Children’s services departments are paying £100m a year over the odds on contracts with companies providing fostering and residential care services, it has been claimed.

A specialist centre which helps women recover from mental health problems caused by sexual abuse could be shut down.

The body of a 67-year-old man has been found following a fire at a private nursing home in Hampshire. Emergency services were called to Kitnocks House in Curdridge, near Southampton, on Thursday night.

TWO young women filmed their sickening abuse of old people to entertain their friends. A court was told how the two former care home workers tormented their victims, both suffering from severe dementia, pinching them, pulling and contorting their faces, pushing a mobile phone at one woman’s face and putting their fingers in the mouth of another.

The deputy manager of a care home where a young resident choked to death on a ham sandwich was secretly doing another job at the time, a court was told today.