The government has withdrawn funding from the Belfast-based Rape Crisis Centre. However, the Department of Health said funding for services to victims of rape and sexual violence would continue. It said the £60,000 previously given to the centre will now be given to the health boards.

The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety has announced that it will no longer provide funding for the Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Centre (RC&SAC). However, it has said that it will continue to provide funding for services to victims of rape and sexual violence and will ensure that this money is directed into quality services.

The Mental Health Commission is now faced with another problem if it wants to begin operating mental health tribunals on the target date of 1 November. The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has advised consultant psychiatrists not to sign a contract with the Commission to provide independent medical examinations of involuntary patients. Mr Fintan Hourihan, Director of Industrial Relations with the IMO, said the contracts are inferior to the consultant common contract.

A high risk convicted sex offender who poses a serious threat to children is on the run in Northern Ireland. The PSNI have taken the unusual step of warning the public about 35-year-old Paul Hunter Redpath. They said he should not be approached as he poses a serious threat to vulnerable children and young people.

A long running dispute between two families in west Belfast has led to 600 separate incidents ranging from threats to kill to murder, police have said.  In the latest incident, an unoccupied house was set on fire. Earlier, petrol bombs were thrown through the conservatory window of the house at Dermott Hill Park in Ballymurphy at about 0330 BST.

Firefighters have rescued 18 elderly residents, including a 104-year-old, from at a nursing home near Portadown. The blaze broke out in the kitchen of the Rathowen Nursing Home at about 2245 BST. Firefighter Walter Johnston said most of the residents were still in bed when they arrived to discover a “fairly extensive” fire.

Social Services Minister, Paul Goggins, has launched a strategy to boost training throughout the social services workforce and improve safety. Under the Personal Social Services Development and Training Strategy, all staff, for the first time, will have to undertake training regularly, to maintain their registration with the Northern Ireland Social Care Council. The Council will then be able to monitor that they are practising safely. The Strategy ensures that people will be supported, through comprehensive training, to maintain those high standards of service.

More than half of the sex abuse victims surveyed by a Northern Ireland charity said they had experienced mental health problems. More than a third said they had been sexually abused for at least six years. The survey was carried out by the Nexus Institute, which provides counselling for adult victims.

A reference card for mental health services in the south of the Ireland has been drawn up in a bid to prevent suicides. Just a week after an inquest into the drownings of a young mother and her two daughters branded the social services a disgrace, the Health Services Executive (HSE) South said a range of measures for suicide prevention and for those affected by suicide have been developed. “People who feel they are in crisis for whatever reason, need to know they are not alone,” Sean McCarthy, Mental Health Resource Officer with the HSE South, said.

Thousands of people in Northern Ireland risk death or disability because they do not know enough about strokes, a leading medical charity has warned. NI Chest Heart and Stroke has labelled the findings of a new survey “shocking”. Eighty-four people in 100 did not think a high-fat diet was a risk and just 13% understood the danger of too much salt.