Around 50 of Edinburgh council’s health and social care department staff are set to be offered voluntary redundancy in a bid to help reduce its budget deficit.

{mosimage}Home helps are among those likely to be targeted in a cost-cutting exercise expected to save around £1 million in the course of a full year.

The drastic measures may be necessary because fewer workers than anticipated have left as a result of natural staff turnover. Union leaders today warned such action would impact on vital services for elderly and vulnerable residents across Edinburgh.

The department is responsible for a number of care homes and social work offices. However, council chiefs said they would be able to minimise the effect by increasing the efficiency of the remaining workforce, such as reducing the amount of time spent by workers travelling between clients.

Staff in the health and social care department are already facing extra pressure following a decision to freeze recruitment.

A council spokeswoman said: “Due to the budget situation, we are considering some voluntary severance of staff. There has been no formal agreement yet on the scale of these redundancies.”

THE police chief spearheading Scotland’s war on drugs quit his post last night, blaming bureaucracy, under-manning and lack of co-operation.

Immigrant children in Glasgow suffer racist abuse and bullying from each other as well as from others, according to new research.

A children’s cancer charity boss has paid back more than £50,000 to the scandal-hit organisation’s creditors.

Fife Council and Unison Fife have hit back at media criticism of home care services. They also admitted a lack of communication between carers and senior management.

A Review of how covert medication is given to residents in care homes has been announced following an Aberdeen man’s campaign.

A cheating nurse pocketed £3000 in sick pay while secretly continuing to work. Katherine Clark claimed that back trouble meant she was unable to do her job at an NHS 24 call centre.

The national watchdog on care homes is to investigate whether staff are hiding drugs in elderly residents’ food and drink.

The number of child psychiatry beds has plummeted by 70 per cent in Scotland, forcing youngsters into adult wards where they are at risk from sexual predators, it emerged yesterday.

Nearly 2,500 offenders convicted of drug-dealing, assault, housebreaking and other crimes have been released early from Scotland’s prisons under a controversial policy to tackle overcrowding.