Doctors believe Scotland’s biggest city is set to face a shortage of maternity beds as the birth rate continues to defy forecasts of sharp decline. One of Glasgow’s three maternity hospitals, the Queen Mother’s at Yorkhill, is scheduled to close at some point between this year and 2009, leaving the city with capacity to deliver just 12,000 babies a year.

Some of Scotland’s leading experts on drug abuse in prisons have warned that lethal narcotics are being smuggled into the country’s jails by corrupt prison officers. Professor Neil McKeganey director of Glasgow University’s Centre for Drug Misuse Research warns today of the “very strong likelihood” that the thousands of prisoners using heroin and cannabis in prison are being supplied by officers.

A one-stop-shop – designed to complement Scottish child protection services has been launched today. The 24-hour child protection information line will give people easy access to child protection services and allow them to share concerns about a child with the most appropriate local agency.

A bid well in excess of £100,000 is to be made to the Shetland Charitable Trust to help finance the provision of personal care and home helps for islanders.

One of the most important messages from the Scottish Executive’s Changing Lives Report is that more of the same won’t do. To enable and support staff to do their jobs effectively the methods and processes used in Scotland’s social services need to be informed by sound knowledge and evidence.

The number of ambulances in Scotland taking longer than an hour to reach an emergency has more than doubled since 2000, newly released figures have suggested. The statistics, obtained by Christine Grahame of the SNP, showed that 189 patients had at least an hour wait in 2005/06, compared with 71 in 2000/01.

A second senior figure has announced his departure from Scotland’s largest local authority in less than a month. David Comley, director of social work at Glasgow City Council, told staff he will leave his £110,000-plus-a-year post this summer.

Scotland’s charities watchdog is to investigate the finances and operations of a child care provider which collapsed with the loss of almost 600 jobs. News that the Office of the Scottish Charities Regulator (OSCR) will meet the liquidators of One Plus comes as one of the UK’s biggest charity funders confirms it refused funding because of serious financial concerns.

Nine months after launching its home is… campaign, Shelter Scotland has illustrated to Minister for Communities Rhona Brankin how important home is to the people of Scotland.

Abuse of the elderly must be treated with the same seriousness as child abuse, with police receiving special training to protect older people from what has become a “national scandal”, a charity said today.

{mosimage}Help the Aged said half a million older people were neglected or abused at any one time — physically, sexually, or psychologically — but a third of people had not heard of “elder abuse” and almost a quarter had no idea what the signs were.

As The Daily Telegraph reported last week, the largest proportion of abusers are related to the person being abused (46 per cent), with 64 per cent of abuse occurring in the homes of victims.

However, almost a quarter of people surveyed by the charity were under the impression that professional care workers were the ones most likely to carry out abuse.

Only 17 per cent of those surveyed thought that sons and daughters would be most likely to abuse their parents, even though figures show that a quarter of abusers of the elderly are sons or daughters.