Essex County Council’s efforts to improve the performance of its beleaguered children’s services department have been praised by Ofsted inspectors.

If he’s lucky, Frank Bailey gets a good night’s sleep twice a week. The rest of the time he is on call and spends the small hours worrying, waiting for a bell to ring, to signal at best that his sick wife, Faith, needs help out of bed; at worst that she is struggling for breath and he will have to call paramedics to take her to hospital.

Plans to increase charges for people using social care in Kent are being put forward by the county council.

Two women who claimed to be from social services are being sought by Wiltshire Police.

OFSTED has inspected services for children in Derbyshire and rated them ‘good’. The report looked at how well children in the county are kept safe and the quality of services for looked-after children and care leavers.

Front-line social workers should regain the freedom to decide what is best for children in a shake up of England’s child protection system, an official review says.

There is a national shortage of social workers, with 10% of posts unfilled and both recruitment and retention causing problems.

A CARE home in Birmingham where a resident was left injured because of “potential neglect” has been told it must improve by the care services watchdog.

Not a single person identified with autism or asperger’s syndrome during a community survey in England actually knew they had the condition, research led by the University of Leicester reveals.

Child deaths from abuse have fallen dramatically over the past 30 years, new figures show. With social workers frequently vilified after the death of a child at the hands of adult guardians, the findings – published in Archives of Disease in Childhood – act as tribute to the success of child protection policies and those who implement them.