News round up: Social services allowed mother to abuse children

Bungling social services allowed Munchausen’s mother to abuse her own children for years

Bungling social workers seized two children from a mentally- ill mother but abandoned three others to be abused by her, it has emerged. A damning official report yesterday exposed how social services ignored the alarm bells and did not ‘ sufficiently acknowledge’ the mother’s shocking history.

She has Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, in which sufferers harm others to gain attention for themselves. The report by the Bristol Safeguarding Children Board said that child protection procedures were ignored and no safeguards were in place to prevent harm coming to the youngsters.

Read more on this story in The Daily Mail

Couple care for ‘unwanted’ twins

Twin girls who were allegedly abandoned because they are the wrong gender are actually being cared for by their “attentive” parents, a hospital said yesterday.

A brief statement from Birmingham’s strategic health authority appeared to pour cold water on the front-page story in yesterday’s Sun which claimed a British-Asian couple had abandoned their newborn IVF girl twins in a hospital because they wanted boys.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Heroin video to be shown to children

A graphic video diary of a middle-class heroin addict’s failed attempts to give up will be shown to millions of schoolchildren as a warning of the dangers of drugs.
Ben Rogers, 34, filmed what turned out to be his last few months alive to record what the drug had done to him.
Read more on this story in The Daily Telegraph

Life expectancy best in south west England

People in southwest England have the best chance of reaching the age of 75, while those in South Wales, Manchester, Liverpool and Tower Hamlets, East London, have the least.