Monday 11 October 2004

By Amy Taylor, Maria Ahmed and Clare Jerrom.

Ethics review set up after ruling on Wyatt baby

An independent review into the ethics of treating very premature
babies has been set up after a judge ruled that a premature baby
should not be resuscitated if she stopped breathing.

Charlotte Wyatt’s parents wanted their baby to be
revived.

Now the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, an independent body that
makes recommendations how ethical issues should be looked at by
doctors, has set up a group to look at the ethics of giving life
prolonging treatment to very premature babies.

Source:- The Independent Saturday 9 October page 20

Climbie worker loses job appeal

Victoria Climbie’s social worker Lisa Arthurworrey has lost
her employment tribunal appeal against her dismissal from Haringey
Council in London.

Source:- The Guardian Saturday 9 October page 8

Tube bars launch of Shelter ‘non-ideal home
show’

London Underground has banned Shelter from launching its campaign
to highlight the problems of bad housing at a tube station
yesterday.

The charity booked out advertising space at Earl’s Court tube
station to promote their campaign as the Ideal Home show is on
nearby. However, the show’s organisers allege that the
posters are defamatory and demanded they were removed.
London Underground then reneged on the agreement to allow Shelter
to conduct the launch at the station. The launch went ahead on the
street instead.

Source:- The Guardian Saturday 9 October page 9

Villagers bristle at accusation of rural prejudice

Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality Trevor Phillips has
said that there was a “passive apartheid” in operation
in the countryside that could cause people from ethnic minorities
to fell uncomfortable.

Speaking to the BBC, Phillips said that it wasn’t that
anybody in the countryside wanted to keep ethnic minorities out but
that a “gradual drift towards a difficult situation in which
ethnic minorities feel uncomfortable” was taking place.

Source:- The Guardian Saturday 9 October page 13

Gays to get same protection as racial minorities

Gay people are to be given the same protection as racial minorities
and the disabled by a single anti-discrimination watchdog.

The new Equality and Human Rights Commission will merge the
Disability Rights Commission, the Equal Opportunities Commission
and the Commission for Racial Equality under one umbrella. In
addition to gay rights the commission would deal with
discrimination on the grounds of religion and age.

The proposed body is likely to be included in the legislative
programme announced in the Queen’s Speech next month,
although it will not come into operation until 2006.

Source:- The Sunday Times Sunday 10 October 2004

Doctors ‘wanted to let boy die’

Doctors from the hospital at the centre of last week’s ruling
to let 11-month-old Charlotte Wyatt die are under police
investigation over the care of another child.

Portsmouth police have confirmed that a file on an incident in
which doctors wanted to let a severely handicapped 12-year-old boy
die has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The allegations under investigation involve David Glass, then 12,
whom doctors at St Mary’s Hospital, Portsmouth, determined
was dying and put a “do not resuscitate” order with his
notes without telling his mother.

The parents of the boy, now 17, took case to the European Court of
Human Rights and won a verdict that the rights of their son had
been violated.

Source:- The Sunday Times Sunday 10 October 2004

Boys aged 10 for sale in sex scandal

Boys are being forced into prostitution, hidden by their use of
mobile and the internet.

Source:- The Observer Sunday 10 October 2004

Family of banker stabbed in the park demands end to laws
that let danger patients roam free

The family of Denis Finnegan, who was stabbed to death in a London
park by an allegedly mentally ill man, have blamed the government
for his murder.

They have written to the Prime Minister calling for an urgent
review of the care of psychiatric patients.

Source:- The Mail on Sunday Sunday 10 October 2004

Asylum seeker who sparked £38 million prison riot
sues

Eunice Edozieh, the asylum seeker who allegedly sparked off the
riot at Yarl’s Wood detention centre, is suing the government
for compensation.

She is demanding more than £50,000 from the Home Office and
security firm Group 4, claiming they breached her human rights. The
riot was triggered after Ms Edozieh was restrained by Group 4
guards at the Bedfordshire complex.

Source:- The Mail on Sunday Sunday 10 October 2004

Asylum advisors face axe

More than 1,000 of the 2,500 immigration and asylum advisors could
be “struck off” due to problems with a scheme designed
to eliminate cowboy advisors it has been warned this week.

The Law Centres Federation said that many advisors may fail to sit
the exam before the April deadline.

It says that the deadline is unrealistic as the exam is only being
held intermittently in a few locations that lack the required
facilities.

