News round up: Inquiry into care home girls who leapt to their deaths

Inquiry into care home girls who leapt to their deaths holding hands

Two girls who held hands before plunging to their deaths from a bridge had walked out of a care home for troubled teenagers, it emerged last night.

The girls have been named locally as 15-year-old Neve Lafferty, from Helensburgh, and 14-year-old Georgia Rowe from Hull. Last night tributes began pouring in to social networking sights as fellow residents of the Good Shepherd Centre in Bishopton, Renfrewshire, could be seen crying and comforting each other.

Read more on this story in The Independent

Teenage mother who stubbed out cigarette on her baby daughter’s back because she was ‘stressed out’ is jailed

A teenage mother who repeatedly stubbed a cigarette out on her 15-month-old daughter’s back because she was ‘stressed out’ by the infant crying was jailed for nine months yesterday.

Charlotte Sutton, 19, burned the child’s skin three times – scarring her for life – when the toddler started to cry, a court heard.

Read more on this story in the Daily Mail

Elderly people who pay £8,000 to join the Conservatives’ proposed residential care scheme may still have to pay annual top-ups, The Times has learnt. Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, called the scheme “a guarantee that absolutely all fees for permanent residential care would be waived for life”.

However, the party acknowledged yesterday that it would set a ceiling on the benefits, meaning that an unknown number of elderly people would have to pay more to cover their fees.

Read more on this story in The Times

Study reveals alarming level of drug errors in care homes

Seven out of 10 people living in a care home have suffered from medication errors, such as being given the wrong drug or wrong dose, a study has found.

The scale of drug errors alarmed campaigning groups yesterday and will be embarrassing for the government, which pledged in 2000 to tackle the problem.

Read more on this story in The Guardian