Wednesday 14 August 2002

By Clare Jerrom, Reg McKay and Alex Dobson.

Fined on the spot

A 65-year-old man became the first pensioner in Britain to
receive new on-the-spot fines for anti-social behaviour.

West Midlands police said the man from Birmingham was given a
£40 fine for being drunk and disorderly. He was arrested after
demanding to fight officers outside a pub.

Source:- The Times Wednesday 14 August page 2

Woman in fight to tell adopted son of
illness

A woman who gave her son up for adoption is desperate to warn
him that he may have a fatal hereditary disease, but the law
prevents it.

Wendy Watson gave up her first son for adoption in 1966 due to
what she describes as “the intense social pressures of the time”.
She was 20 and unmarried, but subsequently went on to marry her
partner and had a further three children with him.

Now her husband is suffering from Huntington’s disease, a
degenerative and incurable disorder, and one of the couple’s
three younger children has also had the disease diagnosed.

Watson’s efforts to warn her son he has a 50 per cent
chance of inheriting Huntington’s has been thwarted by rules
that make it impossible for her to contact him.

Watson, who lives in Dorset and whose surname has been changed
to protect her three younger children, is hoping that an amendment
to the Adoption and Children Bill could help her. It will be
debated in the Lords in October.

The amendment, to be tabled by Baroness Barker, will call for
birth relatives to have a statutory right of access to an
intermediary service that would actively seek out the adopted child
once he/she reaches 18 to ask them whether they want to contact
their birth relatives.

Source:- The Times Wednesday 14 August page 7

12 held after net child porn raids

Twelve people suspected of distributing child pornography on the
internet were in custody last night following police raids across
Britain and Northern Ireland.

Search warrants were used at 17 addresses after a five-month
investigation.

Source:- The Guardian Wednesday 14 August page 6

Computer bungle ‘will hit the
poor’

Ministers were criticised for indecision yesterday after it was
claimed there would be further delays to the introduction of a
computer system at the child support agency.

Poverty campaigners also warned that the continued postponement
of the launch, scheduled for April this year, and now reported to
be held on until next summer, was depriving children of low income
single families of sums of up to £10 per week.

The £200 million system designed to simplify and accelerate
decisions on support payments by absent parents, was developed by a
private consortium under the government’s private finance
initiative.

The department of work and pensions refused to comment about
claims by project insiders to the BBC that the planned introduction
for this November, would be missed by about six months.

Source:- The Guardian Wednesday 14 August page 10

Guardian Society

Safety fences

Three patients from a psychiatric unit leapt to their deaths
together. Linda Jackson looks at the tragedy’s
aftershocks.

Source:- Guardian Society Wednesday 14 August page
9

Flexible friends

Young people with behaviour problems are being offered a mix of
residential and foster care

Source:- Guardian Society Wednesday 14 August page
68-67

Display of good practice

Manchester shop windows to promote disability awareness

Source:- Guardian Society Wednesday 14 August page
67

Situations critical

Despite investment, staff shortages continue in social care

Source:- Guardian Society Wednesday 14 August page
67

Scottish newspapers

Country retreat for drug addicts

A new residential rehabilitation centre for drug addicts is to
open in rural Tighnabruaich in Argyll. The centre, King’s
Court, is being set up and managed by the Maxie Richards
Foundation, established in 1994 by anti-drugs campaigner, Maxie
Richards, and will accommodate six people at any one time.

The residents, aged between 23 and 35 years, have to be drug
free for a year before they qualify for the centre. Richards is a
staunch advocate of a drugs free life, and has campaigned against
the use of substitute drugs such as methadone.

Source:- The Herald Wednesday 15 August page 9

Welsh newspapers

Children’s Commissioner calls for inquiry into huge
burden of examinations leading to pupil ‘burnout’

Children’s Commissioner for Wales Peter Clarke warned last night
that the pressure of exams was pushing pupils into burnout before
they reached university.

He said that those who would receive their A-level results
tomorrow were the first to have been tested all the way through
their education, and he added that he felt that children were
over-tested now and that it was an area that needed to be looked
at.

Geraint Davies, secretary of the National Association of
Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers Cymru, said that he
thought that it had become a fact that we expect burn-out among
youngsters. He added that by the time they reach university they
had become jaded and had lost their thirst for knowledge.

Source:- Western Mail Wednesday 14 August page 1

90-year-olds six-hour wait on trolley for
ambulance

A 90-year-old woman waited on a hospital trolley for six hours
for an ambulance to take her home.

The ambulance service told Jessie Thompson, who suffers from
Alzheimer’s disease, that unless her case was an emergency she
would have to wait another eight hours for transport.

She was eventually driven back to her nursing home by an
ambulance after her carer chased after paramedics arriving at the
West Wales General Hospital in Carmarthen.

Thompson’s son, David, said that if her carer had not chased
after the ambulance his mother would have been stuck in casualty
for 14 hours with no guarantee that an ambulance would have been
available then.

The Welsh Ambulance Service has now launched an
investigation.

Source:- Western Mail Wednesday 14 August page 1

Art display aims to lift mental health
stigma

A pioneering art exhibition featuring the works of those
affected by mental health problems is being staged to help those
suffering from depression.

The exhibition that is being shown in Cardiff Bay is part of a
nationwide drive to lift the stigma of mental health problems,
which affects more than 700,000 people in Wales each year.

The Art Works in Mental Health project opens on 28 August and
the organisers say it demonstrates that people with mental health
problems can take part in society alongside everyone else.

The exhibition is being held in the Bay Art gallery at 54 Bute
Street, Cardiff and runs until 7 September.

Source:- South Wales Echo Tuesday 13 August page 10