Figures released by Skills for Care, the national workforce development organisation for People working in adult social care, show that for the first time ever all of its allocated funds to employers under the banner of the Training Strategy Implementation Fund  (TSI) have been fully used for the purpose.

Guidance issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) should offer hope to patients suffering from chronic heart failure, according to campaigning coalition The Medical Technology Group.

The Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) has announced that a newly updated version of the ‘Making it Happen – Working together for children, young, people and families’ booklet is now available.

As a result they may be able to claim tens of thousands of pounds in compensation after a landmark Court of Appeal judgment. It held that their human rights were breached because they were kept in prison beyond the date on which they became eligible for parole.

{mosimage}The Prison Service and the Parole Board are so concerned at the far-reaching consequences of the judgment that they are planning to appeal to the Law Lords, the most senior judges in England and Wales.

Latest figures indicate that between 500 and 700 prisoners a year miss their early release deadline because of delays within the jail system.

Derrick Johnson, who was sentenced to seven years for supplying drugs, was held in jail for an unjustified and arbitrary 8½ months beyond the date on which he was eligible for parole, according to the Court of Appeal. Johnson, from Bristol, was jailed in May 2000 at the city’s Crown Court and was eligible for parole in June 2003.

In accordance with usual practice he was asked six months before that date whether he wished to apply for parole and told the authorities that he wanted to be considered for early release. There was then a long delay in assembling the dossier that must go to the Parole Board when it considers a case.

Among the papers are reports from the Probation Service including details of settling the offender on leaving jail and others from prison staff on behaviour in prison, assessment of likely reoffending and courses undertaken to tackle offending behaviour or substance misuse.

Mental illness is now the second largest reason for UK workers taking time off, a report suggests. A study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found an increasing amount of sickness leave is due to depression or stress.

The NHS in England is facing a blitz on hygiene standards as a watchdog uses new powers to crackdown on infections.

They are still grappling with the alphabet, learning nursery rhymes and making toys out of egg cartons. But now children as young as four will be expected to get in touch with their feelings by filling in questionnaires which ask if they are “optimistic about the future” and “dealing with problems well”.

{mosimage}Under guidance being drawn up by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), primary schools in England will have a duty to improve children’s emotional and psychological well-being. Schools will be expected to combat factors that are “likely to lead to poor mental health or mental disorders” by introducing programmes to help children make the transition to secondary school, teaching “emotional literacy” and providing specialist counselling services and family therapy. However, the suggestion that schools should measure happiness has been condemned by headmasters as needless bureaucracy that would divert teachers from teaching.

In a document outlining the draft scope of the guidance, Nice says that a school’s success in making its pupils happy will be measured by indicators developed by Warwick and Edinburgh universities, which monitor positive attributes, such as confidence, resilience, attentiveness and the ability to form good relationships.

The “well-being scale” involves putting 14 statements to individuals about their thoughts and feelings and asking them whether they feel like that often, rarely, some of the time, all the time, or never – not unlike the self-help quizzes found in women’s magazines. Its use in primary school could see data collected from thousands of pupils, from the age of four to 11, on whether they feel, for example, useful, relaxed and interested in other people.

The burden on primaries to improve pupils’ mental health is part of wider drive by the Government to force schools to take responsibility for elements of a child’s development that were once considered the domain of -parents and part of a good, traditional upbringing. As revealed by this newspaper, emotional literacy classes, which attempt to teach children how to manage anger and jealousy, and develop empathy and self-motivation, have already been introduced in primary and secondary schools after earlier trials.
     
The £20 million initiative has supplied schools with a mountain of documents on how to teach emotional intelligence through assemblies, dedicated sessions or discussions in other curriculum areas. It suggests using “worry boxes”, where pupils write down their anxieties and post them into a box, and “emotional barometers”, which pupils can use to show classmates the strength of their feeling about a subject.

Five organisations representing 85% of NHS mental health staff have withdrawn from the united front campaigning against the government’s mental health bill.

Lancashire Social Services have branded the closure of a care home at six hours notice ‘appalling’ – and admitted they had no idea it was shutting.

A jury has returned a verdict of suicide on a 14-year-old boy who hanged himself in a privately run secure unit. Adam Rickwood became the youngest child to have died in penal custody for 25 years when he hanged himself with his shoelaces at the Hassockfield secure training centre in County Durham in August 2004.