Over a hundred new policies based on what children have said are important to them have been suggested in a new report from the Children’s Rights Director for England.

Social Services chiefs in Leeds have received 114 complaints about home care services provided by private companies. Part of the city’s home care work is contracted out to the private sector and figures presented to councillors show that between April last year and January this year, the council received a total of 114 complaints about services provided by six companies.

The BMA has launched updated guidance on withholding and withdrawing life-prolonging treatment, to take into account the major changes for patients and doctors that will come into force when the Mental Capacity Act is implemented in England and Wales in April and October 2007.

Social services chiefs last night insisted that home care support for thousands of elderly people is not being run down ahead of controversial privatisation plans.

Seventeen deaths at a hospital in Norfolk have been linked with an outbreak of a virulent strain of the superbug Clostridium difficile.

The chairman of the Healthcare Commission has called for the mandatory recording of the ethnicity of all patients using mental health and learning disability services.

The rise in the number of elderly people is set to create a major demand for care services. North Yorkshire County Council has said older people made up 18% of the population on its patch in 2001, but the figure is set to rise to 25% by 2020.

The head teacher of a Lancashire school has been sacked following allegations she employed a convicted sex offender to work on the school’s website. Kathleen Tyson, who has been the head at Holy Trinity Primary School in Darwen for two years, was suspended in January while an inquiry took place.

Improvements in technology could soon see aspects of social care being performed by robotics within a service user’s home, according to the British Computer Society (BCS).

The number of children aged 11 to 15 who smoked at least one cigarette a week has remained unchanged since 2003. And girls are more likely than boys to be smokers, the research claimed. Government targets aim to reduce smoking among this age group to 9% or less by 2010.