Government plans to bring in free care for elderly and disabled people could leave Kent County Council with a £22million financial headache.

A Yorkshire council has suspended a number of staff and promised a full overhaul of its children’s care services after independent consultants uncovered massive failings which could have left vulnerable children at risk of abuse and neglect.

An attempt to delay a bid to provide free personal care at home for some 250,000 people in England has failed. The House of Lords voted against a motion tabled by former health minister Lord Warner.

A mental health charity has been ordered to pay £50,000 for failing to protect a graduate who was stabbed to death by a paranoid schizophrenic.

People from black and ethnic minority communities are three times more likely than average to be detained under the Mental Health Act, new figures from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) show.

Ministers have ‘significantly underestimated’ the costs of providing free care to eldery people that are most in need, social services chiefs say.

COUNTY Hall bosses have agreed to pump more than £20million into improving services for children in Essex. Essex County Council’s cabinet this week agreed to transfer £20.9million to help children’s social services.

FURIOUS union leaders warned today that some of York’s most vulnerable people would suffer after council chiefs unveiled plans to axe dozens more staff.

CRUCIAL services that have helped generations of Warrington’s deaf community are set to be shelved. The Deafness Support Network (DSN) has been told by Warrington and Halton borough councils that their own staff will take over its social work and technical equipment services contract as of April 1.

CAMPAIGNERS furious at plans to make sweeping cuts to Bolton’s Children’s Services department, will stage a mass rally in the town centre.