Cornwall County Council is acting to reduce the number of people currently waiting to be transferred from acute hospitals by spending more than £500,000 on funding beds in care homes and community hospitals. The authority has agreed to spend £529,000 funding placements for 120 people currently blocking hospital beds in the county.

A new scheme aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence is set to be unveiled by ministers. The “sanctuary scheme” will provide money to create a room in which women

Most physiotherapy graduates have struggled to get a job this year due to NHS cutbacks, industry leaders say. A Chartered Society of Physiotherapy poll found that seven out of every 10 physios who graduated in 2006 had not yet found a job.

A psychopathic teenager who engaged in sexual activity with a fellow mental patient at a Bexhill clinic has been made the subject of an indefinite hospital order. Martin Curtis, 18, was under intensive care as an in-patient when he and the older female victim were found naked from the waist down in her bathroom by staff at the unit.

Sir Menzies Campbell will make a grab for Labour’s traditional heartlands as he pledges to make the fight against poverty central to the Liberal Democrats’ approach. The party leader will launch an assault on Gordon Brown’s means-tested benefits in a deliberate strategy to take on the Chancellor in preparation for the next General Election.

The Government’s flagship children’s centres must do much more to help teenage parents and single mothers, according to a new report. The National Audit Office (NAO) said most families who use the Sure Start children’s centres value them but the jury is still out on whether the £3.2 billion scheme represents value for money.

An independent inspectorate for immigration, similar to the chief inspector of prisons, is to be set up in an attempt to restore public confidence in the beleaguered immigration and asylum system.

An innovative new service has been funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) which will give heart failure patients much-needed, individually-tailored care. The first BHF Heart Failure Pharmacist was appointed in Northampton recently to give bespoke prescriptions and advice to heart patients with complex medical needs.

Veterans’ minister Derek Twigg has announced that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is to put up a substantial amount of money to provide funds for mental health care for former combatents.

A 37-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murdering five women found dead at sites around Ipswich. The man was arrested at his home at Trimley, near Felixstowe on