More than half of violent thugs caught by police now escape with a ticking-off, it has emerged. Instead of being hailed before the courts or jailed, more than 50,000 violent attackers were simply handed a caution last year – an increase of more than a third on 2004. They included more than 1,300 louts guilty of life threatening wounding and even threatening to kill their victim. The Conservatives said the revelations were “an insult to the victims of crime”.

Teenage muggers and burglars sentenced to jail by the courts will instead attend local schools and live alongside orphans in open children’s homes. The hardened criminals would normally be locked in detention centres with specialist classrooms. But it has emerged an overcrowding crisis in the juvenile prison system is forcing the Government to dramatically relax the law. It will allow the criminals to mix with society’s most vulnerable youngsters in the relaxed regime of a mainstream children’s home for the first time. And some will even be allowed to attend local schools.

Liz Railton, director of children’s services in Essex, has been announced as the programme director for the new national children’s centres support programme being led by the Together for Children partnership. Liz has over 30 years experience in local government delivering social care and children’s services. Liz was director of social services in Cambridgeshire before moving to Essex in 2003, initially to take up the combined role of chief education officer and director of social services.

{mosimage}A new contract between the state and the citizen setting out what individuals must do in return for quality services from hospitals, schools and the police is one of the key proposals emerging from a Downing Street initiated policy review.

Examples include an expectation that a local health authority will only offer a hip replacement if the patient undertakes to keep their weight down. Parents might also be asked to sign individually tailored contracts with a school setting out what the parents must do at home to advance their child’s publicly-funded education.

The police might also promise to achieve a specific response time in a local area, so long as an agreement is struck on the local law and disorder priorities.

A Muslim classroom assistant suspended by a school for wearing a veil in lessons has been sacked. Aishah Azmi, 23, was asked to remove the veil after the Church of England school in Dewsbury, West Yorks, said pupils found it hard to understand her.

Capacitybuilders’ Board has committed itself to a programme of change in the future delivery of national support services to the voluntary and community sector and social enterprises. The Board’s decision was in response to a package of proposals recommended by Simon Hebditch, Chief Executive, aimed at ensuring that Capacitybuilders is able to offer the sector a coherent and sensible approach to the future provision of national support services.

The relentless rise of HIV and other sexual infections in the UK is continuing, with evidence that some groups in the population are ignoring warnings and still engaging in risky sexual behaviour, according to figures published yesterday. There are now 63,500 adults living with HIV infection in the UK, of whom 7,450 were diagnosed during 2005, according to the Health Protection Agency. It is 25 years since Aids was identified and surveillance began. The UK is ahead of most countries in its efforts to prevent infection and treat it, and yet the spread in this country has not been checked, the HPA acknowledged yesterday.

Hundreds of teachers living in England as refugees are not employed because the system fails them, a report says. Their skills are being wasted and an opportunity for a diverse workforce is being lost, a taskforce of teachers and educational organisations suggests. Its co-chairman, Stephen Jones, said the system for helping refugee teachers find work was “about as unfriendly as it is possible to be”. He wants clearer guidance and a national database of refugee teachers.

The father of an 18-year-old girl who died suddenly after taking Ecstasy bitterly attacked plans to downgrade the drug. Siobhan Delaney, had planned to study drama at university when her life was cut short after she collapsed at a nightclub last year.

A powerful army of nearly 100 MPs joined the growing backlash against British Airways over its decision to ban the cross. It came amid signs that the campaign to force BA into retreat over its treatment of check-in worker Nadia Eweida was spreading across the world.