The Bristol Drugs Project was due to take its campaign for fairer treatment funding to Westminster today.

Campaigners hit the streets of Derby yesterday to protest at the potential closure of a care home.

A Chronic shortage of beds for mentally ill teenagers has been highlighted in the county. Currently teenagers and adolescents requiring mental health treatment have to travel out of Gloucestershire to a specialist unit at Marlborough House in Swindon.

Teesside’s “high levels” of child poverty have been condemned as disgraceful by a national charity boss. Martin Narey, the Middlesbrough-born chief executive of Barnardo’s, claims four in every 10 children in the area are living in poverty.

Alex is not a disturbed child, although he could easily be mistaken for one. Sitting in his classroom, he often looks out of the window, and then his restlessness becomes infectious and begins to distract the other kids. Asked to read a sentence, Alex becomes recalcitrant, unwilling to try.

People needing private home care in the Isle of Man are being forced to pay an extra 58% for the facility.

Britain is at risk of producing a new generation of latchkey kids because parents of older children are struggling to find suitable care for them, a report warns today.

{mosimage}It says just one childcare place is available for every 200 children aged 11 to 14, and argues that they are becoming the overlooked age group – unable to access the childminders used by younger children or the youth clubs enjoyed by their older teenage siblings.

Still Home Alone, produced by the charity 4Children, also warns that the problem will worsen next year under changes to the welfare rules.

Lone parents will need to seek work when their youngest child turns 11, five years earlier than under the current rules.

It argues that councils and youth services should work with schools to provide activities at the end of the day and over holidays, urging the government to back such schemes with start-up funds of around £20,000. It also calls on the government to offer long-term funding in deprived areas, where parents may be too poor to pay for after-school clubs.

According to the last census, there are about 4 million children aged between 11 and 14. But official estimates suggest there are only about 20,000 childcare places for this age group.

Care home owners are expected to defend their right to evict residents and maintain profits.

More than 9,000 people have registered their anger at plans to sell off six care homes. A public consultation on Leicestershire County Council’s plans ends on Monday.

The solicitor who mounted repeated legal action against Staffordshire County Council’s Changing Lives programme should have known it would fail, a High Court judge has ruled.