Children and Families Minister Beverley Hughes announced that action has been stepped up to tackle child abuse linked to ‘possession’ and ‘witchcraft’. A comprehensive cross-agency strategy has already been put in place to speed-up the identification of cases by local agencies and deal with the perpetrators, as well as to help prevent cases happening in the first place. Prevention depends on Local Authorities having strong links with new communities.

Psychological therapy for sex offenders can reduce re-offending rates, but does not provide a cure, a study says. Researchers from the Universities of London and Leicester reviewed nine studies involving 567 offenders in the US, UK, Canada and Europe. Some treatment programmes have cut re-offending by up to 40%. But experts said the British Medical Journal report was wrong to talk about curing as it was not a medical problem and could not be solved as such.

It is hailed as a quick fix for depression, schizophrenia, ME – even infertility. Now the government sees it as the answer to Britain’s widespread mental health problem. So what is cognitive behavioural therapy? And does it really work? Helen Pidd investigates.

From her early teens, Katie had two nicknames. They were “Fat Sharon”, inspired by Pauline Quirke’s character in Birds of a Feather, and the more self-explanatory “Womble”. Though meant in jest, the taunts cut deep, and by the time she was 16 she desperately wanted a way to make the bullying stop.

George Monbiot’s argument for understanding the increase in child mental-health problems within a context of social mobility bears further examination. While his venturing “Willy Loman syndrome” as a root cause of what he rightly calls a social catastrophe is engaging and partially successful, it can’t account for many of the phenomena described in the British Medical Association’s report to which he refers.

Care homes are locked in a funding crisis, but how does this affect the elderly people who have to pay for themselves? Eileen Morrison died peacefully on Tuesday night, surrounded by her family and the carers who had looked after her for two years.

{mosimage}Skills for Care, the sector skills council for social care work, has received £3m from the Department of Health to launch phase two of a programme to shape the sector’s future workforce.

The New Types of Worker programme was launched in March 2003 to identify how roles need to adapt to deliver the health and social care reforms outlined in the White Paper, Our Health, Our Care, Our Say.

It has so far identified how roles in social care are evolving in response to the needs of people who use the services. Under phase two, it will identify the impact of the findings on the development of the workforce in the short-, medium- and long-term.

Swindon Council care staff have received more than 200 nominations for outstanding service. The nominations for the second annual Quality Services award came from the public and council employees to recognise work done in the adult, children and families social care areas.

A hearing into the conduct of a Registered Social Worker from London will be held on 6 July by the social care workforce regulator the General Social Care Council (GSCC). The social worker is alleged to have committed misconduct and breached the GSCC’s code of practice for social care workers by securing registration with the GSCC by failing to disclose a full criminal record.

Care homes for elderly and disabled people are to be given hotel-style rankings so that residents and their relatives know what standard of service to expect. The ratings, ranging from 4-star for excellent to 1-star for poor, will be awarded according to the calibre of care given as well as the quality and condition of equipment and accommodation.

Social services bosses in Oldham have been criticised after a disabled 81-year-old woman died of thirst while her son lay dead upstairs. The family’s care co-ordinator found the bodies of Clara Schofield and her 58-year-old deaf and mute son George at their Roundthorn home on April 12 last year – the day she was due to discuss a replacement home help after care was withdrawn ten weeks earlier.