Community nurses pledge falls victim to cost-cutting

By Mithran Samuel, Maria Ahmed and Derren Hayes

Community nurses pledge falls victim to cost-cutting

The government appears to have missed its target to have 3,000 community matrons in post to support people with long-term conditions by March of this year, with figures showing just under half were in post in December.

Social workers, physiotherapists and others are having to boost the number of “case managers” employed to manage the care of people with long-term conditions, it has emerged.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 15 May 2007 page 20

We are making ludicrous arrests just to meet our targets, say police

Police officers will tell the new justice secretary Lord Falconer they are being forced to make “ludicrous” arrests to meet government targets, at the annual conference of the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 15 May 2007 page 4

Children who miss numeracy targets to get one-to-one help

Children who struggle with numeracy are to be given intensive one-to-one tuition to ensure all children are numerate by the time they leave primary school, under plans to be unveiled by chancellor and Labour leadership candidate Gordon Brown today.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 15 May 2007 pages 6-7

Town halls to lose £40m in migrant numbers row

Councils in London and the South East have slammed government estimates on the number of migrants in the region which it claims are far lower than the true figures.

Westminster, Slough, Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea councils have written to ministers asking them to abandon new estimates from the Office for National Statistics, which they claim will shave £40 million off government funding to councils next year.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 15 May 2007 page 22

Social worker drowned his disabled baby

A social worker is facing a substantial period of imprisonment for killing his 14-month-old son because he could not cope with the pain the child was suffering due to a rare form of epilepsy which left him blind, deaf and prone to daily convulsive fits.

Andreas Milakovic, who is deaf and worked for Rotherham Council, tried to commit suicide after drowning his son Yacub in the bath.

He admitted manslaughter with diminished responsibility and is now awaiting sentence following psychiatric reports, but Mr Justice Penry-Davies, presiding at Sheffield Crown Court, told him to expect a “substantial sentence of imprisonment”.

Source:- The Times Tuesday 15 May 2007 page 26

Twice as many women as men working in public sector

Twice as many women work in the public sector as men, according to latest Office for National Statistics figures, which also show that average earnings have increased faster in the public than private sector since 2000, by 29.3% compared to 26.5%.

The statistics also showed that public-sector workers occupied their jobs for longer, with 40% staying in the same job for 10 years, compared to 28% in the private sector.

Source:- The Financial Times 15 May 2007 page 4

Banned Alzheimer drugs are better than we thought

Alzheimer’s drugs banned by the NHS for not being ‘cost-effective’ could have a significant effect on dementia patients, research has revealed.

Source:- The Daily Mail, Tuesday 15 May 2007, page 17

Scottish news

The number of inmates freed early from Scottish prisons who have been sent back to jail for breaching their electronic tagging orders has nearly tripled in the past five months.

More than 1,500 prisoners have been released with an electronic tag up to four months ahead of their scheduled liberty date under the home detention curfew (HDC) scheme introduced last June to ease pressure on overcrowded jails.

Nearly 240 of those – 16 per cent – have been recalled to prison for breaching the terms of the curfew, with some having committed further offences.

Source:- The Scotsman, Tuesday 15 May

Nurse’s sex act on OAP patient

A nurse has been accused of performing a sex act on a care home resident where she worked.

It is alleged Jessie MacPhee also told another nurse to have sex with the patient. Colleagues accused the senior nurse of serious acts of professional misconduct while working at Lynn of Lorne Care Home, near Oban, in 2003 and 2004.

MacPhee, of Oban, faces being struck off if the Nursing and Midwifery Council find her guilty of misconduct.

Source:- The Record, Tuesday 15 May