THE mother of the Inverness teenager who murdered 17-year-old Joshua Mitchell by stabbing him in the heart had repeatedly asked social workers to help her son.

A senior hospital manager has been suspended after a laptop containing the unencrypted personal data of more than 20,000 patients was stolen, a health trust admitted yesterday.

Fewer criminals in Scotland should be locked up in prisons, the long-awaited independent review of penal policy is expected to recommend.

A campaign to raise awareness of Scotland’s National Care Standards was launched with a dramatic flourish today. As well as a TV advert, the campaign will feature a touring theatre production which will visit day centres and care homes throughout Scotland.

Funding for Scotland’s only specialist domestic abuse court is to be doubled to £1.2m, allowing 500 more cases to be handled this way and improving the handling of other cases in mainstream courts.

A charity inspired by the actor Paul Newman claims it has been unable to send seriously ill children on holiday in Scotland because it faces too much red tape and high registration fees from the country’s care sector watchdog.

The English-based Over the Wall charity had planned to hold a residential camp next month at Glenalmond College in Perth for more than 80 children, aged five to 17.

However, the charity has been told by the Care Commission, which regulates the care sector in Scotland, that legislation north of the border means it must register as a care home if it wants to proceed. This means it will face registration fees of about £4000, which will impinge greatly on its limited funds.

Organisers with the charity also claim the lengthy process of applying to hold camps in Scotland is an “additional pressure” for the volunteers who run it.

Over the Wall has now scrapped plans for a week-long camp for 60 seriously ill children at the Perthshire venue. It now plans to bus them almost 350 miles to another camp near Kidderminster in the Midlands. It claims, however, that it will still be allowed to hold a camp for 60 siblings of the children at Glenalmond.

MALE nurses were allowed to carry on working despite evidence they had accessed child pornography, the deputy head of the official nursing watchdog claimed last night.

The Scottish Government could be forced to pay back millions of pounds as part of the probe into the fiasco surrounding the collapse of child care provider One Plus.

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A charity  worker who stole more than £1000 from the cancer shop she helped run has been spared jail. Hard-up Alexis Hughes, 40, pocketed the takings because she was struggling to clothe her kids.