Leicestershire County Council has implemented a new electronic documents and records management system to improve access to social services case files and other information.

The NHS is on the brink of collapse and cannot be saved unless Gordon Brown intervenes when he becomes prime minister to give doctors the authority to organise a recovery, the leader of Britain’s 33,000 hospital consultants will claim today.

{mosimage}Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the British Medical Association’s consultants committee, will tell Mr Brown: “Political meddling has brought the NHS to its knees. Unshackle the profession, give us back the health service, and we will rebuild it.

Fail to do so and you will rightly be condemned for destroying the best piece of social capital the country has ever had.”

Dr Fielden will make his plea as Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, announces the NHS’s financial results for the year to March. She is expected to confirm a report in the Guardian last week that it made a surplus of about £500m.

Dr Fielden will blame the Department of Health for cutting services too aggressively last autumn, when ministers panicked about the possibility of another deficit. “It takes weeks to cut, but years to rebuild trust,” he will tell the BMA consultants’ conference in London. “We are angry with the government for a woeful dereliction of duty – towards patients, towards the profession and towards the future. We have lost all confidence that the government can solve the problems it has created.”

Absent parents who refuse to pay maintenance for their children could be named and shamed under plans to reform the Child Support Agency (CSA).

The “unprecedented” exhumation of an elderly woman’s body as part of an inquiry in to seven suspicious deaths at a care home in Somerset is complete.

Drastic cost-cutting ordered by the Government across the NHS has derailed its flagship policy to ensure that no patient waits longer than 18 weeks for hospital treatment.

More than eight million people in Britain are considered problem drinkers, according to figures released yesterday by the Department of Health.

People providing substantial care for their spouse or partner are less likely to consider themselves as ‘carers’, putting them at risk of missing out on the extra cash benefits they are entitled to, according to Age Concern.

Guidelines to assist health professionals who suspect cases of forced marriage have been launched by the Government. Aimed at frontline practitioners such as GPs, school nurses, midwives, and A&E staff, the guidelines provide practical advice on how to recognise the warning signs, and what to do if a patient discloses that they have been, or are about to be, forced to marry.

Herefordshire Council is to consult on changes in the way it charges for a range of services to adults needing non-residential social care. These services include the provision of care in people’s homes, attendance at day centres, adaptations to buildings and the provision of transport and meals.

Mental health charity Mind has commented on a new report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development which shows that mental illness is now the second largest reason for UK workers taking time off sick.