A judge yesterday ordered an inquiry into how a convicted paedophile was able to sexually abuse a 10-year-old child despite social workers being tasked to supervise him. Lord Hardie demanded answers to a series of questions about the handling of the case of James Steele, 28, who carried out an indecent act against the child nine months after he was released from an eight-year jail sentence for sexual offences against two boys. The High Court in Glasgow heard that Steele befriended the boy and his family under the noses of social workers delegated to monitor him while he was out on licence.

Hundreds of British psychiatric casualties of the war in Iraq could be left without adequate care unless the UK’s leading military mental welfare charity can raise £150,000 to help provide specialist therapy for veterans. Combat Stress, which runs Hollybush House in Ayr, Scotland’s only residential home for soldiers affected by the horrors of conflict, is to launch a nationwide appeal for funds this week. The charity dealt with 939 cases of clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder at its UK network of care homes last year, up 21% from the 775 casualties referred for treatment in 2004. Combat Stress needs £5m a year to operate its three homes and welfare programme.

Professor Morag Cameron Faulds, who died peacefully after a long illness, was born in Tobermory on the island of Mull. She began school there and later attended Oban High School. Subsequently, she took an arts degree at Glasgow University followed by a diploma in social sciences. From there, she went on to qualify as an almoner (a medical social worker) under the auspices of the Institute of Hospital Almoners. In 1946, she was appointed as a social worker at Kings College Hospital, London. In 1948, she returned to Scotland as head social worker at Hairmyres Hospital, East Kilbride, then held a similar post at the Victoria Infirmary, Glasgow.

A £15M Scottish Executive campaign to slash MRSA rates has been branded a dismal failure after the number of infections rocketed across the country by almost 30%. Scotland on Sunday can reveal there were almost 280 MRSA cases between January and March this year, 60 more than between April and June 2005, when the campaign began. It is an enormous embarrassment for ministers, who pledged a year ago to spend £5m annually reducing cases of the potentially deadly superbug. In two areas of the country – Grampian and Lanarkshire – MRSA cases have soared outside the upper safe limit.

{mosimage} More than half of Scotland’s private hospitals have been found to be breaching national guidelines during inspections. Four of the country’s seven independent hospitals were judged to be falling short in areas such as staff checks, fire safety and medicine control during inspections during the past year. Inspections by the Care Commission, the standards watchdog, revealed problems at Glasgow Nuffield Hospital, Fernbrae Hospital Dundee, Abbey Kings Park, Stirling, and the Murrayfield Bupa in Edinburgh, all private hospitals offering a range of services for patients paying for treatment.

Two of Scotland’s ‘tsars’ have warned against radical plans for social contracts for drug addicts that would see them agreeing not to have children until they had beaten their habit. Under proposals put forward by Labour MSP Duncan McNeil, and revealed in the Sunday Herald last week, addicts would also agree to enter drug cessation programmes. Breaking the agreement could result in services, such as free methadone, being taken away and children could be removed for good from their parents if they had to be taken into care for a certain number of months a year.

The Care Commission has outlined its policy to work with Care Homes for Older People in order to drive forward the requirement to offer the choice of a single room to residents from next year. At a recent Board Meeting in Dumfries, senior officials from the Care Commission agreed to commit to a policy to enforce the National Care Standards and ensure the basic right of the option of a single bedroom is available to all. Now the Care Commission has committed to working with owners and management of Scotland’s Care Homes to help them work towards meeting this standard and to continue to increase the quality of care for their residents.

One in 10 young people in Scotland suffers from mental health problems severe enough to interfere with their daily life, according to a leading children’s charity. The findings are included in NCH’s annual report card on children in Scotland, which claims there is still much to do to address the problem of child poverty and inequality. According to the charity’s research, smoking rates have halved in 15-year-old boys from 30% to 15% since 1996, while they have fallen from 30% to 24% among girls of the same age.

Violence and verbal abuse against voluntary workers is on the rise as they take on dangerous work previously handled by local authorities, leading Scottish charities have warned. Charity workers in the most difficult areas, such as housing and mental health, have told the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations’ Third Force News they face aggressive behaviour on a “daily basis” as local authorities “transfer the risk” of violence to voluntary organisations.

Plans to spend an extra £1.6m on care services for older people have been announced by Perth and Kinross Council. The move came amid concern over councils operating waiting lists for the Scottish Executive’s flagship free personal care for the elderly policy. There are 48 people in Perth and Kinross currently on a waiting list. The authority, which said it spent more money on the service than the executive provided, expects the number of eligible people to increase.