ALMOST 150 of Scotland’s most vulnerable kids have died in just six years despite being registered with the Children’s Reporter, we can reveal today.

THE City of Edinburgh Council is facing a soaring bill for drafting in agency workers to cover staff shortages in care homes, it emerged today.

Social work chiefs in the Highlands have appealed for home-care customers to be patient during a period of reform.

Cornerstone chief Edel Harris promised last night to work with civil service and local government officials struggling with restricted budgets to provide services to people with learning disabilities.

A community rated the most deprived in Glasgow is to get a new £9 million health and wellbeing centre. The project in Saracen Street, which is due to open in 2012, will replace the existing health centre in Denmark Street which was built more than 30 years ago.

CONTROVERSIAL plans to contract out the care of nearly 800 vulnerable people were in turmoil today after the chief executive of the city council dramatically called a halt to the scheme.

SCOTLAND suffered 53,000 reports of domestic violence over the last year, equivalent to more than 1,000 a week. The figure was branded ‘totally unacceptable’ by the government minister responsible for tackling the problem.

A care assistant has described how firefighters desperately pulled bodies out of a fire that had ripped through a care home killing 14 pensioners.

A PETITION, prompted by the case of Dundee tot Brandon Muir and calling for the introduction of a “safe guardian” law, took its first steps through parliament yesterday.

Health, police and social work professionals will gather in Paisley on Wednesday to discuss ways in which they can try and help people with drink and drug problems get on the road to recovery.