Community health services for people with dementia need to be expanded ten-fold in Sheffield to meet the needs of sufferers, warns a charity.

Children’s charities have welcomed the government’s plans for a cross-departmental child poverty unit but say more funding is needed to halve child poverty by 2010.

The government must step up its battle against child poverty, ministers admitted yesterday, as they announced a new unit to coordinate work on the issue.

Plans to relocate cancer care services an extra 13 miles away, affecting patients in Barnoldswick and Earby, have been put on hold temporarily.

The Bristol Drugs Project was due to take its campaign for fairer treatment funding to Westminster today.

Campaigners hit the streets of Derby yesterday to protest at the potential closure of a care home.

A Chronic shortage of beds for mentally ill teenagers has been highlighted in the county. Currently teenagers and adolescents requiring mental health treatment have to travel out of Gloucestershire to a specialist unit at Marlborough House in Swindon.

Teesside’s “high levels” of child poverty have been condemned as disgraceful by a national charity boss. Martin Narey, the Middlesbrough-born chief executive of Barnardo’s, claims four in every 10 children in the area are living in poverty.

Alex is not a disturbed child, although he could easily be mistaken for one. Sitting in his classroom, he often looks out of the window, and then his restlessness becomes infectious and begins to distract the other kids. Asked to read a sentence, Alex becomes recalcitrant, unwilling to try.

People needing private home care in the Isle of Man are being forced to pay an extra 58% for the facility.