{mosimage} The NHS has barely begun to implement recommendations made over two years ago to improve care of people with multiple sclerosis, a report by doctors says. The NHS treatment watchdog had called for faster diagnosis, more specialist services and better tailored care. But the report commissioned by the MS Trust and the Royal College of Physicians found services were of “low quality and inadequate quantity’. The government said it expected the NHS to adhere to the guidelines on MS care. MS, which affects about 85,000 people in the UK, is a disease of the central nervous system.

A police chief has given his “absolute assurance” that elder-ly people will not suffer from the loss of an OAP care project. Superintendent David Chinchen defended the decision of Southwark police and council bosses to axe the borough’s Elderly Care Project. It was brought in four years ago to support vulnerable pensioners and cut crimes such as distraction burglaries. Rather than shelving successful aspects of the scheme, Supt Chinchen says its work will now fall under the day-to-day duties of a range of police units. He denied the “mainstreaming” drive would affect the service given to elderly victims of crime.

It can be how soft a boiled egg should be, and at whose risk, or how to open a bank account without a passport, utility bill or ability to get to a branch. The issues raised by care home residents seeking the help of an advocacy project run specially for them by Age Concern Leicestershire and Rutland are many and varied. “There is a large and expanding population of older people in care homes who are virtual prisoners, with no contacts in the community, and are considered to be quiet and therefore content,” says the project in its entry in a directory, which claims to be the first attempt to map the availability of advocacy services for older people across England, whether in residential settings or not.

A former council leader and police authority chairman was yesterday cleared of sexually abusing a teenage boy more than 20 years ago. Colin Inglis, 49, was found not guilty of five charges of indecently assaulting the 13-year-old boy during the early 1980s, when he was a social worker at a children’s home in Hull. The boy, now 37 and a senior financial adviser, had claimed that Mr Inglis performed numerous sex acts on him in the home, at a sports centre and on a camping trip.

The system of NHS charges – covering parking fees, phone costs, eye tests, prescriptions and dental care in England is a “mess”, MPs say. A health select committee report calls for a review of the existing system. It suggests prescription charging should be revamped and parking made free for those who have to go to hospital for daily treatment. The government said it would consider the MPs’ report carefully, but denied charges were a mess.

More than £9.5million a year is being spent looking after asylum seeker children in Cambridgeshire. There are currently 122 unaccompanied asylum seeker children in Cambridgeshire, most of whom live in the city, and the county council pays £1,500 per week to look after each child. Children as young as 12 escaping war and torture across the world end up here after being sent to Oakington Reception Centre before officials realise they are too young to be detained. Social services are then called in to find them homes and arrange education, counselling and health care.

Billions of pounds are being spent on hospitals for the NHS that will not be suitable for the planned new patterns of care. A new report claims that the NHS could be left with “white elephants” — huge hospitals that will take 30 years to pay off, when the future of healthcare lies with smaller, more flexible units closer to where people live. The report says that awareness of this in the Department of Health has brought capital investment of all kinds to a shuddering halt just as new policies are changing the ways in which care will be delivered

No police officers are to be prosecuted over the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at a Tube station. But the Metropolitan Police will be charged under health and safety laws. The Crown Prosecution Service said there was “insufficient evidence” to offer a realistic prospect of conviction against any individuals. Brazilian Mr Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head at Stockwell, south London, on 22 July 2005, after being mistaken for a suicide bomber. A surveillance team had been monitoring a block of flats in Tulse Hill, south London, where Mr Menezes lived, in the belief that a man wanted in connection with the previous day’s attempted suicide bombings in London resided there.

Hundreds of physiotherapy students and graduates will gather in Westminster today to demand urgent Government action over the jobs crisis facing thousands of newly qualified physiotherapists. The lobby of Parliament coincides with the release of a new survey from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP), which indicates that 93 per cent of this year’s 2,529 physiotherapy graduates, trained at a cost of £73 million to the taxpayer, have no NHS job to go to this summer.

The General Social Care Council (GSCC) has welcomed the announcement by the Department of Health (DH) of a public consultation on proposals for change to healthcare professional regulation. The consultation follows the publication of Good doctors, safer patients a review by the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, following the Shipman Inquiry and The regulation of the non-medical healthcare professions, a review by the DH’s former Director General of Workforce, Andrew Foster.