Local authorities are not referring enough children to voluntary sector children’s homes, reports a new study. This, the first major examination of voluntary sector provision of residential care, found 58% of providers had experienced a downturn in levels of occupancy in the last two years.

Drug addicts will be given shopping vouchers under a scheme which will cost up to £5 million a year. The plans will see around 36,000 drug addicts in England given between £70 and £150 a year for accessing treatment and health programmes and staying clean.

Just two per cent of working parents have signed up for childcare vouchers, research has revealed. The finding came from a poll of nearly 1,200 parents commissioned by childcare voucher company Childcare Choice.

The government is to launch what it says is the country’s biggest public consultation on tackling drugs. Jacqui Smith, who last week admitted having taken cannabis at university, will outline plans such as more drug education for children aged under 11.

The government’s plans to force lone parents back to work will fail unless more is done to expand childcare outside normal working hours, according to a new report. Lack of available childcare is the main barrier to lone parents working, according to research published in the wake of government proposals to make single parents on benefit look for jobs when their youngest child turns seven.

{mosimage}Childcare charity the Daycare Trust spoke to lone parents across England and found care and activities outside school hours were too expensive, too inflexible, or non-existent. The report recommends a home-based service – suggesting a bank of registered childminders who could look after children in their own homes. Such a scheme exists in Scotland, developed by charity One Parent Families with funding from the Scottish Executive.

Daycare Trust’s joint chief executive, Emma Knights, said: “To support these parents in bringing up their children, the government needs to go much further in subsidising and providing childcare – and in giving parents rights to flexible, family-friendly working conditions. Lone parents need to know their children will be happy and well cared for.”

She added that by the time their children were at secondary school, a large majority of single parents were at work, and there were often good reasons for those who were not – a child with a disability, or caring responsibilities for elderly parents, for example. “We support the right of every parent – including those on benefits – to make that choice [not to work], and are pressing for the government to protect it,” she said.

The government is to lend its weight to a concerted national campaign to eliminate the stigma that is blighting the lives of people suffering from mental illness, health ministers have announced.

{mosimage}The campaign, spearheaded by the UK’s high profile mental health charities, will use television advertising and community projects across England to tackle the prejudice that prevents those who suffer mental health problems from getting jobs, mortgages, friendships and a fair share of NHS care.

Ivan Lewis, the care services minister who took over responsibility for mental health this month, said:
“It is time to draw a line following years of division over the reform of mental health legislation.

“We should now unite to launch a sustained national campaign against the stigma and ignorance which has blighted the lives of too many people with mental health problems for too long.” He will announce the government’s support for a consortium led by the charities Mind and Rethink, which last week won £18m from the Big Lottery Fund and Comic Relief for a four-year anti-stigma campaign.

The boss of an old people’s home in Longtown has been charged with stealing property and cash worth £3,278. Ann Watt, 45, was relieved of her duties at Cumbria County Council’s Eskdale House in March pending a police probe into “misuse of funds”.

No doubt about it, Francis Ward, Head of Skills, Research and Intelligence for Skills for Care has the power of persuasion when it comes to his favourite topic – the National Minimum Data Set for Social Care.

A committee of MPs is to investigate the misuse of prescription and over-the-counter drugs. The All Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Misuse hopes to pin down the true scale and nature of the problem, and find ways to tackle it.

Servicemen and firefighters were battling to protect the electricity supplies of half a million people last night as the highest flood waters in memory continued to rise.

{mosimage}The Government announced an independent inquiry as water levels in the Thames and the Severn exceeded those of the devastating floods of 1947 and were forecast to rise to 20ft (6m) higher than normal.

More than 10,000 families have been left homeless in the West Country and Thames Valley over the past four days and thousands of others have been told to leave their homes as a mass of water surges down river. Electricity supplies to 50,000 homes have been cut and 150,000 homes have been left without water.

The Times was told last night that the utility companies were warned by the Government seven years ago that they needed to make key facilities flood-proof to protect supplies. The Castlemeads power station near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, was shut down yesterday morning, however, leaving more than 50,000 homes without electricity. Supplies to a further 500,000 homes were under threat as a 250-strong force of military personnel and firefighters attempted to prevent rising waters overwhelming the Walham substation.

There was a glimmer of hope last night when the Environment Agency said that the Severn appeared to have peaked two inches below the level that would have overwhelmed the substation. An agency spokesman warned, however, that it was still a “dangerous situation”.

The level of the Thames in Oxford may not peak until early Wednesday. Eight severe flood warnings and 50 other flood warnings remained in place last night as further rain added to the misery. Emergency planning teams met in Cambridgeshire after a flood warning was placed on the Great Ouse and the police prepared for possible floods around St Neots.