The UK needs to boost stroke services quickly – or remain the worst in western Europe, says a leading doctor. Professor Hugh Markus, of London’s St George’s Medical School, said care was poorly organised, the British Medical Journal reported.

The care system set up to replace axed community hospitals in Wiltshire is continuing to take shape later than originally planned. With county hospitals either to lose their general medical beds or to have the number of beds slashed, neighbourhood teams are drawing up final plans to take over.

Medical practitioners have expressed ‘serious concerns’ over the rights of nurses to prescribe complex medicines after new figures showed a big increase in the practice.

A judge has been accused of giving paedophiles a licence to offend after he refused to send a serial child sex attacker to jail. Michael Porter, 38, used his trusted position as a ministerial servant in the Jehovah’s Witnesses to prey on young boys in Clevedon, Somerset, over a 14-year period.

Gordon Brown has promised “intensive” action to tackle gang violence involving guns and knives. The prime minister said there would be “tougher enforcement” of the law in areas with a gang violence problem.

Housing associations are making full use of their tools and powers in responding to anti-social behaviour (ASB), according to new Housing Corporation research.

David Cameron called yesterday for action to confront the growing “anarchy in parts of the UK” and for magistrates’ maximum sentencing powers to be doubled to 12 months.

{mosimage}In a wide-ranging speech, made only hours before an 11-year-old was shot dead while playing football outside a Liverpool pub by what appeared to be a youth on a BMX bike, the Conservative leader decried the “rising tide of youth violence and antisocial behaviour”.

He said he wanted to see a wider use of the power that courts already have to ban young offenders from holding or applying for a driving licence.

“Common sense suggests that with young people you need to hit them where it hurts: in their lifestyle and their aspirations…I want to see this measure more widely used – and I don’t believe it should only be targeted at driving-related offences, as the government guidance suggests,” said Mr Cameron.

“I’d like to see judges and magistrates tell a 15-year-old boy convicted of buying alcohol or causing a disturbance that the next time he appears in court he’ll have his driving licence delayed. And then I’d like that boy to tell his friends what the judge said.”

Two teenage boys have been arrested on suspicion of the murder of an 11-year-old boy who was shot dead on his way home from playing football.

We have lift off! For the first time in England a picture of employment in the social care sector, taking in workforce development, skills training and qualifications, funding and career pathways, is obtainable online to the industry.

Record numbers of young children are being removed from their parents and adopted unjustly because of government targets and the “secrecy” of the family courts, it has been claimed. Campaigners say there are now more than 100 cases of possible miscarriages of justice where children have been forcibly adopted.

{mosimage}The figures, revealed in BBC Radio 4’s Face the Facts programme, claims the number of parents in England who have had to give up their children, despite insufficient evidence they were causing them harm, has now hit record levels. It says 1,300 babies under a month old are being adopted every year, up from 500 when the government came into power in 1997.

Social workers told the BBC programme that they were being put under immense pressure to meet the government adoption targets set back in 2000. And lawyers have claimed that parents were not being given a proper chance to challenge adoptions because of the time limit placed on appeals and the secrecy within the family courts.

Family law solicitor Sarah Harman said: “Secrecy breeds bad practice, it breeds suspicion. It feeds parents’ sense of injustice when they have their children removed that they’re not able to talk about it. They’re not able to air their grievances. Children have been removed from their families unjustly. There’s no two ways about that.”

A social work manager with 25 years’ experience in child protection said parents had little chance of getting a hearing and overturning a decision made by the authorities. The manager told the BBC: “People will find that their children have been removed and freed for adoption without them having had a proper chance to defend themselves and their families and their children.”