Medical records falsified after Holloway Prison death

Medical records falsified after Holloway prison death

The NHS medical records system is under scrutiny after a nurse falsely recorded, in retrospect, that she had given a potentially life-saving medication to a female prisoner who later hanged herself.

A coroner who presided over the inquest on Annemarie Cox, who died at Holloway prison, has urged the health secretary, Andy Burnham, to make changes to the computerised patient records network, known as Emis.

Read more this story in The Guardian

Third of children lose touch with parents after divorce

The failure of parents to divorce amicably means that one in three children permanently loses touch with a parent, usually the father, a new study has found.

It also found that one in five parents said that their primary objective during separation was to make the experience “as unpleasant as possible” for their former spouse.

As a result, a fifth of children involved said that they “felt used” by their parents with a third feeling isolated and lonely.

Read more on this story in The Times

Police want power to tackle repeated domestic bullies

Police will today call for a new crime to be introduced to prosecute men who carry out low-level psychological or physical abuse of their wife.

Officers say the creation of a ‘course of conduct’ offence would allow them to drag to court men who currently escape punishment by repeatedly committing more minor acts against their partner.

Read more on this story in The Daily Mail

Middle class families to lose more than £2,000 a year in childcare vouchers despite Brown U-turn

Tens of thousands of middle-class families will lose childcare vouchers worth more than £2,000 a year despite a humiliating climbdown by Gordon Brown.

Under pressure from women Labour MPs who said mothers would quit work over the plans, the Prime Minister is to make a U-turn on his decision to scrap the scheme entirely.

Read more on this story in The Daily Mail

Roman Catholic church stalls on £8m child abuse claims

Handed over to foster care when barely a few weeks old and then hauled through the care system’s institutional layers, Graham Baverstock had few chances at a childhood.

Now aged 51, confined to a wheelchair and reliant on local authority carers, benefit cheques and doctors, he is a damaged man who admits he is quick to anger and slow to trust. He has tried to kill himself twice and thoughts of suicide are never far from his mind.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Britain’s criminalising of children breaches their rights, says report

Britain is punishing its children with custody orders and Asbos, failing to keep them safe and systematically breaching the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a major report has found.

In a damning assessment of how the UK is looking after some of its most vulnerable people, the report found that Britain is the most punitive nation in Europe, that its child protection services are “not fit for purpose” and that arrogance in some local authorities has created a “postcode lottery” of help available for children in need.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Children’s rights ‘being systematically breached’

Read more on this story in The Independent

Butcher freed

A DOUBLE killer who butchered a mum and DISEMBOWELLED her son walks free – after just SIX YEARS off the streets.

Gregory Davis, 30 – locked up indefinitely by a judge – is allowed out alone for two hours twice a week in the run-up to RELEASE.

Last night his victims’ loved ones – who thought he would be in Broadmoor for life – were “mortified”.

Read more on this story in The Sun

Belle de Jour revealed at last: scientist who penned Diary of a London Call Girl outs herself to foil Daily Mail

She had kept her identity secret for six years, defying millions of readers – and a host of literary experts – who had speculated about the author responsible for one of the internet’s most widely read blogs.

But today the mystery was solved when a scientist from Bristol outed herself as Belle de Jour, the former escort behind the anonymous Diary of a London Call Girl.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Net tart Belle is scientist

THE high-class hooker whose notorious Belle de Jour blog inspired the TV hit Secret Diary Of A Call Girl has unmasked herself as a research scientist.

Dr Brooke Magnanti’s explicit internet story of her experiences became a book and Billie Piper played her in the ITV series.

Read more on this story in The Sun

Hospital stands by research scientist unmasked as Belle de Jour

The employers of a research scientist who unmasked herself as a call girl turned bestselling author are standing by her, saying that her past had nothing to do with her present job.

After much digging by journalists and fans it emerged that Belle de Jour is Brooke Magnanti, a petite, blonde thirtysomething who works as a specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol.

Read more on this story in The Times

Baby RB’s mother: we held him as he died

The mother who fought an emotional high-court battle with the father of her severely disabled son over the infant’s fate has described how she and the father cuddled the child after his life support system was switched off.

The baby, who could not be named for legal reasons and was known as Baby RB, died on Friday, shortly after the machines that helped him breathe throughout his 13 months of life were turned off. Three days before that, the child’s father withdrew his objection to pleas by Baby RB’s mother and doctors that his life support system should end.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Scrap Queen’s speech in favour of reform, urges Nick Clegg

Gordon Brown was today urged by the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, to scrap the Queen’s speech and to instead to devote the final months of this parliament to cleaning up politics.

In an article in the Independent, Clegg said that the Queen’s speech would be based on “a complete fiction” because the government would find it difficult to pass any of the bills proposed before the general election, which has to be held by 3 June at the latest.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Kevin Rudd says sorry to Britons forcibly shipped to Australia as children

The Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, today apologised to the surviving British children who were forcibly shipped to Australia during the last century.

More than 150,000 British children, most of them from deprived backgrounds, were sent to Commonwealth countries with the promise of a better life – but the reality was often very different, with many facing abuse and a regime of unpaid labour.

Read more on this story in The Guardian

Brown signals start of bitter election campaign

Gordon Brown will fire the starting gun this week for a general election campaign that could run for six months. He will outline a programme of populist measures in the Queen’s Speech and challenge David Cameron to support them.

The Prime Minister is to emphasise his determination to carry on governing with a political programme designed to exploit Labour’s differences with the Conservatives on health, education and the economy. He will use Wednesday’s speech to reveal plans to provide free care at home for about 350,000 of the neediest people and to tear up “risky” bankers’ contracts.

Read more on this story in The Times

Prisoners allowed up to 100 days ‘holiday’ from cells

Murderers, rapists and other prisoners are being allowed up to 100 days “holiday” from their cells to ease pressure on overcrowded jails.

Some prisoners can even spend up to a month at a time doing community service outside their prisons.

Read more on this story in The Daily Telegraph

Sara: Spy to protect web kids

VICTIMS’ Champion Sara Payne urged parents yesterday to spy on their kids’ internet use to protect them from paedophiles and cyber-bullies.

Sara, 40, said adults should install computer monitoring software.

Sara, whose daughter Sarah, eight, was murdered by pervert Roy Whiting in 2000, checks on her 14-year-old girl.

Read more on this story in The Sun