Two Scottish councils are looking at merging several key departments, it has emerged.

To ease handover of the Care Commission’s work to the new scrutiny body that comes into existence on 1 April 2011, the Care Commission will implement single quality theme inspections for low risk services from October 2010.

When is a rise really a cut? Politicians are very sensitive about “the C word”, especially when elections are in the offing. Gordon Brown spent an entire summer avoiding it.

A new exhibition of photographs reflecting young people’s images of their lives in care has gone on display in Aberdeen.

NURSERY education for three-year-olds in the Borders will not now be provided because of £2.45million of council cuts.

“Eligibility criteria” are used by social work staff to decide which vulnerable people will get their needs met.  New guidance was agreed by COSLA and the Scottish Government in 2009.  

A Broughty Ferry nursing home has been given the lowest mark possible in an official inspection report by Scotland’s care watchdog.

CONCERNS have been raised that patients in the region with HIV are receiving “an increasingly unsatisfactory and potentially substandard provision of care”.

A MUM who ripped large chunks of hair from the heads of two social workers, has been ordered to perform 80 hours of Community Service and to pay her victims £150 each in compensation.

COMPLAINTS to South Lanarkshire’s social work department fell last year despite an increase in general enquiries from the public in the local area.