Nurses are struggling to access child protection training due to funding cuts, according to a survey by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) published today.

Beneath the sash window of a care home in Wimbledon, lit by a shaft of spring sunlight, Lady Cicely Mayhew sits in the leather chair she occupies most days. Now 86, she reminisces about her adventures as the first female British diplomat, and her childhood growing up in Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.

Gordon Brown will tomorrow return to the issue of immigration by promising that no more unskilled workers will be allowed into Britain from outside the EU for the foreseeable future.

Child protection services in Kent are managing to cope with “enormous pressure”, a report has found. Kent County Council’s review identified a 22% rise in referrals to children’s services between April 08 and March last year.

A jury has gone out to consider its verdicts in the trial of a south London nursery manager accused of force-feeding children.

MORE than £1million of taxpayers’ money has been spent by a health trust over the past three years on the salaries of staff who have been suspended. South Essex Partnership Trust, responsible for mental health services, spent the money in the three years from 2006, including £675,711 in 2008/09 alone.

BASW chair Fran Fuller has warned that rival plans for a National College of Social Work in England are ‘fatally flawed’. In an open letter to Moira Gibb, chair of the Social Work Reform Board (SWRB), Ms Fuller offered to ‘work together’ to address issues of contention but insisted that the SWRB’s College Development Group was adopting an approach that lacks credibility.

A London council has become the first in the UK to role out the use of new satellite technology for residents who have dementia.

Labour stood accused of hiding plans for a “death tax” to fund universal social care for elderly people in the small print of a long-awaited white paper published today.

The Government’s social care plans were branded a “train crash” today after Health Secretary Andy Burnham confirmed a National Care Service would not be created for at least five years.