The most infirm elderly and severely disabled Islington residents are now more likely to be forced out of their homes and into residential care – to save money, it is claimed.

Millions more people will be forced to care for elderly and disabled relatives because of a lack of investment, disability campaigners have said. The Disability Rights Commission (DRC) estimates that the number of unpaid carers will increase from six million to nine million over the next 25 years.

The quality of youth services is gradually improving according to a new report published by Ofsted. Building on the best: overview of local authority youth services 2005-06 reveals that a greater proportion of youth services were judged as good or better in 2005/06 than in previous years.

The UK has been accused of failing its children, as it comes bottom of a league table for child well-being across 21 industrialised countries. The Unicef report looked at 40 indicators including poverty, peer and family relationships and health. The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Finland head the list.

{mosimage}Children’s charities have condemned the findings. The government says it has made progress on child well-being through several initiatives.

Unicef – the United Nations’ children’s organisation – says the report, titled Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries, is the first study of childhood across the world’s industrialised nations.

Unicef UK executive director David Bull said all the countries had weaknesses that needed to be addressed. “By comparing the performance of countries we see what is possible with a commitment to supporting every child to fulfil his or her full potential,” he said.

Lawyers must take a back seat to policy makers when it comes to counter-terrorism, the Lord Chancellor is expected to warn. Lord Falconer of Thoroton – due to deliver a keynote speech at a major conference on politics and terrorism – will say that counter-terror measures must always be lawful.

The civil justice system is in crisis, according to one of Britain’s top county court judges. Judge Paul Collins, London’s most senior county court judge, has told Radio 4’s Law in Action programme that serious errors are commonplace. He said low pay and staff shortages meant “we run the risk of bringing about a real collapse in the service”.

Changes to the rules governing cremations are unlikely to have stopped serial killer Harold Shipman, despite Government claims, according to a forensic expert. A recent letter from Harriet Harman, minister at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, said that Government plans to allow relatives to inspect certificates on the cause of death before cremation might have stopped Shipman.

A drug that lowers oestrogen levels in women with hormone-sensitive breast cancer might save more than 1,000 lives a year if it was adopted throughout the UK, new research shows. Switching from the gold-standard breast cancer treatment tamoxifen to the new drug exemestane after two or three years results in death rates falling by 17%.

A 30-year-old terminally-ill woman launched a ground-breaking right-to-die case at the high court yesterday, arguing that doctors’ refusal to give her pain-relieving treatment that will kill her violates her human rights.

Labour’s multi-billion- pound project to create the NHS’s first ever national computer system “isn’t working and isn’t going to work”, a senior insider has warned. The damning verdict on the ambitious £20 billion plans to store patients’ records, and allow people to book hospital appointments, on a central computer network has been delivered by a top executive at one of the system’s main suppliers.