Proposals to outsource residential children’s homes in Essex are to go before councillors tomorrow. The council’s cabinet will be asked to vote on plans that could see seven children’s homes either sold to private providers or closed altogether.

A young offender institution (YOI) in Yorkshire has been criticised for carrying out routine strip-searches of children despite technological alternatives being available.

This autumn, the public sector union Unison held its first national conference exclusively for members in the voluntary sector, where its membership has soared by 50% in the last six years and now totals more than 60,000.

Uncertainty over the future of training and improvement support could put the children’s residential sector at serious risk, Sir Paul Ennals has warned.

More than 39,000 children in England are subject to a child protection plan, according to latest government statistics.

Directors of children’s services are to take a greater role in managing public health, the government has announced in its latest health white paper.

Tim Loughton, children’s minister, promotes the use of volunteers in child protection work as “an additional resource that, at a time when we are well stretched, it makes a lot of sense to explore” (Minister calls for more social work volunteers, 29 October). “Financially it is a sensible thing to do,” he says.

A day centre offering specialist dementia care has closed. The Hillings day care centre, part of The Hillings Care Home in Grenville Way, Eaton Socon, St Neots, shut its doors yesterday after HealthCare Homes, which runs the centre, decided not to renew its contract with Cambridgeshire County Council.

A CARE worker who was forced to take early retirement after being seriously injured by a mental health patient has lost her long-running legal battle for compensation.

People need to be able to protect themselves against the loss of almost all their assets and their homes if they need long-term care, according to Andrew Dilnot, head of the government’s inquiry into a new system for funding social care.