Health inspectors will start making unannounced spot checks on hospital wards amid fears that elderly and vulnerable patients are being increasingly neglected, it has emerged.

{mosimage}The Healthcare Commission, which regulates hospitals, believes the dramatic move is necessary because standards of care for older people are being breached so regularly. It believes a “culture of neglect” has built up in some hospitals, made worse by mixed-sex wards and the attitude of some staff, resulting in geriatric patients being left lying in soiled sheets and not being allowed to visit the toilet.

Some pensioners are not being helped to eat, leaving them at risk of being given food to which they are allergic or choking on food they cannot swallow.

The Healthcare Commission is now planning to carry out unannounced visits to hospitals where families and patient groups claim there have been repeated breaches in care or dignity.

Its chief executive, Anna Walker, said: “We have been looking at this, and where we see a cluster of concerns, and feel we are not getting the full picture, we would want to go in without giving the hospital prior notice, and carry out a full check.”

A Government-commissioned report by the commission will reveal damning details how the culture of neglect has built up in some hospitals. It will also report on 23 investigations carried out at hospital trusts where standards have not been met.

Danny Wilde collected his last pay cheque from the Tulip pork factory in Norfolk on Friday before joining the dole queue.

The growing number of women taking their own lives while in prison will be highlighted this week when a leading campaigner is put on trial for protesting outside a jail.

{mosimage}Pauline Campbell, a former college lecturer, began to protest against conditions in women’s prisons after her daughter, Sarah, died of a drugs overdose at Styal prison in Cheshire. She has staged 26 protests outside jails across the country. One of her tactics is to try to block prison vans as they arrive at the gates.

In January Ms Campbell was arrested outside Eastwood Park, a closed prison in Gloucestershire, where mother-of-five Caroline Powell, 26, was found hanged in her cell. Originally Ms Campbell was charged with aggravated trespass, which can carry a prison term. This was reduced to obstructing the highway, for which the maximum penalty is £1,000 fine.

A leading human rights lawyer, Peter Thornton QC, is representing Ms Campbell at North Avon magistrates court, where the case will be heard by a district judge this week.

Ms Campbell’s daughter died in January 2003, the third of six women to die at Styal in 12 months.

Sarah had learning difficulties, was a heroin addict at 16 and had commited at least 28 acts of self-harm while previously on remand. She had just begun a three-year jail term for manslaughter when she took an overdose. An inquest jury decided that “a failure in duty of care” contributed to her death.

Eleven doctors are still free to work in the NHS despite being convicted of sex and child pornography offences, The Daily Telegraph can reveal today.

Independent life insurance and protection specialist LifeSearch is advising people to protect themselves against the expense of long-term care for Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Two women who ran a nursing home where elderly residents were neglected and abused were found guilty of misconduct yesterday. A hearing was told that their shocking negligence had left two people at death’s door.

{mosimage}They included a 79-year-old woman who needed urgent hospital treatment for malnutrition.

An official inspection dossier exposed widespread humiliation and abuse of residents at the private Laurel Bank Nursing Home in Halifax, which charged £445 a week.

Linda Parker (left) was cautioned while Lily Leatham (right) was left weighing 5st 1lb

Staff were said to have punched, threatened, sworn and aimed lewd taunts at elderly men and women.

Incontinent residents were left to sit in a “loopy lounge” all day, or abandoned in their beds in an insanitary and undignified state.

Yesterday, a professional conduct committee of the Nursing and Midwifery Council struck deputy matron Elisabeth Uttley, 62, off the register.

Now retired, she refused to turn up for the four-day hearing and was said to have never expressed any regrets.

But her boss, home manager Patricia Parker, 59, escaped with a formal caution for five years after admitting failing to provide adequate care.

Children’s minister Ed Balls and London’s mayor Ken Livingstone will today unveil plans to spend £40m relaunching youth services in London amid rising concerns about teenage alienation and gang violence.

Immigrant workers are importing their national feuds and criminal behaviour to rural England, a police chief said yesterday.

The unpaid work of carers saves the UK £87bn per year – more than the total amount spent by the NHS in the last financial year, say experts.

{mosimage}The figure, calculated by the University of Leeds for the charity Carers UK, is up 52% since the last estimate, calculated in 2002. The average person caring for a sick or frail relative is now estimated to save the nation more than £15,260 a year. The government said measures had been taken to help carers, with more due.

The new figures are based on how much it would cost to provide alternative care if a carer was not available. This has been calculated at £14.50 an hour.

The total is more than four times the amount spent on social care services for adults and children by local authorities in the year 2005-2006.

Carers UK warned that the economy was over-reliant on care provided by family and friends – and if just a small proportion gave up it could have a disastrous impact.

It said many carers remained isolated and unsupported, with thousands living in poverty, unable to take up paid work or have a normal social life.

More than 180 children recently trafficked illegally into the UK have since gone missing without trace from social services care, according to a Unicef report warning that the government is failing to protect vulnerable youngsters brought into the country.