Private social care grows as councils restrict help

By Mithran Samuel, Maria Ahmed, Clare Jerrom and Amy Taylor

Private social care grows as councils restrict help

People are increasingly having to organise and fund their own social care or rely upon under-supported carers, due to ever-increasing restrictions on publicly-funded care, the Commission for Social Care Inspection warned yesterday.

In its annual state of social care report, CSCI said the tightening of eligibility criteria by councils was hitting carers’ ability to hold down a job and look after their children.

Source:- Financial Times Thursday 11 January 2007 page 4

Leaked documents suggest that Home Office ministers knew about the fact that serious criminals had not been registered on a national police database last October, despite claims to the contrary.

The letter from the Association of Chief Police Officers warned that people convicted abroad had not been entered on the database, despite home secretary John Reid claiming that ministers only found out about the problem after ACPO told MPs this week.

The unregistered criminals may have taken jobs working with vulnerable people because their convictions would not have come up under Criminal Records Bureau checks.

Source:- Financial Times Thursday 11 January 2007 page 2

The government was defeated last night in a vote on a key element of its Mental Health Bill after peers backed an amendment to provide greater safeguards for people receiving compulsory treatment.

The amendment said patients could refuse treatment if their decision-making faculties were intact.

Source:- The Guardian Thursday 11 January 2007 page 12

The Law Society is preparing a judicial review challenge against the government’s plans to reform legal aid through market forces and replacing hourly rates by fixed fees.

Source:- The Times Thursday 11 January 2007 page 30

Fifty families ‘ to lose their homes every day’

More than 50 families will lose their homes every day this year because they cannot cope with their debts, experts warned yesterday.

Source: – The Daily Mail Thursday January 11 2007 page 19

Green values help academy top new league table 

A  city academy which educates its pupils on green issues throughout its lessons has been found to have the best teaching standards in the country.

St Francis of Assisi Academy in Liverpool, which is jointly sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England came first in a new league table which shows which schools have done the most to improve their pupil’s attainment.

Source:- The Independent, Thursday 11 January 2007

I know nothing

John Reid admitted that he had no idea of the whereabouts of 280 serious criminals who had returned to Britain after committing crimes overseas.

Some of the group may be murderers and paedophiles. The Association of Chief Police Officers has revealed that crimes committed overseas were not logged on the police national computer.

Source:- The Sun, Thursday 11 January 2007

Scottish news

A failure by local authorities to put in place available tax breaks means working mothers are missing out on thousands of pounds.

Parents can save as much as £100 per month with the childcare vouchers, which cut tax from nursery fees.

Chancellor Gordon Brown introduced the scheme in April 2005 to ease the burden on working families. However, so far only 3,000 families in Scotland out of a total of 30,000 people in the UK have benefited from the scheme.

Source:- The Scotsman  Thursday 11 January

Animal rights groups have criticised provocative posters comparing people with learning difficulties to pets.

Enable Scotland launched the campaign to highlight the problems learning disability charities face when raising funds. The organisation wants the posters to show that animal charities attract almost twice as many donors as disability charities.

However the campaign has been criticised for creating tension between the two sets of charities.

Source:- The Herald  Thursday 11 January