Bradford Metropolitan District Council has introduced mobile technology in an effort to increase the time its 75 social workers spend helping vulnerable children and adults.

Violence in prisons has soared almost 600% in 10 years, according to official figures. The number of violent incidents spiralled from 2,342 in 1996 to 13,771 in 2005, Home Secretary John Reid disclosed in a letter to the Liberal Democrats.

Media criticism of Essex social workers has created recruitment problems for the service, a chief officer admitted this week. Doctor Carey Bennet, recently appointed head of the county council’s new schools, children and families service, told the Yellow Advertiser the press coverage made it harder to recruit social workers.

Mentally-ill patients and their families need more protection under the Mental Health Bill, MPs and peers have said. The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) said the Bill, currently with the House of Lords, needs amending.

An independent inquiry has been demanded into the handling of a child abuse case that has disturbing echoes of the Victoria Climbie scandal. A four-year-old with cerebral palsy was handed back to her parents by social workers despite foster carers’ grave concerns.

Over seven weeks from 1 February to 18 March last year she suffered the worst abuse experts said they had seen.

{mosimage}Kimberley Harte, 23, and Samuel Duncan, 26, kicked their daughter repeatedly in the groin and locked her in a toilet for 49 days, only weeks after she had been allowed home by Westminster City Council social services.

The Maida Vale couple, who forced her to eat her own faeces and take cold baths, have been found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and this week face possible life sentences.

Today Labour councillors in Westminster demanded a full independent inquiry into the council’s handling of the case.

Labour group leader Paul Dimoldenberg said: “The full circumstances of the council’s decision to let the child return home need to be investigated thoroughly so that, if mistakes were made, they can be avoided in the future.”

The former RAF Base at Coltishall, near Norwich, is being transferred to the Home Office as part of our efforts to expand detention capacity.

Three men who used an internet chat room to hatch a plot to rape two young sisters have been jailed. They made “chilling references to the Soham murders” on a free website, Southwark Crown Court heard.

{mosimage}David Beavan, 42, of Bransgore, Hants, Alan Hedgcock, 41, of Twickenham, and Robert Mayers, 42, of Warrington, were found guilty of conspiracy to rape.

They were given indeterminate sentences with an 11-year tariff for Beavan and eight-year tariffs for the other two.

Jurors heard how the men, who had never met, came across each other in an incest chatroom where Hedgcock told Beavan he wanted to abuse two sisters, aged 13 and 14.

Beavan said he was interested in the plan, which involved pouncing on them as they walked through woods to school.

Mayers was later recruited via the internet.

Passing sentence on Monday Judge Geoffry Rivlin QC said the chatroom logs of their discussions about the plan were “most lurid and disgusting”.