A nurse and a chef who work at a residential care home in Somerset have been arrested and questioned over suspicions a 97-year-old was poisoned. A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police said the elderly woman died at the Parkfields home at Butleigh near Glastonbury on New Year’s Day.

The police are to set up “retail jails” on high streets and in busy shopping malls to detain yobs and other offenders for up to four hours under Home Office proposals published yesterday.

In almost everyone’s life there will come a point when they need support and help with every day living. The ravages of old age, physical or mental disability in both adults and children, mean hundreds of carers across Wearside are needed each day to make sure there is always someone on hand.

Social care workers across the Reading area have been attacked on an astonishing 379 occasions since January 2005. A Reading Chronicle investigation has revealed that on average one person is attacked every day while doing their job.

Payment by Results (PbR), the funding system for a significant portion of NHS care in England, must adapt and change if it is to improve patient care, says the Chairman of the BMA’s Consultants’ Committee, Dr Jonathan Fielden, when responding to the consultation on PbR1, launched today (15 March 2007).

Social care for vulnerable people is being squeezed as a result of NHS deficits, according to the Local Government Association. The LGA says costs are being shunted to social services departments as the NHS in England aims to balance its books. A survey of 95 councils which run social services found two thirds say NHS debts are affecting them.

{mosimage}The Department of Health said the NHS and local authorities had to work together for patients’ benefit. Forty per cent of the councils surveyed by the LGA said the knock on effect of the financial pressure in the NHS was worse than in previous years.

When the organisations were asked what the NHS had done in their area to affect them, half said beds had been closed, and a quarter said there had been a reduction in district nurse numbers. Another 14% said there were increased waiting times for NHS services, such as admission to hospital while 13% said community hospitals had been closed.

In addition, more than a third of the councils in the LGA survey say they are having to take responsibility for more cases normally dealt with by the NHS. The continuing care of elderly patients is the main area where responsibilities overlap.

Almost a quarter (24%) say the local NHS is failing to fund agreed or joint services. This might involve cuts to nursing services, meaning home helps have to take on tasks such as changing wound dressings or checking insulin levels. Funding disputes have increased, the councils reported.

The LGA says there is deep concern on the ground about the trend towards cost-shunting and its impact on already stretched council social care services. Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, chairman of the LGA, said councils did not want to start a war of words with the NHS. But he added: “There are grave financial pressures on both councils and the NHS that are starting to impact on the quality of service.”

In response to the report in today’s Guardian announcing the first trials of the NHS electronic summary care record, Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chair of the BMA’s IT committee said:

There is a major breakthrough in reducing waiting times and creating choice in the NHS with the opening today by the Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, of the first Independent Sector Treatment Centre in London.

The government is launching a plan to tackle obesity by helping parents recognise the warning signs that their children are overweight. It follows a claim by the Medical Research Council that many people do not know their children are overweight.

{mosimage}The Department of Health has pledged to do more in the next year to support parents in encouraging healthy eating and physical activity.

But critics said the government had not acted quickly enough to tackle obesity. The government has set a target of halting the yearly rise in rates of obesity in the under-11s by 2010.

But Dr Susan Jebb and colleagues from the Human Nutrition Research unit at the MRC found several major barriers were preventing families from adopting healthy lifestyles even though they knew the importance of a healthy diet and exercise.

Their review of the evidence showed people have a poor perception of their own weight status and are even worse at spotting when their child is overweight or obese. Busy lifestyles, irregular working hours and fears that having a healthy lifestyle is too difficult to achieve also put people off healthy choices.

The National Autistic Society (NAS) has launched a brand new web resource, Signpost, tailored specifically for individuals with autism, their parents and carers, and aimed at providing them with vital information that could change their lives.