The Royal College of Nursing is giving its members in England until mid-September to decide if they want to accept the government’s final pay deal. Some 95% of nurses had voted to go ahead with a ballot on industrial action over the original pay award.

An elderly man who sold his home to pay for a nursing home place is being evicted because his money has run out. Edwin Coglan, 78, of Weston-super-Mare, paid £40,000 in 2000 from the sale of his home to Summer Lane Care which charges £1,000 a month.

Too many people are being diagnosed with depression when all they are is unhappy, a leading psychiatrist says. Professor Gordon Parker claims the threshold for clinical depression is too low and risks treating normal emotional states as illness.

More proof is needed that electronic personal health records are safe and effective, some doctors have said. Ministers are pushing ahead with plans to put personal medical records on a national electronic database, which patients can themselves access online.

Trade union bosses have hit out at plans to privatise home care services in Rochdale as the council is looking to employ a private company to provide long-term help to the elderly and infirm. But Unison fears that could put some of the most vulnerable members of the community at risk.

The courts have been officially warned that teenagers who breach their Asbos should not normally be jailed and that “excessive” sentences should not be passed on adult offenders in similar circumstances.

{mosimage}The proposals from the official body that lays down guidelines on sentencing come after latest figures show that 46% of the 7,500 people successfully prosecuted for breaching their antisocial behaviour orders in 2005 were jailed.

The sentencing advisory panel, in its proposals for new guidelines to the courts for dealing with Asbo breaches, says that in most cases involving young offenders the appropriate sentence should be a community order.

The judges, police and prosecutors on the panel say that jail should only be considered for young people if their breach involved serious harassment, alarm or distress, or if there had been a series of serious breaches.

“In principle custody should be used less frequently for youths, so the threshold should be set at a higher level than the custody threshold for adults,” says the panel’s consultation proposals, published yesterday. “Even where the custody threshold is crossed a custodial sentence will not be inevitable. The younger the offender the more likely that perseverance with community orders will be more effective than detention in preventing re-offending.”

Around 90 per cent of care homes can ignore the Human Rights Act, according to Help the Aged. The law, which came into force in October 2000, gives residents of council-run homes the right to take cases of abuse and neglect to court.

Researchers have revealed that prescribing some medicines to elderly people in order to stave off illnesses could just mean changing the nature of diseases and reduce life quality overall.

Britain’s largest trade union today blamed poor pay for the neglect and abuse of elderly people in care homes. Jack Dromey, the deputy general secretary of Unite, said the profit motive was at the heart of the ill treatment of elderly people.

Politicians and drinks manufacturers have dismissed a call by a chief constable to raise the legal drinking age to 21. Peter Fahy, of Cheshire police, said raising the limit would send “a clear message about the dangers” of alcohol.