A mother with a severe mental illness killed her two children after being allowed unsupervised access despite the warnings of their father, a court heard yesterday.

{mosimage}Vivian Gamor, 29, was detained indefinitely after admitting two counts of manslaughter at the Old Bailey.

The children’s father, Jimi Ogunkoya, blamed social services for their deaths after he was encouraged to let them stay with her despite bizarre behaviour that had led to her being sectioned.

“I obeyed the law and let them go,” he said in a victim impact statement read out in court. “I wish I had not done that.

“The system that I obeyed has frog-marched my children to their deaths. They assessed her and found nothing wrong. This is pure negligence, which will not be tolerated.”

Sentencing Gamor, Judge Peter Rook told her: “On the face of it, this terrible tragedy could have been avoided if you had not been allowed unsupervised access and the children’s father’s grave concerns had been given weight.”

Gamor, from Hackney, east London, bludgeoned 10-year-old son Antoine with a claw hammer and suffocated daughter Kenniece, three, with cling film in January.

Jonathan Rees, prosecuting, told the court that she then dialled 999 and told the operator: “I kind of lost it, I snapped.” When police arrived they found the bodies of her children lying in her bedroom, with a blood-stained hammer lying next to Kenniece, and Antoine crouched in a defensive position between the cupboard and the wall.

A care home in York was so dirty and damaged that managers had to be hauled before top council bosses. Hygiene inspectors published a Care Home, in Gale Lane, Acomb, after visiting the premises last autumn.

Thousands of arthritis sufferers will be denied treatment with proven benefits by a decision not to pay for a new drug.

The Youth Justice Board, set up seven years ago by Labour to cut juvenile crime, has failed to hit any of its key performance targets in the past 12 months, according to its annual report.

High-stress jobs make young workers twice as likely to suffer from major depression and anxiety disorders, according to a British study of mental health in the workplace.

Plans to turn a £1.7m house in Surrey into a “home from home” for families of injured service personnel have been approved despite residents’ objections.

The damp summer may have made us all miserable, but research suggests it is hot weather that poses a far more serious problem for vulnerable people.

MPs and pressure groups yesterday rounded on ITV after it issued a “clarification” over a landmark documentary in which a man with Alzheimer’s was filmed as he supposedly passed away.

{mosimage}In fact, the network admitted yesterday that the man died two and a half days later, and not while the cameras were still rolling.

Paul Watson, the acclaimed documentary maker at the centre of the latest row, last night defended the film, saying he never intended to imply the footage portrayed the exact moment of death. But ITV’s admission was immediately seized on as further evidence that TV must get its house in order.

“We are very disappointed to learn that yet another documentary appears to have been doctored,” said the shadow culture minister, Ed Vaizey. “I hope this is now the final lesson to be learned by production companies who often make good programmes that are undermined by misleading publicity campaigns.”

With broadcasters having declared zero tolerance on misleading viewers in the wake of the row over publicity footage for BBC1’s A Year with the Queen and a series of other incidents, ITV’s “clarification” was the latest example of their jittery disposition.

Last week, the broadcaster faced criticism for proposing to show the final moments of Alzheimer’s sufferer Malcolm Pointon as part of a moving documentary by Watson that tracks the debilitating effect of the disease over 11 years.

It defended scenes in which Mr Pointon is surrounded by his family as he slowly loses consciousness. His widow, Barbara Pointon, also appeared on the radio and in newspapers including the Guardian defending the decision.

Children born with the help of donated sperm or eggs should have the fact recorded on their birth certificates, a group of MPs and peers has suggested.

Mental health patients’ care is being threatened by nursing staff shortages, nurses say. A poll of 600 mental health nurses by the Royal College of Nursing found nearly half thought low staffing compromised care once a week.