A charity believes a 60-year-old study of mental health in Scotland could hold the key to developing new treatments for conditions like Alzheimer’s.

Hundreds of vulnerable children and adults could be denied vital care if staff at one of Scotland’s largest charities vote for industrial action. Up to 600 workers at Quarriers will decide this week whether to strike over a pay disagreement, with management offering 2.5% while employees want either 3.4% or £600 – depending on which is greater.

A lobbying group yesterday issued a declaration of no confidence in Highland Council’s management and provision of services for the elderly. The Highland Senior Citizens Network has sent a leaflet to councillors and a letter to local authority chief executive Arthur McCourt outlining its concerns on the sale of council care homes, respite care and home care.

A garden designed to benefit disabled people in Kirkcaldy has been destroyed by vandals. The Kirkcaldy Sensory Impairment Centre garden, which was created and maintained by volunteers for the benefit of users, was ruined as pots and brick paving were ripped up and smashed.

A new care home is set to be created on the site of a former primary school, despite residents’ fears over traffic congestion and the building’s appearance.

Mary Castles started her career as a rent collector and now she’s collecting £102,600 as the council’s new executive director of Housing and Social Work. The Kirkshaws woman began her career in local government back in 1979 with the old Monklands District Council and has now risen to the top with North Lanarkshire.

A major breakthrough in scanning technology, which could save thousands of lives by allowing doctors to spot developing diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis at a much earlier stage, was announced by Scottish researchers yesterday.

Children handed a petition signed by more than 800 people to Jack McConnell, the First Minister, yesterday, calling for the release of a family of asylum seekers from a detention centre in Scotland.

The Executive must spend an extra £15 million to tackle Scotland’s epidemic of dementia, campaigners said yesterday. Alzheimer Scotland said that the number of people with dementia will increase by 75 per cent in 25 years, from 58,000 to 102,000 in 2031.

A former nurse who admitted tampering with panic alarms at a Scottish care home escaped a jail sentence yesterday. John Cruickshank disconnected emergency alarms at Grove Nursing Home in Kemnay, Aberdeenshire, where he was a staff nurse.