NHS Direct has welcomed Sir Ara Darzi’s report – ‘Simple and Direct Access to Emergency and Urgent Care Services Across London’ and hopes the potential reform outlined in the report will provide the opportunity for it to play an even more significant role in the health of Londoners.

Gordon Brown today made good on his promise to put the interests of children to the fore as he unveiled his government’s legislative plans. The prime minister unveiled bills to protect children in care and reform the child maintenance system, as well as revealing plans to seize millions of pounds from dormant bank accounts to spend on youth centres and community schemes.

{mosimage}The Children in Care Bill is intended to give looked after children the same life chances as their peers and a greater say in decisions regarding their future. The aim is to boost their achievements, partly by trying to ensure that education is not disrupted by children having to change schools in the run-up to GCSE-year exams. The bill, which covers England and Wales, also states that young people should not be forced out of care before they are ready and that supervision will be strengthened so they are visited regularly.

Some local authorities will take part in a pilot scheme to test a different model of organising social care by commissioning services from social work practices – modelled on GP practices. Mr Brown also announced plans to set up a new child maintenance and enforcement commission, to replace the discredited child support agency.

The child maintenance and other payments bill – which will apply to England, Wales and Scotland – also aims to simplify the process for assessing how much parents should pay, and give parents freedom to come to an arrangement without involving the authorities.

Under the unclaimed assets bill, cash in bank accounts that has been inactive for at least 15 years will be “recycled” for use in communities. However, there will be a “reclaim fund” so that people do not lose out if they were merely not aware an account was still open.

In England, the money – thought to total more than £400m – will be focused on youth services, while devolved administrations in the rest of the UK could set their own spending priorities.

Children and young people in the capital are being forgotten and failed, because the Government has failed to make sexual exploitation a policing priority, failed to ensure new legislation is used to bring child abusers to justice and failed to provide long term funding for services.

{mosimage}Despite a shocking Barnardo’s report published two years ago warning of the dangers to 1000 of London’s most vulnerable youngsters, their situation has barely improved. In a new report, ‘Forgotten and Failed’, Barnardo’s examines what has happened to protect children in the capital from sexual exploitation since the 2005 report.

Barnardo’s is working in partnership with the Metropolitan Police and Local Authorities throughout London, but despite best efforts only three specialist services exist in the whole of the capital.

And despite the fact that the Sexual Offences Act of 2003 introduced three new offences specifically designed to prosecute adults who sexually exploit children and young people, the situation does not appear to have improved significantly.

According to the Government’s own figures, despite 425 recorded offences of ‘sexual grooming’, there were no prosecutions recorded in the whole of England and Wales, and only 35 prosecutions for ‘abusing children by prostitution’ between 2003 and the end of 2005 – it would seem that the new legislation has just not succeeded in bring more perpetrators to justice.

‘Nurses in England have earned the right to a fair pay deal,’ insists the Royal College of Nursing. Pressure has increased for English nurses to be given their pay award in full after politicians in Northern Ireland opted to give their nurses the entire 2.5%.

New evidence published on bmj.com today confirms that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) should not be prescribed to older women who are many years past menopause to help prevent chronic conditions such as heart disease.