Care visits missed dead pensioner for five weeks

Care visits missed dead pensioner for five weeks
A coroner has called for Somerset Council to carry out an inquiry into why home carers failed to notice the death of a pensioner despite calling seven times after her death. An inquest heard last week that Eileen Fry-Wilkins had died on 4 or 5 April, but was only found on 11 May. She received care from Somerset Care at Home.
Source:- Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 14 November 2006, page 10

The nanny state school for good parenting
Children’s minister Berveley Hughes unveiled plans for a national parenting academy, to be launched next autumn, in a speech yesterday.
She said it would be a source of both academic research and practical advice on both parenting and parenting support.
Source:- Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 14 November 2006, page 8

Charity calls for new measures to monitor sex offenders
Charity Barnardo’s has called for lie detector tests and greater use of satellite tracking to monitor sex offenders in the community.
In a report today, it said such measures would be more effective than informing the local community of the presence of sex offenders, under a so-called Sarah’s law.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 14 November 2006, page 7

Homes for teens
Families will be offered up to £100 a week to take in homeless teenagers as part of a strategy unveiled today by Department for Communities and Local Government secretary Ruth Kelly.
Source:- The Times, Tuesday 14 November 2006, page 2

Paediatrician accused of misconduct
Controversial paediatrician Professor David Southall allegedly accused a grieving mother of hanging her 10-year-old son, the General Medical Council was told yesterday.
The details emerged in a hearing into Southall’s conduct in relation to five children in child protection cases in the 1980s and 1990s, in which he is charged with 18 offences, some of which he admits.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 14 November 2006, page 11
 
‘Cold turkey’ prisoners win payouts
Up to 200 prisoners and former inmates could win substantial payouts for being forced to go “cold turkey” to fight their addiction to drugs, after the Home Office settled with six of them in a test case.
The six had claimed the practice, in which their methadone was withdrawn, amounted to assault and a breach of their human rights.
Source:- The Independent, Tuesday 14 November 2006, page 9

Stop using law as alibi, ministers told
The government has been criticised for misleadingly citing the Human Rights Act for covering up their own failures in a report by parliament’s joint committee of human rights.
Source:- The Times, Tuesday 14 November 2006, page 22

Scottish news

Disclosure on sex offenders works
US law enforcers told MSPs last night that providing the public with information about dangerous sex offenders was effective.
Giving evidence by transatlantic conference call to a Holyrood sub-committee looking in to Mark’s Law, the law officers said wider disclosure could prevent children from harm, without creating vigilante attacks.
In the US, officers go door to door to notify every household within 1000 yards of where a predatory offender stays and contacted schools and day-care centres within one mile, as well as sending out fliers about the offender and releasing details on an email alert system.
Source:- The Herald, Tuesday 14 November 2006

Welsh news

Put school before term-time hols, parents told
Parents in Wales have been told to stop taking their children on holiday in term time after new figures showed the scale of the problem. More than 3,000 pupils were absent during the past academic year in schools in Cardiff the figures show.
Source:- icWales, Tuesday 14 November 2006