A care worker was taken to hospital with smoke inhalation following a fire in a Whitton care home last night.

Remploy – which provides work for people with disabilities – is planning to close 36 of its 54 factories, putting more than 1,700 jobs at risk.

David Cameron will set out plans on Friday to create a “fairer, faster” adoption process – including moves to make it easier for white couples to adopt black children.

BASW has responded to the latest government plans to reform the adoption system in England by insisting that a child’s right to the best possible outcome should not be sacrificed in a “knee-jerk” rush to speed up the time it takes to secure adoption placements.

A serious case review into the sexual assault and murder of a 15-year-old Polish girl by a convicted sex offender has uncovered failings in communications between the police and public protection agencies in Humberside and Leeds.

More than half of elderly and disabled people in care homes are being denied basic health services while staff are failing to to do enough to preserve their dignity, according to an official review.

Concerns have been raised about the quality of care at a Thorpe St Andrew nursing home after a high number of staff changes in recent months.

Residents of a south Devon care home have been given less than three weeks to find alternative accommodation after the owners announced it was closing.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is failing to identify and stop elderly people having their basic human rights ignored, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has said, claiming that the way the elderly are treated now meets the legal definition of torture which refers to “inhuman or degrading treatment”.

Over a thousand older and disabled people have turned up to a mass lobby of parliament.