A daily summary of social care stories from the main newspapers

By
Clare Jerrom and Alex Dobson.

Police
hold runaway father with HIV child

A
British man was arrested in Sydney yesterday after he broke a court order when
he fled to Australia with his HIV positive daughter to avoid tests.

The
man wants to take his three-year-old daughter back to Britain for alternative
therapy, but Australian authorities say she is dying and needs conventional treatment
urgently.

The
man and his wife left Britain in 1999 after a High Court ruled that their
daughter should be tested for HIV as her mother, who has since died, suffered
from the disease.

The
father broke an Australian court order by leaving his Victoria home with the
child last weekend. Neither can be named for legal reasons.

Both
were captured in Sydney on Wednesday and his daughter was taken into care.

A
Children’s Court issued an order for the child’s apprehension so that she could
have conventional anti-retroviral therapy in Victoria.

A
court in Sydney will rule today whether the father can keep custody of his
daughter.

Source:-
The Times  Friday 3 May page 10

Home
office is cool on drug report

The
home office welcomed a report yesterday that suggested heroin and cocaine users
should be sent for treatment rather than prosecuted, but did not endorse it.

Drug
treatment charities backed the announcement from the Association of Chief
Police Officers. But ministers are understood to be unconvinced about the idea
of giving hard drug users a choice between treatment and conviction.

But,
they are believed to welcome the general police support for drug treatment,
which chimes with government policy.

Ministers
also welcomed the decision not to call for Ecstasy to be downgraded from a
class A to a Class C drug. However there was no comment on the suggestion to
recommend a softer approach to cannabis possession, which would allow many
users to escape with a warning.

Source:-
The Times  Friday 3 May page 10

Sangatte
Kurds shot

Three
Frenchmen were charged with the attempted murder of two refugees from the Red
Cross centre in Sangatte, near Calais.

Police
described the suspects, from nearby Boulogne-sur-Mer, as racists. They had
fought with refugees near the centre early on Tuesday before returning home to
consume alcohol. Later they went out again, but this time armed with a rifle.

In
the centre, they shot an Iraqi Kurd in the foot and drove to Sangatte where
they shot another Kurdish man from Turkey.

The
three suspects were then chased by police and after they crashed their BMW,
were detained by police. The three were drunk at the time and all had police
records, according to officers.

Source:-
The Times  Friday 3 May page 15

60
stowaways questioned after French search ‘lapse’

Sixty
illegal immigrants were being processed at an immigration detention centre
after they successfully reached Britain by stowing away on a channel tunnel
freight train.

The
59 men and one child, thought to be from Afghanistan, jumped out of containers
on Wednesday at the Dollands Moor freight depot in Kent. Five men evaded
security guards and reached the M20 before they were picked up by police.

The
lapse follows a similar move last month when 100 illegal immigrants were found
at the depot.

English,
Welsh and Scottish Railways, which runs the freight depot, blamed French
authorities and rail operator SNCF: “One or two asylum seekers getting through
would be understandable, but a train with 60 people on indicates it has not
been searched.”

Source:-
The Guardian  Friday 3 May page 6

Sex
policies ‘encourage girls to get pregnant’

Ministers
pouring money into child care, housing and job opportunities for teenage mother
are encouraging young girls to get pregnant, according to a family pressure
group.

Today,
the Family Education Trust says in a letter to MPs that the teenage pregnancy
unit should be scrapped. It claims the current strategy for tackling teenage
pregnancies is a disaster and improving the economic situation for teenage
mothers does nothing to deter pregnancies.

The
trust’s director Robert Whelan said: “Young people are growing up in an
environment in which public authorities are making arrangements for people to
become sexually active at a very young age.”

England
has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Western Europe.

Source:-
Daily Telegraph  Friday 3 May
page 11

Welsh
papers

Doctors
at war over child health services

A
row has broken out between two groups of paediatricians in the two largest
cities in Wales.

The
publication of a new report on specialised children’s services has ignited a
simmering row between doctors in Cardiff and Swansea over the best place to
site the new children’s hospital for Wales.

There
have already been claims from a group of consultants in Swansea that the
hospital, which is due to be built near Cardiff, will only result in more
services being based around the capital.

The
report released yesterday by the Specialised Health Services Commission for
Wales says that paediatric neurosurgery should be carried out only in Cardiff.
Dr Dewi Evans, a consultant paediatrician at Singleton Hospital in Swansea,
said that the report’s conclusions were flawed in a number of ways. He added
that it was biased, prejudiced and ill-founded and the worst piece of research
that he had ever read.

Source:-
Western Mail Friday 3 May page 2

Scheme
to help young people leaving care

A
new scheme to help young people leaving care in Wales is to be launched next
week.

The
Prince’s Trust Leaving Care Scheme will be unveiled at Cardiff’s city hall by
health and social care minister Jane Hutt. The scheme will provide young people
leaving the care system with a fully trained volunteer mentor who will help
them into the world of independent living.

The
project is funded by the Lattice Foundation and will initially run in parts of
the south and west of Wales but eventually it is hoped that the scheme will be
available to care leavers throughout the principality.

Source:-
Western Mail Friday 3 May page 9