Parents with children at a York nursery have been given a week to find alternative childcare after it announced it is to close.

An NHS Direct nurse from Hampshire has been kicked out of nursing for failing to uphold the honesty and integrity of her profession.

The most vulnerable people in society will suffer under planned budget cuts, warned County Councillor Rod Fletcher this week.

Bracknell Forest Borough Council has been voted national Winner of Winners at the Skills for Care Accolades honouring their pioneering work with people with dementia.

{mosimage}The local authority beat off stiff competition from all over the country to win the Most Innovative New Type of Worker or Way of Working at the glittering Accolades awards ceremony held at the Landmark Hotel, London last night.

They then carried off the Winner of Winners Accolade for their highly successful initiative to provide services to people with dementia enabling them to remain in their own homes.

The far-reaching initiative centres on partnerships with the Berkshire Healthcare Trust and other stakeholders resulting in significant savings as admissions to hospital have dropped and 15 people with dementia did not have to access residential or nursing home care.

A survey of service users and their relative carers found they felt they were treated with respect, that their views were taken into account by Home Support Workers and there had been improvements in people who use services’ emotional and mental health.

The scheme came into being as a result of a pilot programme financed by Skills for Care under its New Types of Working initiative.

Skills for Care is the employer led authority on the training standards and development needs of nearly one million social care workers in England providing over £25 million in funding to support improved training and qualifications for managers and staff.

The Church of England has pledged to investigate the records of thousands of clergy, dating back decades, in an attempt to uncover unchecked incidents of child abuse.

The former general manager of a village nursery school has been charged with more than 40 child sex offences.

Services for the elderly, homeless and teenagers in care have seen no significant improvement. Lincolnshire’s Supporting People programme to help the sick, the poor and the needy has been given a zero rating by inspectors.

A shake-up of staffing at community hospitals in Maldon and Braintree is being considered by cash-strapped health chiefs – but they deny it will mean redundancies.

A carer who withdrew £150 from the bank account of the wheelchair-bound woman she looked after has been given a suspended jail sentence.

A Government minister has called for a new culture in the care system to tackle abuse and neglect of the elderly. Care services minister Ivan Lewis said society needed to be as outraged by the abuse of an old person as by the abuse of a child.

{mosimage}His comments came as a new telephone hotline was launched in conjunction with care homes themselves to enable people to complain without worrying about repurcussions.

advertisementIt is intended to give elderly residents, families, friends and care workers a safe and protected way of speaking out, knowing there is an independent charity overseeing the process.

The phoneline involves a number of organisations including the major elder abuse charity in the UK, Action on Elder Abuse, the police, and the biggest care provider in the UK, Southern Cross Healthcare, which has 710 care homes in the UK. It will be run by Essex County Council.

At present nearly a quarter of calls to the charity Action on Elder Abuse are about abuse in care homes, where only 4.9 per cent of older people live.