In every country there is an excess of male deaths due to potentially avoidable reasons. The main causes of death are those that are more or less directly attributable to lifestyle and risk-taking,” said Alan White of Leeds Metropolitan University in England.
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Elderly and vulnerable people needing care at home are suffering from cuts in NHS spending as councils struggle to take up the slack, a study has revealed. As local authorities pick up the shortfall, they are being forced to increase council tax or cut services. A study, commissioned by the Local Government Association (LGA), found nearly seven out of 10 local authorities in areas with an NHS deficit have been affected.
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