The growing number of women taking their own lives while in prison will be highlighted this week when a leading campaigner is put on trial for protesting outside a jail.

{mosimage}Pauline Campbell, a former college lecturer, began to protest against conditions in women’s prisons after her daughter, Sarah, died of a drugs overdose at Styal prison in Cheshire. She has staged 26 protests outside jails across the country. One of her tactics is to try to block prison vans as they arrive at the gates.

In January Ms Campbell was arrested outside Eastwood Park, a closed prison in Gloucestershire, where mother-of-five Caroline Powell, 26, was found hanged in her cell. Originally Ms Campbell was charged with aggravated trespass, which can carry a prison term. This was reduced to obstructing the highway, for which the maximum penalty is £1,000 fine.

A leading human rights lawyer, Peter Thornton QC, is representing Ms Campbell at North Avon magistrates court, where the case will be heard by a district judge this week.

Ms Campbell’s daughter died in January 2003, the third of six women to die at Styal in 12 months.

Sarah had learning difficulties, was a heroin addict at 16 and had commited at least 28 acts of self-harm while previously on remand. She had just begun a three-year jail term for manslaughter when she took an overdose. An inquest jury decided that “a failure in duty of care” contributed to her death.

Eleven doctors are still free to work in the NHS despite being convicted of sex and child pornography offences, The Daily Telegraph can reveal today.

Independent life insurance and protection specialist LifeSearch is advising people to protect themselves against the expense of long-term care for Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Two women who ran a nursing home where elderly residents were neglected and abused were found guilty of misconduct yesterday. A hearing was told that their shocking negligence had left two people at death’s door.

{mosimage}They included a 79-year-old woman who needed urgent hospital treatment for malnutrition.

An official inspection dossier exposed widespread humiliation and abuse of residents at the private Laurel Bank Nursing Home in Halifax, which charged £445 a week.

Linda Parker (left) was cautioned while Lily Leatham (right) was left weighing 5st 1lb

Staff were said to have punched, threatened, sworn and aimed lewd taunts at elderly men and women.

Incontinent residents were left to sit in a “loopy lounge” all day, or abandoned in their beds in an insanitary and undignified state.

Yesterday, a professional conduct committee of the Nursing and Midwifery Council struck deputy matron Elisabeth Uttley, 62, off the register.

Now retired, she refused to turn up for the four-day hearing and was said to have never expressed any regrets.

But her boss, home manager Patricia Parker, 59, escaped with a formal caution for five years after admitting failing to provide adequate care.

Children’s minister Ed Balls and London’s mayor Ken Livingstone will today unveil plans to spend £40m relaunching youth services in London amid rising concerns about teenage alienation and gang violence.

Immigrant workers are importing their national feuds and criminal behaviour to rural England, a police chief said yesterday.

The unpaid work of carers saves the UK £87bn per year – more than the total amount spent by the NHS in the last financial year, say experts.

{mosimage}The figure, calculated by the University of Leeds for the charity Carers UK, is up 52% since the last estimate, calculated in 2002. The average person caring for a sick or frail relative is now estimated to save the nation more than £15,260 a year. The government said measures had been taken to help carers, with more due.

The new figures are based on how much it would cost to provide alternative care if a carer was not available. This has been calculated at £14.50 an hour.

The total is more than four times the amount spent on social care services for adults and children by local authorities in the year 2005-2006.

Carers UK warned that the economy was over-reliant on care provided by family and friends – and if just a small proportion gave up it could have a disastrous impact.

It said many carers remained isolated and unsupported, with thousands living in poverty, unable to take up paid work or have a normal social life.

More than 180 children recently trafficked illegally into the UK have since gone missing without trace from social services care, according to a Unicef report warning that the government is failing to protect vulnerable youngsters brought into the country.

Nearly 400,000 elderly people could lose their home help after next year, local councils. They said assistance for frail and vulnerable older people will be withdrawn unless taxpayers pump extra billions into council coffers.

{mosimage}Leaders called on Gordon Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling to pay money into their social services rather than into the NHS and hospitals in the major Whitehall spending review due next month.

The warning put hundreds of thousands of older people who depend on help paid for by social services at the centre of a spat between local government chiefs and Mr Brown.

Home help includes vital everyday assistance with dressing, washing, cooking, shopping and keeping house. Without it many elderly people would become isolated, ill, and unable to live by themselves – and many would be forced to abandon independent lives and go to live in care homes.

Sir Simon Milton, leader of the Local Government Association, set out the warning in a letter to council bosses.

He told them that unless town halls are given generous treatment in the Comprehensive Spending Review, “then there will be real difficulties.”

“In the next three years alone, there will be more than 400,000 more older people, many of whom will require social care.

More than half of all working mothers will lie about why they are running late or absent from the office if their childcare arrangements fall through, according to research.