A senior hospital manager has been suspended after a laptop containing the unencrypted personal data of more than 20,000 patients was stolen, a health trust admitted yesterday.

Funding for Scotland’s only specialist domestic abuse court is to be doubled to £1.2m, allowing 500 more cases to be handled this way and improving the handling of other cases in mainstream courts.

A charity inspired by the actor Paul Newman claims it has been unable to send seriously ill children on holiday in Scotland because it faces too much red tape and high registration fees from the country’s care sector watchdog.

The English-based Over the Wall charity had planned to hold a residential camp next month at Glenalmond College in Perth for more than 80 children, aged five to 17.

However, the charity has been told by the Care Commission, which regulates the care sector in Scotland, that legislation north of the border means it must register as a care home if it wants to proceed. This means it will face registration fees of about £4000, which will impinge greatly on its limited funds.

Organisers with the charity also claim the lengthy process of applying to hold camps in Scotland is an “additional pressure” for the volunteers who run it.

Over the Wall has now scrapped plans for a week-long camp for 60 seriously ill children at the Perthshire venue. It now plans to bus them almost 350 miles to another camp near Kidderminster in the Midlands. It claims, however, that it will still be allowed to hold a camp for 60 siblings of the children at Glenalmond.

MALE nurses were allowed to carry on working despite evidence they had accessed child pornography, the deputy head of the official nursing watchdog claimed last night.

The Scottish Government could be forced to pay back millions of pounds as part of the probe into the fiasco surrounding the collapse of child care provider One Plus.

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A charity  worker who stole more than £1000 from the cancer shop she helped run has been spared jail. Hard-up Alexis Hughes, 40, pocketed the takings because she was struggling to clothe her kids.

A woman has been charged with attempting to murder an 11-year-old boy six weeks after she was released from a mental health unit in the south-west of England.

Plans for a five-year programme of building new care homes for the elderly have been announced by Fife Council. The authority, which runs 10 homes housing almost 300 residents, said it had set aside £40m to build the first four or five homes at about £8m each.

After the first phase, the council will “take stock” of the remaining homes to see if more need replacing.  If approved, Appin and Raith Gates homes in Kirkcaldy and Alan McLure home in Glenrothes will be rebuilt first.

The proposals will go before the social work and health committee on Monday.  Figures show an increasing elderly population across Scotland, but fewer people want to be looked after in care homes in their twilight years.

Only two of the current stock of 10 have en-suite facilities and councillors want all the care homes to be modernised

Serious concerns about two of the country’s largest private homecare companies have been revealed in a BBC Scotland investigation. Domiciliary Care and HRM Homecare provide almost 15,000 hours of care per week to the most vulnerable sections of Scottish society.

Ex-workers accused them of putting profits before people’s welfare. Both companies denied the allegations but HRM has promised to investigate fully the BBC’s claims.

More than 70,000 elderly and disabled Scots have carers coming into their homes, allowing them to retain some independence. About a third of these services, which are paid for by local authorities, are now delivered by the private sector.

The allegations, which are broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland’s The Investigation on Monday morning, include:
    * “cramming” – which means fitting in as many clients in as short a time as possible, irrespective of how long they have been allocated
    * poorly-trained staff
    * carers not turning up
    * companies falsely charging local authorities for work that is not being done.