Youth workers have been threatened with the sack if they don’t accept a new restructuring deal, according to documents leaked to The Herald.

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.

Police are investigating almost 1,400 sex offenders living within a 20-mile radius of the home of missing schoolgirl Shannon Matthews as her mother insists she is still alive.

Karen Matthews today denied that her daughter had run away and said something “sinister” must have happened to her to prevent her returning home.

The nine-year-old vanished more than a fortnight ago, but a huge police search has failed to find any trace of her.

Detectives have now turned their attention to the 1,387 convicted sex offenders who live within half an hour’s drive of the family home in Dewsbury Moor, West Yorkshire.

Hundreds have already been questioned, but police have admitted they have few leads to go on.

Mrs Matthews, however, told GMTV that she remained “convinced” her daughter was still alive.

She said: “Wherever she is she has to be frightened. It’s breaking everyone’s hearts in the streets. They want her back in her own environment.

“I don’t think she has run away, I think something sinister has happened. I’m convinced she is still alive. I know she is.”

The investigation into child abuse at Jersey children’s homes is likely to spread to Guernsey after an alleged victim said he was attacked by staff of residential homes on both Channel Islands.
 

THE facilities provided on a Trafford elderly rehabilitation ward are sub-standard and could create infection risks – according to the nurses who work there.

Charities are being warned they could lose more than £90m a year when the new lower income tax rate is introduced next month. The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) says the

Every day, over a million working parents use childminders and private nurseries, believing their babies are in hands of highly qualified, strictly regulated and genuine caring people.

Most people are unaware of the funding that they may or may not be entitled to in order to pay for a care home and social care when they are elderly, an expert claims.

A staff nurse who murdered four elderly patients with lethal injections of insulin was today jailed for life and told he would serve a minimum of 30 years.

Staff at a Jersey care home are being investigated over claims that they covered up suicides and mysterious deaths of children as police discovered further possible human remains yesterday.

Records of deaths during the three decades when children allegedly suffered brutal sexual and physical abuse at Haut de la Garenne are being reviewed after concerns that they were not investigated properly at the time. Police are also drawing up a list of former residents from the 1960s to 1986 who cannot be traced.

More than 160 victims have contacted police with allegations that they were abused in underground punishment rooms, detention cells, the sick bay and during organised boating trips around the island. Some residents and staff have told police that children disappeared during the night.