Two drug-dealing empires have been smashed and more than 100 dealers jailed after a three-year investigation. In what has been hailed as one of the nation’s most successful drug operations, the dealers have been jailed for a total of more than 70 years. Addiction workers have also praised the convictions from Operation Round-up, which has removed the hard drugs supply from a region plagued by abuse. The drive against more than 100 dealers by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary targeted the supply network of class A drugs in the area, predominantly heroin and cocaine.

The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC), the organisation established to register key groups of people who work in social services in Scotland, has recently extended the list of qualifications it recognises and accepts for the purposes of registration. Qualification requirements are set as part of the eligibility criteria for registration to help ensure the competence and professionalism of the workforce.

Parents from North Glasgow will,  on Thursday 6th July 2006,  highlight the need for better play environments for Scottish children. Donna Stewart, Gillian Spence and Marie Forsyth, who are supported by CHIP (Children’s Inclusion Partnership), will call for more safe, secure play environments for Scottish children at an international conference called ‘Planning and designing healthy public outdoor spaces for young people in the 21st century’.  They will be supported by Kirstin Henry, parent development worker from CHIP, who has been working alongside them. 

The reform of Scotland’s adoption laws has moved a step closer. MSPs on the Scottish Parliament’s education committee have come out in support of proposals that would allow unmarried couples to adopt children. However, they said the reforms should be tied to a campaign to increase the number of foster families. At the moment, only one member of an unmarried couple can adopt, while the other has separate rights to live in the same house as the child.

Social work services helping Scotland’s most vulnerable children are facing their first real budget cuts since devolution, it has been claimed. The body representing the country’s most senior social workers said they could no longer meet politicians’ demands to improve care for young people because of persistent underfunding and an exploding caseload.

A help centre for mental health sufferers which was suddenly closed by social work bosses is to re-open after one of its users committed suicide. Susan Wilson, 38, was buried on Monday, the same day as her friends at the Springboard complex in Hawick were told the service was being re-started.

East Dunbartonshire Council and Strathclyde Police have announced important new measures to try to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children when they go missing from Council care. The joint protocol which incorporates elements of child protection, community safety and joint decision making, will help the Council and police identify at an early stage those children and young people who are at greatest risk from going missing from their placement in a residential unit.

The actions needed to deliver social work services that meet the needs of the 21st century are set out in a five year plan, published today. Nearly 100 actions for the Executive, service providers and professionals are detailed in the Changing Lives Implementation plan, which will be backed by £15 million over the first two years.  Further funding will follow in the subsequent three years.  The plan will deliver the vision set out in Changing Lives, the 21st Century Review of Social Work, which was published earlier this year.

The poor standard of care and inadequate staffing levels at a nursing home contributed to the death of a pensioner, a sheriff said yesterday. George Fairlie, 74, a resident at the Alexandra Nursing Home in Paisley, died in October 2002, after contracting “preventable” gangrene in hospital following what his family claimed was sustained neglect by the care home’s management. Sheriff David Pender’s fatal accident inquiry report said tests following Mr Fairlie’s admission to hospital showed he was “severely dehydrated and malnourished” and, as a result, his blood pressure had dropped so low that it was “barely compatible with life”.

A sheriff has sharply criticised the care given to a 74-year-old man who died in hospital after being left in a Paisley nursing home severely dehydrated and malnourished.  George Fairlie was a resident  at the Alexandra Nursing Home and died in 2002.