Children with asthma are missing out on the best drug treatment for their disease, because family doctors are ignoring prescribing guidelines, suggests research published ahead of print in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

A report into the death of the youngest person to die in custody has called for sweeping changes to how children are dealt with in the youth justice system. Adam Rickwood, 14, hanged himself at Hassockfield Secure Training Centre (STC) in County Durham in 2004.

Help the Hospices, the national charity for the hospice movement has published its report on end of life care and related recommendations for implementing the Government’s proposed ‘End of Life Care Strategy’ for England.

Around 700 mental health workers in Manchester have announced they will go on a three-day strike next week, the second such occurrence in less than a month. The dispute is over the suspension of a union official accused of bringing the Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust into disrepute.

When care services minister Ivan Lewis recently admitted that the government was ‘failing’ people with dementia and their carers, he acknowledged what many nurses already knew to be tragic fact.

Councils need to take the lead in attracting investment to social care services that meet people’s present and future needs, according to a new report entitled ‘Safe as Houses? What drives investment in social care?’

Children’s Secretary Ed Balls is to urge schools to teach teenagers how to handle their emotions as part of a drive to improve behaviour and has promised £14 million over four years to extend the social and emotional aspects of learning programme (Seal) running in primary schools into secondaries.

The social care workforce is ready to use more web-based methods of learning, according to Ipsos MORI research commissioned by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE).

A child born to a labourer is six times more likely to suffer extreme poverty by the age of 30 than one born to a lawyer, a major study has revealed. In a remarkable portrait of childhood in Britain, academics have exposed a society in which inequalities are entrenched and social mobility is a myth.

Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, has responded to criticism about security issues surrounding ContactPoint, the new children’s database. In a letter to Family Law Week she states that: