The Mental Health Alliance delegates at the Labour Party conference criticised the governments new mental health changes. Speaking at the Mental Health Alliance (MHA) Fringe Event, Marcel Vige, Manager of Diverse Minds at MIND, focused on the challenge presented by the relationship between mental health and Black and Ethnic Minority (BME) communities. He highlighted evidence from the Caribbean census that demonstrated the over-representation of these groups in terms of mental health problems.

Primary care trusts and mental health services must work harder to ensure they meet end-of-year targets for adolescents, the Government is expected to say in a forthcoming report. The draft progress report on the implementation of the mental health standard in the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services, seen by Young People Now, is due to be published in October by the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills. It is aimed at child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), primary care trusts (PCTs), local authorities, CAMHS commissioners, and strategic health authorities.

Pensioners are being stripped of home services they need to live independent lives, say support groups. Pressure social services budgets means fewer pensioners are now eligible to receive specialist support at home, such as cleaning, transport, washing and dressing. Norfolk County Council has been highlighted by national charity Counsel And Care for raising its eligibility criteria to the two top levels of substantial and critical needs. That means only people whose lives are threatened, who have significant health problems or are unable to carry out the majority of their personal care or domestic routines are still entitled to specialist social care.

The Home Office has admitted it breached the human rights of a “vulnerable” inmate who died in a women’s prison. Sarah Campbell, 18, died of an overdose of anti-depressants at HMP Styal, in Cheshire, in January 2003. Her mother Pauline sued the Prison Service under the Human Rights Act and the Home Office settled out of court.

Penn Hall School in Wolverhampton has beaten off competition from more than 250 schools across the UK to be crowned 2006 Kielder Challenge Cup Final champions. The Kielder Challenge is a unique national outdoor adventure competition for teams of eight 13 to 16 year olds with and without learning, sensory and physical disabilities. More than 250 teams entered the competition earlier this year and each took part in a regional heat at a country park in their area but only six teams got to take part in the Cup Final.

{mosimage} An independent report into the treatment of Michael Stone, who murdered Lin Russell and her daughter Megan 10 years ago, found there had been a catalogue of errors in his care before the attack, it emerged today. Stone – who had a personality disorder and displayed psychotic symptoms linked to drug and alcohol misuse – was given three life sentences for the killings and the attempted murder of Megan’s sister Josie, then aged nine, in Kent in 1996.

A “reckless” mistake caused the adverse drug trial reactions at Northwick Park, according to a Channel 4 investigation. Documents obtained by the programme Dispatches revealed drug TGN1412 was administered 15 times more quickly than it had been in animal safety studies. Six men were left seriously ill after receiving the drug.

The man who bludgeoned Lin and Megan Russell to death in 1996 told a nurse he wanted to kill someone five days before the murders, a report has said. Michael Stone is currently serving life for the killings and for the attempted murder of Megan’s sister Josie in Kent. Before the murders he received support for mental health problems and drug addiction and spent time on probation.

{mosimage} The special police and immigration service unit set up to locate the more than 1,000 foreign prisoners released without consideration of deportation was quietly disbanded three months ago, the Home Office confirmed yesterday. The Portsmouth based unit was needed primarily to locate and detain the 43 most serious offenders – those convicted of murder, manslaughter, rape or sexual offences against children. Seven have still to be traced and one of these is believed to have died abroad. It remains unclear whether nearly 500 of the prisoners have been located.

“We have got the vast majority of them now under lock and key,” the home secretary, John Reid, said. “Some of them, we think, may be dead or out of the country. The resources that we put into tracing the others – about 40 or 50 of them – have now come to the end of their useful life in their present configuration,” he added. “But it doesn’t mean that the general efforts have been stopped.”

Private health centres are being paid tens of millions of pounds by the NHS for operations that are not happening. Hardly any of the independent centres set up under generous contracts are meeting their targets, an investigation by Health Service Journal has found.