PRIVATE home-care workers are being “exploited”, and effectively paid below the minimum wage with little or no training.

Scotlands top carers and social service projects have been recognised at Care Accolades 2010, the prestigious award ceremony celebrating the very best of the care sector across the country.

Some local authorities are now working to an updated doomsday financial forecast. According to the chief executive of the nation’s largest council – Glasgow’s George Black – a realistic scenario is a 20% cut and the impact on the public would be devastating.

Administrators for two Scottish nursing homes are looking for buyers for the businesses, as their elderly residents begin searches for new homes, after the company behind the homes went into administration.

The architect of Scotland’s flagship free elderly care policy today admits it should be reviewed amid massive pressure on public funding – but also calls for a fundamental examination of the UK’s free health service.

Masinde, a 22-year-old refugee from Burundi, has been in Glasgow since 2003. She was abandoned at Central Station, aged 15, when the man who had helped her come to Scotland vanished, saying he would be back in ‘a few minutes’.

Scotland’s only respite care centre for people with multiple sclerosis is to close later this year. The decision to shut Leuchie House near North Berwick was taken following an 18-month review to assess whether it met the needs of those living with MS.

SEVENTY-FIVE elderly residents are facing being made homeless after the company that owns their nursing homes went into administration.

Illegal gangmasters are expanding into new industries such as care homes, construction and the restaurant trade to take advantage of a loophole in the law.

MSPs have voted to allow women to benefit from a Stirlingshire care home that has been restricted to men since it opened 150 years ago.