Scotland’s first official strategy to encourage and structure volunteering is to be launched in the Capital. Inspiring Volunteering: A Volunteering Strategy for Edinburgh, aims to encourage people to join projects, ranging from teaching or supporting people with special needs, to working in shops.

Better prevention, more local care and improved support to help aid recovery are to be the focus of mental health services in the future, according to a newly published delivery plan Delivering for Mental Health. There are also to be a new set of high-level targets to provide better care in the community by cutting back on the increase of anti-depressant prescribing by supporting people in different ways, and reducing the number of people with mental ill-health who need to be re-admitted to hospital.

A pre-Christmas information campaign to prevent drug-related deaths among users during the high-risk festive holiday period in Glasgow is to be launched in conjunction with Scottish Drugs Forum. The aim is to raise awareness among drug users of the heightened risks of overdose and death over the holiday period when many services are closed and users may be feeling more vulnerable.

Talks between union and Glasgow council leaders yesterday failed to stall an unprecedented strike by key public service workers, which will leave care homes for vulnerable children and the elderly unstaffed. A walkout by up to 10,000 members of public sector union Unison over a pay review will leave the city’s key social care services without “life and limb cover” for three days from Tuesday to Thursday this week.

New laws to open up the adoption system to gay and unmarried couples will not reduce the number of children in care unless extra funding is provided to help support prospective parents. That was the stark warning this weekend from adoption agencies, who said families could be left with inadequate support if funding for social work and psychological services is not improved.

A Care Home in Aberdeen’s west end which has lain empty for three years could soon be demolished and replaced with a new £5million facility, it emerged last night. The Church of Scotland has announced plans to redevelop its Rubislaw Park Home site and build a 64-bed development for the elderly and dementia sufferers.

More than 400 people in Scotland contracted HIV last year, World Aids Day organisers have revealed. New cases were up 11% on the previous year – the biggest rise ever seen north of the border, they claimed. The figures also suggested 3,400 people are now living with disease, which can lead to Aids.

Social Work chief Andrew Lowe has defended Scottish Borders Council’s use of the courts to block what it says was an attempt to reveal the whereabouts of one of the men convicted in the notorious ‘Miss X’ torture case. Mr Lowe told The Southern the local authority took legal action at the weekend to halt plans by The Sunday Mail to print a story that would have given away the new address of recently-released Alexander Maben, alongside an up-to-date photograph of him.

Glasgow’s antisocial behaviour “tsar” yesterday questioned the value of ASBOs as official figures showed the city council has not sought a single order in three years. Councillor Jim Coleman said slapping antisocial behaviour orders – one of First Minister Jack McConnell’s flagship policies – on persistent trouble-makers did no more than offer short-term peace of mind to neighbours, and they should only ever be used as a last resort.

A psychiatrist who hosted a party where a man died from an overdose has admitted that he also used class A drugs. Dr Clint Tatchell, who specialised in addiction therapy, has denied inappropriately supplying pills to his friends at the Roman-themed event at his luxury Glasgow flat.