Birmingham City Council has been ordered to make “robust and sustained” improvements to its children’s social care services following the deaths of 15 youngsters from abuse and neglect.

The manager of a Somerset care home has been charged with murdering three of her elderly residents. Rachel Baker, 44, a registered nurse, was charged in connection with the deaths of Francis Hay, Marion Alder and Lucy Cox at Parkfields care home near Glastonbury. She is also facing 11 counts of possessing a controlled drug, thought to be morphine.

Eight local authorities were judged “inadequate” for safeguarding in Ofsted’s annual performance assessments during December. Janaki Mahadevan investigates what steps each authority has since taken to improve child protection.

Police are investigating allegations of abuse at an elderly people’s home in Bristol. Five former care workers at Kingsmead Lodge in Shirehampton are understood to have given statements on practices that they claim to have seen at the care home.

MENTAL health patients have fled from a Manchester hospital ward four times in four weeks. The M.E.N has been contacted by the anxious relatives and friends of three patients on Oxford ward, at Manchester Royal Infirmary, concerned about poor security on the unit.

Many people are not getting the social care services that meet their needs fully according to a report from the Commission for Social Care Inspection. It also claims that in many areas services are not meeting the transformation vision that was set out by the Department of Health.

No quick fix exists for a shortage of social workers in West Sussex – said to be the main reason why the county’s child-protection services were labelled ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted inspectors.

Families and patients face a postcode lottery when it comes to selling their homes to pay for care home costs, new research has revealed.