Labour is making the fight against child poverty a central aim because the party feels “outrage” at the waste of lives, unlike the Tories who pay “lip service” to the government’s commitments, a senior cabinet minister said yesterday.

The government has ordered a review of how schools should educate the country’s estimated 300,000 dyslexic children, after admitting that many are being left to flounder without tailored teaching.

Survivors of child abuse may be more likely to kill themselves as adults because their early experiences change the way a critical gene works in the brain, according to new research that could shed light on the biology of suicide.

Foster carers are urgently needed in Derbyshire for children over five years old, according to figures released by a children’s charity.

AN innocent care worker was shot dead as she walked into a “Wild West” shoot out between two teen­agers, the Old Bailey heard yesterday.

Totnes hospital worker Stephen Aitkenhead sexually assaulted a disabled woman as she sat at home in her wheelchair, a crown court heard.

Social services bosses have been forced to make an embarrassing apology after a frail 81-year-old was branded potentially dangerous by staff who were supposed to be helping her.

A decision to close three residential centres in East Sussex will see 10 disabled people having to move home, the county council has said.

The homelessness service provided by Preston City Council is ‘good’ but with ‘uncertain’ prospects for further improvement, according to an independent report released today by the Audit Commission.

Mike Wardle, chief executive of the General Social Care Council, on how social workers must respond to the increasing trend for individualised services