The number of patients leaving Health Service hospitals suffering from malnourishment has risen by two-thirds in the past five years.

The current child protection system is still not working effectively, an expert has said. Mark Williams-Thomas said a national computer network will not be working fully until 2010, and people can still get around criminal record checks.

{mosimage}His comments come on the fifth anniversary of the abduction of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham.

The Home Office said the computer system could bring benefits by 2009 and criminal checks are “highly accurate”.

Mr Williams-Thomas, a former police detective who runs a child protection consultancy, has spent 15 years in the field, including working on the Sarah Payne and Jonathan King inquiries. He said the computer network allowing material to be shared between police forces is running three years late.

The development was one of the recommendations of the Bichard Inquiry, set up to investigate how Ian Huntley secured a job as a school caretaker despite a string of sex allegations against him.

Patient care is being compromised due to low staffing levels of mental health nurses according to a new survey from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

An osteopath has been found guilty of sexually assaulting an undercover policewoman who posed as a patient.

Chris Langham, the award-winning comedy actor, was in jail last night facing the prospect of a prison sentence after being found guilty of downloading videos and pictures of child abuse onto his home computers.

Ministers are having to reconsider a national roll-out for satellite tracking of offenders, after research raised concerns about the cost and the way the system can lose people it is monitoring when tall buildings block the signal.

A Birmingham hospital has launched an investigation after two cancer patients died after reportedly being given five times the normal dose of medication.

A former boarding school teacher is facing jail after being convicted of committing 13 sexual offences against children in Devon.

A mother with a severe mental illness killed her two children after being allowed unsupervised access despite the warnings of their father, a court heard yesterday.

{mosimage}Vivian Gamor, 29, was detained indefinitely after admitting two counts of manslaughter at the Old Bailey.

The children’s father, Jimi Ogunkoya, blamed social services for their deaths after he was encouraged to let them stay with her despite bizarre behaviour that had led to her being sectioned.

“I obeyed the law and let them go,” he said in a victim impact statement read out in court. “I wish I had not done that.

“The system that I obeyed has frog-marched my children to their deaths. They assessed her and found nothing wrong. This is pure negligence, which will not be tolerated.”

Sentencing Gamor, Judge Peter Rook told her: “On the face of it, this terrible tragedy could have been avoided if you had not been allowed unsupervised access and the children’s father’s grave concerns had been given weight.”

Gamor, from Hackney, east London, bludgeoned 10-year-old son Antoine with a claw hammer and suffocated daughter Kenniece, three, with cling film in January.

Jonathan Rees, prosecuting, told the court that she then dialled 999 and told the operator: “I kind of lost it, I snapped.” When police arrived they found the bodies of her children lying in her bedroom, with a blood-stained hammer lying next to Kenniece, and Antoine crouched in a defensive position between the cupboard and the wall.

A care home in York was so dirty and damaged that managers had to be hauled before top council bosses. Hygiene inspectors published a Care Home, in Gale Lane, Acomb, after visiting the premises last autumn.