The national charity for older people, Counsel and Care, has published a new range of factsheets specifically for older people living in Scotland or Wales. Counsel and Care has a proven track record of providing advice to older people, and these new factsheets are tailored specifically to the needs of older people in Scotland and Wales. Devolved governments mean that many of the processes for finding and funding care are different to England.

Ed Miliband, Minister for the Third Sector, marked the start of National Giving Week by announcing plans to establish a centre to lead research into philanthropy and charitable giving. The Centre is being created by the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) in the Cabinet Office, in partnership with the Carnegie UK Trust, the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Scottish Executive (SE).

A champion of elderly rights in Dundee says authorities are reduced to “firefighting” a residential care crisis that has left an 81-year-old stranded in Ninewells Hospital for over four months. Councillor Ian Borthwick, who is also Dundee Age Concern’s advocacy officer, said the story of Elizabeth Graczyk – too frail to return to her sheltered housing in Kirkton and in Ninewells awaiting a place in a home – was not unique.

Christine Campbell always had a vision of a house full of children. So, when she and her husband David found they could not have their own, even after fertility treatment, they decided to adopt not just one but a sibling group of three. “Part of the motivation was that during their teenage years, when they say, ‘You’re not my real mummy and daddy,’ we can say, ‘No, we’re not, but these are your real sisters and brother.’ We were thinking ahead to an extent,” says Christine, who lives in Glasgow.

Bosses are ill-equipped to take on staff with mental health problems, it has been claimed. Government efforts to move people off benefit and into work risks failure unless employers get more support to recruit and retain such staff, a Disability Rights Commission spokesman said. A poll of small and medium businesses by GfK NOP for the commission found two thirds had no procedures for managing staff with mental health problems.

Teenager Stevie Riva was once a bright pupil who won awards for reading and writing. He looked forward to going to school and loved spending time with his friends. Although at times she found it difficult to cope with Stevie’s autism, the youngster’s mother, Gina, was able to gather her strength while her son was at school and was proud of how much he had progressed. However, as Stevie entered adolescence, his behaviour became too challenging for his teachers and he was excluded from the special needs school he attended in Edinburgh.

More than 17,000 Scots are claiming incapacity benefit for being addicted to drugs or alcohol, a figure that has doubled in the past decade. The Scottish breakdown equates to one in 20 of those receiving state payments because they are too ill to work.

The social and economic cost of mental health problems in Scotland amounts to around £8.6 billion annually – equivalent to nearly the entire NHS budget this year.

Scottish prisons are reforming their drug-testing regime and stepping up security after a damning report on their own staff’s concerns about heroin use behind bars.

The Social Care Association are to hold their fourth consecutive annual lecture in Scotland on 23rd November. The keynote speaker, at what is now entitled the Dr Ian Mallinson Memorial Lecture, will be Diana Kerr, Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, Edinburgh University.