A summary of social care stories from the main newspapers

By
Community Care reporters.

Judges
to review entry restraints on ethnic groups

Home
secretary David Blunkett faces a high court challenge over rules that allow
immigration officers to discriminate against would-be entrants to Britain on
the basis of their ethnic origin.

Civil
rights group Liberty has been given permission to mount a judicial review on
behalf of six Czechs of Roma origin. They were prevented from boarding planes
to Britain at Prague airport last year.

Liberty
will ask the court to declare a ministerial authorisation issued last May by
the then Home Office minister Barbara Roche as unlawful. This allows
immigration officers to subject certain nationalities or ethnic groups to “a
more rigorous examination than other persons in the same circumstances”.

These
are Kurds, Roma, Albanians, Tamils, Pontic Greeks, Somalis, Afghans and ethnic
Chinese with travel documents issued by Malaysia or Japan.

Source:-
The Guardian, Wednesday 2 January, page 7

Britons
may seek euthanasia in Holland

A
Dutch law making mercy killing easier in Holland came into force yesterday
prompting interest from some terminally ill Britons.

Doctors
no longer have to hide their intention to administer fatal doses of drugs to
the dying and those facing "interminable and unendurable
suffering". 

The
new law covers both physical illness and also those with mental illness whose
pain could be deemed to be unendurable.

Pro-euthanasia
organisations in Holland say they have received dozens of inquiries from
Britons.

Last
year British courts rejected an appeal for the right to die brought under the
Human Rights Act 1998 by Diane Pretty, who has motor neurone disease.

Source:-
The Times, Wednesday 2 January, page 13

Welfare
to Work does not Work, says Government Report

Making
welfare benefit claimants learn about job vacancies has no effect on their
chances of finding work, according to official research from the Department for
Work and Pensions.

The
research also finds that many people who are supposed to be attending
“work-focused interviews” as a condition of getting benefit are not doing so.

The
government has already spent £30m piloting its Welfare to Work programme of
actively encouraging people to find work through ONE – so called because it enables
people to claim benefits and get employment advice at one place in one go. This
involves claimants having to attend an interview about the jobs they could do
if they want to carry on receiving benefit. The approach will be extended
nationwide this year as benefit offices and job centres merge under the new
Jobcentre Plus banner.

But
the DWP’s report, The Employment Effects of ONE, concludes that the
government’s aim of getting more benefit recipients into work has failed.

Source:
– Daily Telegraph, Wednesday 2 January, page 6