Police to exhume three former care home residents as seven deaths deemed suspicious

Police to exhume three former care home residents as seven deaths deemed suspicious
Police are set to start exhuming the bodies of a group of older people who had lived at a care home after two of its workers were arrested.
At least seven suspicious deaths at the Parkfields residential home near Glastonbury Somerset. The exhumations follow the arrest of a registered nurse Rachel Baker, 42, and her husband Leigh, a 48-year-old chef, who ran the home. Rachel was questioned about administering a noxious substance and Mr Baker of “being concerned” with the administering.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 5 June 2007, page 4

Crackdown on middle class wine drinkers
Middle-class wine drinkers will be the focus of government plans to make drunkenness as socially unacceptable as smoking.Under plans published today, a fresh audit is to be conducted by the government into the overall costs of alcohol abuse to society and the National Health Service.
Source:- The Times, Tuesday 5 June 2007, page 1

Women who force-fed chilli and raw eggs to children are jailed
Two Mormon women who force-fed six young children chilli powder and beat them with rolling pins were jailed for 19 months each yesterday.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 5 June 2007, page 16

Children ‘are missing out on crucial friendships’
Children are being prevented from forming friends because parents are worried to let them out on safety grounds, a Children’s Society report has found. The study, part of its Good Childhood inquiry, found more than 40% of adults believed children should not be allowed out with friends until they were 14, even though most parents were allowed to play unsupervised at aged 10 or younger. It also claimed that since 1986, the number of teenagers with no best friends had increased from around one in eight to one in five.
Source:- The Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 5 June 2007, page 4

HIV alert for blood patients
An HIV charity has warned that people infected with the virus during contaminated NHS blood transfusions in the 1970s and 1980s may be unaware they have the illnesss. More than 2,000 haemophiliacs have died as a result of contracting HIV through contaminated blood, but Peter Stevens of the Eileen Trust said there were others out there with the virus.
Source:- Daily Mirror, Tuesday 5 June 2007, page 21

Top City executive sectioned after daughter found with head injuries
A senior executive at insurance firm Swiss Re was sectioned last night after his two-year-old daughter was found critically ill with head injuries at the family home in central London. Alberto Izaga, 36, was arrested after his daughter was found, and the case is now being investigated by the Metropolitan Police’s child abuse investigation team.
Source:- The Independent, Tuesday 5 June 2007, page 6

Rules to make migrants integrate
Ministers want to introduce a national British day to complete a “citizenship revolution” that would also toughen rules for migrants and try to instil community pride in all 18-year-olds.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 5 June 2007, page 1

758,000 places lie empty as parents fight for popular schools
The equivalent of 2, 000 primary schools and 250 secondaries are empty in England despite concerns that many parents are finding it difficult to find places in good schools.
The official figures show there were nearly 758, 000 places unfilled due to a decrease in birth rates.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 5 June 2007, page 6

Scottish news
 
Warning of dementia epidemic
Scotland is facing a dementia epidemic, a leading charity has warned.
The number of Alzheimer’s sufferers will rise by 75% within the next 25 years, according to a report by Alzheimer Scotland. There are currently around 60,000 with the condition.
At its annual conference in Glasgow, officials warned the Scottish executive that a £15m investment is needed to raise awareness of the steps to reduce the risk of developing dementia.
Source:- The Herald, Tuesday 5 June 2007

Scotland to raise age limit for buying cigarettes to eighteen
No one under the age of 18 will be able to buy cigarettes in Scotland from 1 October this year, the Scottish executive is to announce.
Shona Robison, the minister for public health, will set the date as 1 October because this is the day that cigarette sales will be banned for the under-18s in England and Wales.
Ms Robison will announce plans to table an order before the Scottish Parliament rises at the start of next month which will make it illegal for anybody under the age of 18 to buy tobacco and for shopkeepers to sell cigarettes or other tobacco products to the under 18s.
Source:- The Scotsman, Tuesday 5 June 2007

Welsh news

No social care stories today.