A Welsh hospital has resorted to renting hotel rooms for patients to avoid overcrowding and infections on wards. The University Hospital of Wales is piloting a trial of using twin-bed rooms in a nearby three-star Cardiff hotel for patients recovering from a bone marrow transplant.

A community worker savaged by an Alsatian dog said she thought was going to die during an horrific attack. Janine Webber was in hospital for nine days, needed four operations and a skin graft on her right leg. She has to use a zimmer-frame to walk and said her life has been “devastated”.

A gagging row has broken out over controversial plans to shut an old people’s residential home in Cardiff. The council wants to stop staff at the Iorwerth Jones home, in Llanishen, Cardiff, from speaking to the press and prevent them encouraging residents and their relatives to lobby against the closure. The council has begun a consultation, but only offered two alternatives to staff: closure of the home and its transfer to the NHS Trust for use by dementia patients, or keeping one of the four units at Iorwerth Jones open for existing residents until suitable alternative accommodation is found.

The Welsh Assembly Government is to create a series of new groups to help those who deliver public services work more closely together. Local Service Boards will be in charge of directing services that involve a number of different bodies. Ministers have been told that services in Wales from refuse collection to care for elderly people are delivered in an inefficient and patchy way. They have promised changes “on an unprecedented scale”.

A set of basic standards for public services will tell taxpayers exactly what they can expect under sweeping reforms unveiled by the Assembly Government. Important decisions affecting services from healthcare to schools will be taken by a network of public service boards, consisting of council chiefs, NHS managers, voluntary bodies, the police and public sector organisations. Public services will be made to collaborate in an attempt to make standards consistently higher across Wales.

Health Minister Dr Brian Gibbons will launch the therapy strategy for Wales on Thursday. Philippa Ford, Policy Officer for Wales of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, explains what therapists hope the strategy will achieve…

A Welsh police chief was last night at the centre of a furious row over paedophilia after suggesting illegal sex with teenagers was “a grey area”. Terry Grange, who is in charge of the Dyfed-Powys Force, drew a livid response from politicians and children’s charities after he said the term paedophile should not necessarily be used for adults sexually involved with children between 13 and 15.

Nearly 500 people have attended a passionate public meeting in Builth Wells against plans to cut services at the town’s community hospital. An action group has been set up to fight the proposals by Powys Local Health Board (LHB), which is facing a deficit of £3.5m.

A controversial open prison which has seen at least 10 inmates abscond since June has been named one of the best in England and Wales. Two paedophiles and two murderers are among those who have escaped from HMP Prescoed, near Usk, South Wales, in the past few months.

Children in Cardiff are being left out in the cold after a decision to close seven city play centres. The play schemes across Cardiff will close for a week on a rota basis because of a shortage of staff. It comes after Cardiff council announced a temporary freeze on staff recruitment after it announced it was facing a £7.1m overspend in its budget. It hoped the freeze on filling vacant posts and delays in appointing new staff will save around £369,000. But the news has come as a second major hammer blow to children’s facilities in Cardiff.