A crucial meeting has been arranged after members of a civil rights action group formed a blockade outside the city council’s social services department in Birmingham.

A Surrey social worker who had sex with a teenage girl has been struck off. Thomas Ritzler was jailed for two years and four months at Guildford Crown Court last November for sleeping with the 14-year-old.

BIRMINGHAM’S “inadequate” social services for children at risk of abuse show little sign of improving, the city council has admitted.

Inquiries into the deaths of two vulnerable babies have uncovered “systematic failings” in care services at a West Yorkshire council.

Existing regulations governing the standard of care delivered by health and adult social care services will be replaced next year. From 2010-11, the new Care Quality Commission will register all providers against a single set of requirements to do with safety and quality of care.

Worried staff at a pre-school centre for special needs children in Moray last night claimed new qualification requirements could put a huge strain on their facility.

PLANS are being drawn up by the city council to give older and disabled people direct control over a £21m social services budget.

A £1M care home project in Galley Common will create 30 local jobs.Staff will be needed to work in the centre, which is designed to provide independent, but supported, living accommodation for eight adults with learning difficulties.

A social worker convicted of having sex with an under-age girl has been struck off the professional register.

Anger has greeted news that no-one will be prosecuted after a “catalogue of abuse” was uncovered at Budock Hospital.