Health services in the West have suffered from a £770 million shortfall after years of government under-funding.

Care workers fear they will lose their jobs – despite their care home being saved from closure. Staff at Hillport House, in Newcastle, believe Staffordshire County Council is unfairly asking them to reapply for their own jobs, effectively putting them in competition with workers at care homes set to close.

A second suspected underground torture chamber was broken into by a police search team yesterday at the Jersey care home at the centre of a child abuse investigation. A sniffer dog last night indicated the presence of possible human remains.

A drug rehabilitation centre has closed because managers want a new base offering addicts residential care.

A Derbyshire charity has been given an internationally-recognised accolade for the quality of its service.

A forum of charities involved in the fields of mental health and criminal justice have called for major changes to ensure that more people remain out of custody, with a

South Gloucestershire Council is celebrating after it was awarded a national accolade for the way it helps children and young people in care.

Relatives of elderly people in care homes under threat of closure have enlisted the help of a top lawyer.

Leading independent schools are hiding their special needs provision to avoid being swamped and protect their league table ratings, according to an influential guide.

Unnecessary child protection checks and other bureaucratic barriers are wasting the potential of volunteers in public services, Gordon Brown’s volunteering tsar, Lady Neuberger, will say today.

The Liberal Democrat peer, brought in by the prime minister when he took office to be the government’s volunteering champion, will urge hospitals and other providers to break down their resistance to using volunteers.

In the first of a series of reports, on health and social care services, Neuberger says that too often organisations are demanding Criminal Records Bureau checks on all potential helpers.

“This is clearly unnecessary. Checks should only be undertaken where a volunteer might spend time alone with young people or vulnerable adults. Managers need to show some common sense and stop, for example, requiring CRB checks for people working on hospital radio stations,” the report says.

“Insurance and other legal considerations do seem to have created a level of risk-aversion throughout all management levels in health and social care services.”

Neuberger, a health spokeswoman in the Lords, was one of two senior Lib Dem peers brought in as so-called goats (as in Government of All the Talents) by Brown, along with Lord Lester, the lawyer who advises on constitutional reform.