Asylum-seekers were put at risk by the Government’s much-criticised policy of dispersing them around the country, according to a Home Office report which the department refused to publish.

Directors of adult social services have added their weight to concerns about the growing funding shortfalls for services to older people. According to John Dixon, vice president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS):

Recent statistics show that 22,000 people die in Britain each year through alcohol-related illness, and there are 350,000 serious drug users.
Increasingly, the answer for many is costly rehab in a private clinic, or NHS treatment which costs the State millions.
But a new book argues that addiction is not a medical condition which can be cured, but simply a question of moral weakness.
So is it right? Here, two former broadsheet newspaper editors – who both admit to having addictions – take up the cudgels.

Responding to the publication today of guidance from the Department of Health on health clearance for new healthcare workers the BMA said it welcomed any guidance that would ultimately improve the safety of patients but that further clarification was needed as to how it will work in practice.

A senior council official who has been at the centre of controversy over a child subjected to horrific abuse by her parents has been appointed to head the official agency that promotes good practice in social work.
Julie Jones, currently director of children’s services for Westminster in central London, is to become chief executive of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (Scie). Her appointment by the body, which has independent charitable status but is government-funded, has been endorsed by the Department of Health’s director-general of social care.

The sister of a disabled patient found stabbed to death with her care worker in a Southampton flat has spoken of her shock at the discovery. Police found Sue Hale, in her 40s, and her care worker dead in a flat in Townhill Park on Thursday.

A nurse and a chef who work at a residential care home in Somerset have been arrested and questioned over suspicions a 97-year-old was poisoned. A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police said the elderly woman died at the Parkfields home at Butleigh near Glastonbury on New Year’s Day.