CHILDREN’S services in Suffolk have been given good marks by inspectors after an unannounced visit by an Ofsted team.

SOCIAL services are refusing to send patients to a Hampshire nursing home after inspectors found it was providing sub-standard care in squalid conditions.

SOCIAL services for vulnerable children in Hampshire are ‘outstanding’, according to a glowing report from Ofsted.

A pilot scheme where social workers visit elderly people to assess whether their homes are a fire risk should be rolled out across the country and beyond, Norfolk’s coroner said yesterday.

A senior government adviser has been appointed as Ofsted’s manager for social care development.

Cross-party support for England’s national dementia strategy is leading to more research, training and ‘dementia cafes’ for patients and carers

Haringey Council has appointed a permanent director of children’s services. Libby Blake, who is due to take up the post in November, will join Haringey from the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, where she was acting executive director for family and children’s services.

A childrens’ services boss was ‘foolish’ for telling the media no one would be disciplined after a toddler’s death, an employment tribunal was told.

Social work must share the blame for the breakdown in individual responsibility within society. By Dr Jonathan Parker

THE CLOSURE of four residential homes for the elderly and people with learning difficulties must be reconsidered, a panel of councillors said today.