{mosimage} A severely disabled child whose parents fought a long legal battle to ensure she was kept alive is to be placed in foster care because her parents have been judged unfit to look after her.

Brain-damaged Charlotte Wyatt has confounded the predictions of doctors who wanted permission to switch off her life support machine and will turn three on Saturday. Her parents Darren, 34, and Debbie, 25, ran up a £500,000 legal bill for the taxpayer as they fought for two years in the courts to force the hospital looking after her to ensure she was resuscitated.

Men who have sex with women who are not fully sober risk being found guilty of rape unless they have their consent, under controversial new proposals. Ministers want to close a legal loophole which means that thousands of cases fail to reach the courts because victims have been drinking.

Lecturers and university staff across Britain are to be asked to spy on “Asian-looking” and Muslim students they suspect of involvement in Islamic extremism and supporting terrorist violence, the Guardian has learned. They will be told to inform on students to special branch because the government believes campuses have become “fertile recruiting grounds” for extremists.

A stourbridge therapist has hit back at BBC claims he cons patients and leaves them in greater pain. Peter Proud, from the Living Health Family Spine Centre, Norton, says the report, broadcast by the Watchdog programme on Tuesday, was biased against him.

Dunmow families are campaigning to close a legal loophole which could allow care homes to operate without regular inspections after plans were announced for a mental health home in their neighbourhood.

A London social services department faces an investigation into why it abruptly removed a victim of child trafficking from the foster mother with whom he had bonded.

There were tears from members of the public after health officials confirmed plans to make significant cuts to mental health and learning disability services. At a meeting yesterday, the board of the new Northamptonshire Primary Care Trust approved changes to save £2.7m and help balance the trust’s books.

Mental health patients face inadequate community services, extremely long waiting times and some may never get specialist care, a report has claimed.

A detailed look at the future of adult social care in Hampshire is being promised this week at the Annual General Meeting of Age Concern Hampshire.

Forty years after the 1965 Race Relations Act departments responsible for social care within councils are still struggling to embed equality principles into their day to day business. A new study has found that most frontline staff are unaware of the equalities policies within their organisations. And that implementation of race and other equalities legislation is carried out at the margins by senior managers taking a “desk top  exercise” approach to compliance.