Britons adopt fewer children from abroad than any other country because an increasing number of developing countries believe Britain is an unsuitable home, new research has revealed. The study, which shows many countries are automatically rejecting applications from British families, comes in the wake of the controversy sparked by Madonna over her decision to adopt a child, 14-month-old David Banda, from Malawi.

Immigrants and the elderly are pushing up Cambridgeshire County Council’s costs, forcing it to make millions of pounds of cuts. Figures revealed to the Cambridge Evening News show the council is hoping to save £2.8 million from the environment and community services office which looks after roads, buses, adult support services and the environment. Among the proposed cuts is £1.3 million from adult social care, which includes reviewing the help vulnerable people receive.

Regions of the brain may not communicate with each other as efficiently as they should in people with autism, research suggests. US scientists used sophisticated scans to examine connections in the cerebral cortex – the part of the brain that deals with complex thought. They found evidence of abnormal patterns of brain cell connection in people with autism. The research was presented at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

NICE have published the first in a series of 5 commissioning guides to be published this autumn as part of a new set of products to help the NHS in England effectively commission evidence-based care for patients. Each of these web-based guides offers detailed practical support for commissioners on a specific clinical topic.

{mosimage}Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has praised improvements in the NHS but warned organisations not to be complacent and to redouble their efforts to meet patients’ increasing expectations. Ms Hewitt also set out plans for tackling poor performance in a small minority of Trusts identified in the Healthcare Commission’s first ever Annual Health Check results. Responding to the results she said: “I want to congratulate the NHS for the hard work it has put in to improving performance. Millions of people are receiving high quality and safe services every day. The best of the NHS is amongst the best in the world and we should all be proud of its achievements. But I want to see the best everywhere. This is the toughest and most comprehensive assessment of the NHS and it takes forward the commitment we made to patients and the public to provide them with detailed and easily understandable information about the performance of their local health services.

The South London Press campaign calling for the Maudsley Hospital emergency clinic to be saved this week has won the backing of a leading mental health charity and MPs. Marjorie Wallace,the chief executive of Sane,welcomed the campaign to save the service that can be a matter of life and death for people in mental crisis. MPs Simon Hughes and Harriet Harman have also pledged to take up the campaign at the highest level. They were among a group of MPs who met Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt this week to try to save the clinic.

More than half of residential drug treatment providers in England are under financial pressure because of lack of referrals. The Association of Directors of Social Services is warning of an impending crisis and says some providers could go out of business. It is thought drug action teams are increasingly referring addicts to community-based schemes. They are often up to 20 times cheaper, but not as effective.

A psychiatric nurse has quit the NHS after a two-year battle against mountains of paperwork and a desperate shortage of doctors and nurses in west Berkshire. And 37-year-old Lavinia Dowling paints a bleak picture of the “drastic” treatment of mental health patients in the area under the NHS. Just weeks after The Healthcare Com-mission accused the NHS of cutting back on psychiatric services she says the Berkshire system is undermanned and underfunded.

Chris Pownall and Simon Mash are just like any other lads in their twenties – finding their feet after flying the nest, learning how to manage their own money and what to do with a toilet brush. But Chris and Simon have special needs. They were never really expected to be able to fly the nest or live independently, but things are starting to change and as a film premiered last week showed.

A district councillor has criticised planning colleagues for approving an extension of a Donington care home when they did not have the full case history. Coun Fred Fretwell said that South Holland District Council’s planners had “lost” a file relating to Matthew Flinders Residential Home but went on to give the plans the go-ahead. At a recent meeting of Donington Parish Council he claimed that the action was one of “bad practice” and said he would pursue it.