Stroke victim Rodney Dobson has thanked Sunderland’s top-ranked social services for helping him rebuild his life. The 46-year-old from Hetton suffered a stroke in 2001, leaving him with severe mobility and communication problems.

A RESIDENTIAL home has sent out a ‘desperate’ plea for more than £50,000 of funding to save it from closure. Meadowside Residential Home in Newton Abbot is ‘financially struggling’ to keep 10 residents with varying degrees of learning and physical difficulties in what has been their home for up to 20 years.

A PROUD and private great-grandmother died after starving herself for nearly three months in a ‘urine-soaked’ residential home. Greta Campbell, 78, of Westmoreland Road, Douglas, weighed about four stone when she died in Noble’s Hospital last month.

The head of children’s services in the London borough where Baby P died after months of persistent injury and neglect was dismissed from her post yesterday as the government responded to a damning report into the council’s failings.

Police are investigating death threats sent to Sharon Shoesmith’s home that warned the former director of children’s services at Haringey that one of her two daughters would be killed.

The damning verdict on Haringey children’s services is part of a culture of despair in social work. Day in, day out, we do business with social workers. We have dealt with thousands. So knowing something of how they work we are not surprised that Baby P was visited by social workers 60 times – and still they didn’t spot the abuse, let alone stop it. That example of catastrophic failure can be put down to the paralysed, emotionally shutdown culture of some modern social workers.

The tragic death of Baby P and the sexual abuse suffered by two girls for years from their father again raises the question – ‘how did the authorities let this happen?’

Nurses have condemned the ‘postcode lottery’ of the adult social care system and the RCN has called for the government to ensure services are applied consistently across the country.

The Sheffield man who repeatedly raped his two daughters escaped detection for decades. But how could the authorities have missed so many signs of incest? By Cole Moreton and Ian Griggs

A grieving mother has demanded answers after her 15-year-old daughter was found hanged while in the care of Oxfordshire social services.