The current system for accessing and funding adult social care is overly complicated and financially unsustainable, London Councils warned today.

The elderly could be asked to pay an ‘inheritance levy’ of up to £12,000 to help fund a revolution in old age care. Proposals will be unveiled within weeks in an attempt to end the scandal of an estimated 60,000-plus pensioners a year being forced to sell properties to pay for care home places.

Police are searching for two young girls who went missing from separate care homes over the weekend. Natalie Mustafa, 12, who had run away earlier in the week, was last seen leaving her care home, Ingleside Children’s Home in Mayfield Road, South Croydon at 10.05am on Tuesday 11 June.

AN EIGHTH serious case review has been launched in Doncaster after the death of a baby who was known to the council’s beleaguered children’s services department.

Social services chiefs in Northumberland are to strengthen their child protection workforce as part of nationwide efforts to avoid a repeat of the Baby Peter scandal in Haringey.

THE woman brought in to safeguard Island children was for ten years the boss of a social services department heavily criticised in a report issued just months after she left.

MORE frontline staff are to be recruited to care for children in Sheffield after an internal review found child social workers have too many cases to handle and many are inexperienced.

HEALTH and social care teams in Middlesbrough have been condemned for failing three children who were seriously neglected by their mother.

Television presenter Angela Rippon criticised the “bureaucratic nightmare” facing carers and called for more support at Norfolk conference yesterday.

A COUPLE have been found guilty of trafficking and exploiting illegal immigrants from Mauritius to work in two Worthing care homes.