Measures to tackle rising public health problems are being scrapped or postponed because the funds have not materialised, public health chiefs say. An extra £211m was to be ploughed into projects this year to tackle smoking, obesity and sexual health. But public health directors say just a fraction was coming through because of the deficits crisis and the push risked “never getting off the ground”.

Hospitals and GP surgeries face shortages of key medical equipment after NHS workers decided yesterday to stage the first national strikes in the health service since 1988. As anger increases over the policy of using private companies to provide NHS services, Unison, the public services union, announced that its members at NHS Logistics had voted by 74 per cent to strike over the £1.6 billion sale of their network to the German haulage firm DHL.

Twenty-eight convicted sexual offenders are continuing to serve as members of the Armed Forces, according to Ministry of Defence records. The bulk are members of the Army, which has 16 soldiers who have been convicted of sexual offences. There are seven in the Royal Navy and five in the Royal Air Force.

Prison inmates should be given “real work” opportunities with full employment rights, according to research carried out by criminal justice experts in Birmingham. A report written by Prof David Wilson and Dr Azrini Wahidin, of UCE Birmingham, suggests the Prison Service is missing the chance to capitalise on real work schemes for prisoners.

Salisbury College has been warned to expect the “full wrath of the local learning disabled community” over the coming weeks and months as campaigners step-up their fight to get axed college courses reinstated. Members of the Learning Disability Support Group say they are “fed up of quietly being discriminated against” and are demanding the college reinstates around 115 disabled students whose Pathways courses were scrapped at the end of last term because of changes to the way funding is provided.

Children and young people receiving care services have set out 50 key messages on what makes a good service and what they want, in a report launched by the Children’s Rights Director for England.

A counsellor who brainwashed her client into giving her more than £200,000 has been jailed for five years. Mary McCullagh, 59, who was living in Fordingbridge, Hants, told Nicole Anderson she would return the cash once she inherited a fictitious £9m estate. Miss Anderson had been referred to the practice in Bournemouth in 1997.

Social care and the drive to improve standards should be centre stage in the Government’s bid to tackle social exclusion, the General Social Care Council (GSCC) has said. Commenting on the new Cabinet Office plan to tackle social exclusion, the GSCC said the positive emphasis in the plan on a co-ordinated approach spanning adults and children’s services is a step in the right direction that social care is uniquely-placed to take forward.

Directors of care services fully support the government’s drive to provide more preventive services for young people and their families and to nip in the bud more harmful behaviours that might otherwise develop later on. The only concern Association of Directors of Social Services (ADSS) Children and Families Committee co-chair Paul Fallon expressed was over the dangers of stigmatising all children in council care or young parents.

Opposition is growing to county council plans to close 14 day care units for the elderly across Suffolk including those in the Lowestoft and Waveney area. Union leaders have also launched a stinging attack on the proposals. The centres, including Blyford House and Stradbroke Court in Lowestoft and others in Waveney, could be shut and the pensioners who use them asked to attend new facilities under plans being considered by Suffolk County Council.