SNP Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon has pledged extra funding for free personal care for pensioners. The payments, which have remained static at £145 a week since they were introduced in 2002, will now be increased in line with inflation every year.

A national festival for young carers across Scotland will now take place after a £400,000 funding package was announced. Minister for Public Health Shona Robison said £200,000 would establish the festival to give young carers a break from their responsiblities and an opportunity to come together and air their views and concerns.

A programme to tackle sectarian behaviour in children as young as three could be launched in Scotland. A seminar in Edinburgh will gauge opinion on whether such a campaign is needed. It follows a successful campaign in Northern Ireland where children of that age were found to be using sectarian remarks.

Highland Council is poised to make a major U-turn by building five new care homes. The proposal will be put to the full council at the end of this month.

Forty care workers preyed either sexually or physically on Scottish children in what is one of Britain’s biggest abuse scandals, a report will reveal today.

{mosimage}A three-year investigation has found “a significant core of staff” at Kerelaw residential unit in Ayrshire were directly involved. They preyed on some of the most troubled and troubling youngsters in the country, sometimes in the full knowledge of colleagues and superiors amid “a culture of fear and collusion”.

Glasgow City Council, which ran Kerelaw, will today publish its first full report on what happened at the school. It will also issue a chilling warning that some of the workers it believes were involved are still working in Scotland’s care sector.

The report, a copy of which has been seen by The Herald, reveals that far more members of staff than ever before suggested were caught up in the abuse.

The report says: “The investigation shows that there was a significant core of staff, around 40 individuals, directly involved in the abuse of young people.

“However, a far larger number of staff had knowledge and information about abuse and potential abuse, and were unwilling or unable to address this abuse.”

Council investigators also found fault with senior social work and education managers in the authority. The report says: “It is also clear that there have been deficiencies in the quantity, quality, visibility and assertiveness of external management.”

Thousands of chronically-ill patients are to have their prescription charges scrapped by the Scottish Executive in a major victory for the high-profile campaign led by The Scotsman.

As damaged as they were damaging, the children of Kerelaw made the easiest of victims. For years pupils at the school – effectively Scotland’s biggest lock-up for troubled youngsters – had spoken of ferocious bullying, beatings and even rape.

Ministers have been urged to provide more money for affordable housing after official figures revealed homelessness is still on the rise. A parliamentary answer by Stewart Maxwell, the communities minister, showed the number of people registering as homeless stood at 36,625 in 2005-6, nearly 2,000 up on the year before.

About one in 10 Scots have gone without medicine, food or electricity because of poverty, according to a study. Nine per cent of people who participated in the survey said they had gone hungry.

Children with dyslexia in Scottish schools will be able to sit electronic exams rather than the traditional paper version after a successful pilot scheme.