The collapse of care homes operator Southern Cross is likely to prompt the government to hand healthcare regulator Monitor responsibility for social care “sooner rather than later”, Monitor’s interim chief executive said on Tuesday.

As councils tighten eligibility criteria for housing and benefit cuts hit, charities warn of an increase in homelessness

No resident at a Southern Cross care home will find themselves homeless or without care following the cash-strapped operator’s decision to shut down, the Government insisted today.

A REGISTERED nurse has been suspended from working for 18 months after a disciplinary panel was told of a catalogue of failures to safeguard elderly people when she was manager of an Oldbury care home.

BASW has criticised comments by the government’s new adoption tsar Martin Narey, in which the former head of Barnardo’s urged the children’s minister to refocus the role of social workers and ‘ensure that the role of the social worker as the unequivocal protector of the interests of the child as opposed to that of friend of the family’.

Stricken care home chain Southern Cross is being broken up after attempts to rescue the company floundered.

The social care regulator has said it will ensure that Southern Cross care homes continue to be operated to essential standards following the company’s collapse.

Children as young as eight are running away from home or care, while their disappearance goes unreported in two-thirds of cases, a report by the Children’s Society has revealed.

An all-party group has said that less of the £20bn annual cost of looking after people with dementia should go to hospitals

Charities are urging the government to improve support for adopted children and their families to stop them being treated like “second-class citizens”.