Asylum-seekers were put at risk by the Government’s much-criticised policy of dispersing them around the country, according to a Home Office report which the department refused to publish.

Directors of adult social services have added their weight to concerns about the growing funding shortfalls for services to older people. According to John Dixon, vice president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS):

Recent statistics show that 22,000 people die in Britain each year through alcohol-related illness, and there are 350,000 serious drug users.
Increasingly, the answer for many is costly rehab in a private clinic, or NHS treatment which costs the State millions.
But a new book argues that addiction is not a medical condition which can be cured, but simply a question of moral weakness.
So is it right? Here, two former broadsheet newspaper editors – who both admit to having addictions – take up the cudgels.

Responding to the publication today of guidance from the Department of Health on health clearance for new healthcare workers the BMA said it welcomed any guidance that would ultimately improve the safety of patients but that further clarification was needed as to how it will work in practice.

A senior council official who has been at the centre of controversy over a child subjected to horrific abuse by her parents has been appointed to head the official agency that promotes good practice in social work.
Julie Jones, currently director of children’s services for Westminster in central London, is to become chief executive of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (Scie). Her appointment by the body, which has independent charitable status but is government-funded, has been endorsed by the Department of Health’s director-general of social care.

The sister of a disabled patient found stabbed to death with her care worker in a Southampton flat has spoken of her shock at the discovery. Police found Sue Hale, in her 40s, and her care worker dead in a flat in Townhill Park on Thursday.

Children and families who have regular contact with social workers can expect higher standards of care and better communication thanks to a new set of promises from council chiefs.

Three care home workers who encouraged residents to fight and racially abuse each other were jailed for six months each today. Over the course of a year the three systematically preyed on the mentally and physically vulnerable, London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

{mosimage}Eulalee Hall, 51, from Highbury, 31-year-old Noleen Bailey, from Haringey, and Glendeen Nedd, 36, of Walthamstow, variously admitted six counts of ill-treating patients and one of wilful neglect.

The three were arrested after their “humiliating” treatment of residents was secretly filmed on a mobile phone by a colleague.

Passing sentence, Judge Alan Pardoe QC told the trio that those under their care needed to be looked after with ‘skill and dedication’. “There can be no excuse for the verbal abuse of the mentally disabled, still less the cruel ill-treatment of them,” the judge said.

The court heard that the now closed Medina Road residential care home in Holloway, north London, was run by Craegmoor plc for Islington and Camden council. Its lone male patient was never targeted, but care for the three women residents was a different matter.

Janine Sheff, prosecuting, showed the court some of the mobile phone footage. In one clip, Hall could be seen encouraging a Down’s syndrome sufferer to kick a deaf and autistic patient. The barrister said separate video footage pictured Bailey and Nedd laughing hysterically as they encouraged the Down’s syndrome sufferer to call the third woman resident they were supposed to be looking after a “white bitch”.

A care home at the centre of a police investigation into allegations that residents were poisoned has been ordered to close, it has been revealed. Rachel and Leigh Baker, who run Parkfields residential care home in Butleigh, Somerset, were arrested following the death of Lucy Cox, 97, on New Year’s Day.

Physical inactivity costs the UK health service in excess of £1 billion every year, suggests research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.