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.

Rita Jermaine is 75, virtually blind and can barely walk but has been told she cannot move into a council nursing home because she smokes.

The government’s new programme of personalised public services could see NHS patients being given a budget to buy their own care and parents the money to hire their own teachers.

The boss of the Jersey care “home of horror” was a paedophile who raped his own foster daughter, according to sensational new claims.

More than 78,000 prisoners in the last four years have been freed without a home to go to, figures show.

Adults with learning difficulties are subjected to “abusive and degrading treatment”, neglect and carelessness in healthcare centres and residential homes in the UK, a report has warned.

Sheltered accommodation could soon be built on the site of a care home set for closure.

A High Court judge who condemned Nottingham City Council for unlawfully taking a teenage mother’s newborn baby from her has called for an urgent review of training and management of social workers and hospital staff.