Source:- The Guardian Monday 11 October page 6

52,000 youths have nowhere to live, study finds

Up to 52, 000 16 to 24-year-olds in England had nowhere to live
last year, according to new research revealing the extent of the
problem for the first time.

The study, from York University and commissioned by the charity
Centrepoint, comes at a time when ministers have so far refused to
produce figures on youth homelessness.

Source:- The Guardian Monday 11 October page 8

Taxpayer ‘must fun £6bn care for the
elderly’

Britain faces a crisis in care home places for an ageing
population, according to Hamilton Anstead, chair of the English
Community Care Association.

Anstead, chief executive of Four Seasons Health Care, which runs
300 care homes, says that 90,000 beds, a fifth of capacity, have
been lost in six years because local authorities are not prepared
to pay the full costs of providing care.

He rejected community care minister Stephen Ladyman’s
promotion of a new model, called extra-care housing, where
residents have their own front doors but high levels of domiciliary
care.

Source:- The Times Monday 11 October 2004 page 6

Scottish newspapers

Every death at care home to be examined

The Care Commission is to re-examine every cases where an older
resident has died at a troubled city nursing home over the past two
years.

The commission is investigating the death of Isabella McGregor at
Ashley Court Nursing Home in Morningside and has ordered the home
to take urgent action to improve standards of care or risk losing
registration.

Source:- Evening News  Saturday 9 October

Sex shop plan is thrown out

A proposal for a new sex shop in the city centre has been rejected
by councillors following widespread criticism.

Community leaders, parents and education officials fought the plan
for a licensed sex shop in Fountainbridge claiming the venue
earmarked for the shop was just a few hundred yards from a primary
school and education centre.

At a regulatory committee meeting yesterday, councillors rejected
the application claiming there was already an over provision of
similar outlets in the area.

Source:- Evening News  Saturday 9 October

16-year-old mother separated from baby at Dungavel

A 16-year-old mother has been separated from her 18-month-old baby
after being detained with her teenage brothers and sisters at
Dungavel detention centre.

The four Romanian siblings aged between 15 and 18 have been held at
the centre since last week. But when they arrived, Roksana
Tinichigui was told she could not be reunited with her son Michael
as “children were not allowed in Dungavel” and the baby
is believed to have been placed in foster care.

Campaigners have slammed the situation as “hugely
worrying” and “perverse”.

Source:- Sunday Herald  Sunday 10 October

Scotland’s increasing west to east shift creates
health and service crisis

The west of Scotland is experiencing a population decline while
parts of the east are booming, it has emerged.

Over the last 10 years, the Western Isles has lost 10.8 per cent of
its population while Glasgow has seen a 6.4 per cent decline. But
West Lothian’s population has grown by 10.5 per cent, East
Lothian is up 7.3 per cent and Stirling has increased by 6.1 per
cent.

However, the ageing of the rural population has presented a problem
for planners trying to deliver services such as meals on wheels and
nursing care to populations thinly spread in more inaccessible
areas.

Source:- The Scotsman  Monday 11 October

Welsh newspapers

Designer clothes mum starved sons

A mother who wore designer clothes left her two young boys to
starve, a court heard yesterday.

The boys, aged four and one, were so neglected they contracted a
progressive wasting disorder hardly ever seen in the UK.

The 28-year-old from Wrexham, who cannot be named, admitted two
charges of cruelty between January and April of this year.

Source:- Western Mail Saturday 9 October

‘We are all worried for our children’

People in the town of Usk are concerned for the welfare of their
children after a convicted sex offender was able to abscond from a
nearby open prison for 24-hours before being recaptured.

Convicted rapist Robert Neil Stokes walked free amongst the
community earlier this week. Parents are now worried that other
prisoners may be able to escape from Prescoed open prison.

Source:- Western Mail Saturday 9 October

Police warning as schoolgirl’s rapist still at
large

A man wanted for kidnapping a 15-year-old girl off the street in
Cardiff and repeatedly raping her was still at large last
night.

Micam Roland Williams is wanted by police in connection with the
attack on September 27.

Source:- Wales on Sunday Sunday 11 October

1,000 attend anti-racism rally

More than 1, 000 people went to an anti-racism march in Swansea at
the weekend after the death of a Iraqi man outside a pub.

Kalan Karim died in Swansea last month. A 26-year-old man has
appeared in court charged with his murder.

Source:- Western Mail Monday 11 October

 

 

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