The largest health service employees’ union, UNISON has this week threatened ‘strong resistance’ to proposals set out last week by the Health Minister, Michael McGimpsey to pay off staff across all four health trusts as part of a three-year efficiency savings’ initiative.

OLDER people living in Northern Ireland last year failed to claim over £1.2 million in benefits, according to latest figures.

Hundreds of community sector jobs could be at risk due to the failure of the Department of Social Development to approve funding for Neighbourhood Renewal schemes, the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action has warned.

A new multi-agency team has been set up in Northern Ireland to monitor the most dangerous sexual and violent offenders after they are released from prison.

THE HUMAN rights of 150 vulnerable, severely disabled patients at Muckamore Abbey Hospital must not be compromised by government proposals to resettle them into community care.

THE SIMON Community has called on the Government to protect the vulnerable and marginalised of society in the current economic climate.

Crosscare, the social care agency, is to close a 14-bed night shelter for homeless men in Dublin.

A VACCINATION programme against cervical cancer will be available in schools in Larne Borough next month, according to the Northern Health and Social Care Trust.

MENTAL HEALTH problems cost the economy more than €3 billion in 2006, or 2 per cent of Gross National Product (GNP), a new report has found. Meanwhile, the percentage of health funding spent on mental health services has halved since the 1980s.

Pam Arnsberger, professor and researcher at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa’s School of Social Work, has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for Senior Researchers at Queens University in Northern Ireland to study and evaluate outcomes of consumer-based caregiver models of service delivery for the elderly.