News round up: Social services criticised in child killing report

Social services failed children killed by schizophrenic mother

Social services failed to recognise the risk posed by a mentally ill woman who killed her two children after being allowed unsupervised access, an inquiry has found.

Vivian Gamor was acting increasingly strangely towards her children before she bludgeoned 10-year-old Antoine with a claw hammer and suffocated daughter Kenniece, three, with cling film in January last year.

Read more on this story in The Daily Telegraph

NHS blamed for nurse’s abuse of patients

Inadequate NHS management allowed a predatory male nurse to manipulate 23 vulnerable patients into sexual relationships, an inquiry said today.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Government confronts death taboo with call for funeral home open days

Funeral homes and crematoria will be encouraged to hold open days as part of a government plan to help people better prepare for death.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Summer of discontent: Local government strikers challenge Brown’s pay restraint policy

Up to 500,000 local government workers walked out yesterday in the biggest strike yet against Gordon Brown’s pay restraint policy, closing schools, sports centres and museums and disrupting refuse and recycling collections across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Knife deaths up by a third since Labour came to power

Five people every week are stabbed to death as knife crime has risen by a third since Labour came to power, new figures show.

Read more on this story in The Daily Telegraph

Shock figures reveal no part of Britain is safe as knife violence spreads EVERYWHERE

The appalling scale of knife crime across the nation can be revealed for the first time today.

Official figures obtained by the Daily Mail show how the shadow of ‘Blade Britain’ has spread from urban areas to the shires.

Read more on this story in The Daily Mail

Huntley repeat ‘still a danger’

Crucial changes to police methods called for after the Soham murders have still not been introduced.

A report said the failure to bring in a national police database meant “we were still living with some of the risks”.

Read more on this story in The Daily Mirror

One in ten children have sexually explicit conversations on the internet, study finds

More than one in ten children has had a sexually explicit conversation online, according to a study that details how youngsters spend their time on the internet and their mobile phones.

Read more on this story in The Daily Telegraph

Cash for immigrants insufficient, say MPs

Councils have been given insufficient money by the government to meet the cost of dealing with a rising tide of migrant workers, MPs complained on Wednesday.

A report by the communities and local government select committee said plans by ministers to impose a levy on immigrants to pay for extra public services would be “a drop in the ocean in comparison to the needs of local government”.