Labour’s nanny state is to spread its reach to make unprecedented inroads into the lives of families and teenagers. Unborn children are to get social workers as part of the Government’s scheme to improve the lives of a million people caught up with unemployment, crime, drugs and anti-social behaviour.

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.

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.

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.

Work has started on a new £9.2m mental health unit for the elderly at the Great Western Hospital site in Swindon. Bulldozers moved in to clear the site in May and contractors have been busy laying the foundations for the new unit in recent weeks. It is hoped the project will be completed by the end of next year. The unit, which is being built by the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust (AWP), will provide services for older adults with mental health problems, including in-patient beds.