Not-for-profit sector ineffective, say MPs

Not-for-profit sector ineffective, say MPs

Compelling evidence does not exist that shows the voluntary and not-for-profit sector provides public services in ways that improve outcomes, despite the government’s insistence that it does and ministers’ efforts to increase public service provision by the sector, a Commons committee has said.

Read more on this story in The Financial Times

Knife crime: One in ten children feel ‘safer’ carrying a blade

Many children believe they need a knife or gun to keep them safe, new research revealed yesterday.

Read more on this story in The Daily Mirror

Magistrates told to be tough on knives

Every magistrate in England and Wales is to be sent a warning from the next lord chief justice that knife crime is reaching epidemic proportions and needs the “most severe” sentences.

Read more on this story in Society Guardian

One in 10 children’s homes failing on safety, says watchdog

One in 10 children’s homes failed to ensure vulnerable youngsters in their care were safe and well cared for, a watchdog’s report revealed today.

Read more on this story in Society Guardian

Disabled teenagers allegedly told they were ‘scaring off other customers’ in salon

Three disabled teenagers who were allegedly “shooed” out of a beauty salon by staff who said they were “scaring off other customers” have accepted £4,500 in an out of court settlement.

Read more on this story in The Daily Mail

Tens of thousands of criminals to be spared short jail terms

Criminals sent to prison for less than a year should be let off with a community punishment instead, the Government’s sentencing advisers has said.

Read more on this story in The Daily Telegraph

Hospices take on a more positive role

Hospices, once the place where people with cancer went to die with dignity, are reinventing themselves as centres that encourage people in the advanced stages of progressive diseases to live.

Read more on this story in Society Guardian

Scotland rules out private NHS moves

Scotland is to legislate to prevent commercial companies being able to run family doctor services, Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish health secretary, said on Tuesday.

Read more on this story in The Financial Times

Operation Goodnight in Redruth: the holiday town where teenagers must be indoors by 9pm

You see them on street corners in every town: groups of furtive teenagers looking for company but often finding trouble. Fairly or not, they usually get the blame for vandalism, assaults and drunken midnight shouts that shatter the peace in otherwise deserted suburban streets.

Now police in Redruth, a Cornish town plagued by antisocial behaviour, are to impose a nighttime curfew on under16s during the school summer holidays.

Read more on this story in The Times