The most vulnerable people in society will suffer under planned budget cuts, warned County Councillor Rod Fletcher this week.

Services for the elderly, homeless and teenagers in care have seen no significant improvement. Lincolnshire’s Supporting People programme to help the sick, the poor and the needy has been given a zero rating by inspectors.

A shake-up of staffing at community hospitals in Maldon and Braintree is being considered by cash-strapped health chiefs – but they deny it will mean redundancies.

A carer who withdrew £150 from the bank account of the wheelchair-bound woman she looked after has been given a suspended jail sentence.

A Government minister has called for a new culture in the care system to tackle abuse and neglect of the elderly. Care services minister Ivan Lewis said society needed to be as outraged by the abuse of an old person as by the abuse of a child.

{mosimage}His comments came as a new telephone hotline was launched in conjunction with care homes themselves to enable people to complain without worrying about repurcussions.

advertisementIt is intended to give elderly residents, families, friends and care workers a safe and protected way of speaking out, knowing there is an independent charity overseeing the process.

The phoneline involves a number of organisations including the major elder abuse charity in the UK, Action on Elder Abuse, the police, and the biggest care provider in the UK, Southern Cross Healthcare, which has 710 care homes in the UK. It will be run by Essex County Council.

At present nearly a quarter of calls to the charity Action on Elder Abuse are about abuse in care homes, where only 4.9 per cent of older people live.

Ministers were today urged to investigate the slaying of mental health charity worker Ashleigh Ewing.

As devoted foster parents, Vincent and Pauline Matherick have provided a stable family home for almost 30 vulnerable children.

Children as young as eight are to be protected from online sexual abuse in a new initiative by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

As many as one in twenty people sees child sexual abuse images while surfing the internet, with more than a third of all sites showing the most extreme images, according to a report published today.

We constantly hear reports of poor quality social care in the UK, but when Harry Ferguson’s mother was terminally ill he was astonished by the compassion and professionalism of her nurses and social workers