Conservatives plan to tackle poverty with enterprise areas

By Maria Ahmed, Mithran Samuel, Derren Hayes and Amy Taylor

Conservatives plan to tackle poverty with enterprise areas

David Cameron today sharpens his commitment to helping the poor by describing those left behind by rising living standards elsewhere in the population as the most urgent political problem facing Britain.

Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 7 August 2007, page 6
 
New Alzheimer’s drugs might help prevent glaucoma

Drugs being developed to treat Alzheimer’s disease might help prevent one of the most common causes of blindness, according to research published yesterday.

Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 7 August 2007, page 12
 
Ministers were warned of foreign prisoners risk before breakout

An official inquiry warned Home Office ministers only a fortnight ago that Campsfield House detention centre near Oxford, the scene of a mass escape over the weekend, was in no fit state to accept an influx of foreign national prisoners.

Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 7 August 2007, page 13
 
Brown scraps Blair’s welfare-to-work plan

Gordon Brown pulled the plug on a large expansion of private sector involvement in welfare-to-work schemes within days of taking over from Tony Blair.

Source:- The Times, Tuesday 7 August 2007, page 11
 
Benefits go begging

Pensioners on low incomes are missing out on up to £600 a year per household by failing to claim the council tax benefit that they are due, according to MPs on the communities and local government committee.

Source:- The Times, Tuesday 7 August 2007, page 11
 
A lost generation of souls?

The Catholic Church’s cover-up of child abuse will prove far more costly than the original crimes

Source:- The Times, T2, Tuesday 7 August 2007, page 11

NHS fails dementia victims, admit ministers

The government yesterday announced it would produce a national strategy on dementia, as care services minister Ivan Lewis admitted many sufferers were being failed by the current system.

He highlighted problems including the failure to diagnose the condition early enough or at all and the stigma around the disease, as he set in train a 12-month programme of work to produce the strategy, led by Professor Sube Banerjee, professor of mental health and ageing at King’s College London.

Source:- The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 7 August 2007 page 8

Surburban Monsters

A former army major and Liberal Democrat election candidate and his female accomplice subjected two children to extreme sexual abuse after they were offered to them over the internet.

Archibald Wood, from Tavistock, Devon, and Monica McCanch, from Ash, Kent, face jail for the abuse, as does Steven Horton, who witnessed the abuse and arranged for the girl and boy, both aged 12, to be subject to the abuse.

They will be sentenced at Maidstone Crown Court next month.

Source:- The Sun Tuesday 7 August 2007 page 4

2 become 1 to win

Social work students and Big Brother twins, Sam and Amanda Marchant, will now be classed as one housemate, which could give them an increased chance of winning.

Source:- The Daily Mirror Tuesday 7 August 2007 page 26

Ministers were warned of the risk of riots at the troubled Campsfield House immigration detention centre in Oxfordshire ten days before a mass escape by foreign national prisoners.

A report commissioned by the Home Office into previous disturbances at the centre warned that disturbances could break out again without better staff training, more legal representation and information for detainees and tighter controls on keeping foreign prisoners with those refused asylum.

Source:- The Independent Tuesday 7 August 2007 page 8

Scottish news

Abuse group in funds boost

A group that supports women who have suffered sexual violence and abuse is to employ three new members of staff after securing a grant.

The Edinburgh Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre has been awarded £591,029 by the BIG Lottery Fund.

The organisation will now employ a new training development worker, support worker and development co-ordinator.

Source:- The Scotsman, Tuesday 7 August

Welsh news

Truant mentor could save mum from jail

A mother prosecuted twice for her son’s truanting was given a mentor yesterday to help to get him to attend school.

Her 14-year-old son, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, has the worst attendance level Flintshire officials have ever witnessed.
The boy only went to school for one day between February and June.

Flintshire Magistrates’ Court in Mold appointed the mentor, a supervising officer from the probation service, to try to help tackle the problem but said if the boy truanted again the mother would face jail.

Source:- IC Wales  Tuesday 7 August