Care news

• Felicity Whittaker obituary

  27-06-2025 16:21
  No one who met my friend Felicity Whittaker, who has died aged 96, could ever forget her. Not the dozens of disadvantaged and often troubled children whom she cared for, nor fellow protesters from Ban the Bomb days to Extinction Rebellion marches. And certainly not the many friends who enjoyed her lively and engaging company in Highgate in north London and later in Bedford.Felicity was born in London to Lydia Bilbrook, an actor, and George Harrison Brown, a journalist. Her parents separated when
  
  Read more

• Reform council’s plan to shut eight care homes ‘a betrayal of local people’

  23-12-2025 14:52
  Announcement after proposed sale falls through prompts backlash and unionsays more than 200 jobs at riskA Reform UK-led council plan to shut eight of its residential care homes has been condemned as “a betrayal of local people”.Days before Christmas, Derbyshire county council announced that the homes would have to close after a proposed sale fell through. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Young care leavers in England to get free prescriptions, dental and eye services

  23-12-2025 06:01
  Those under-25 to receive help while a pilot will trial paid internships in NHS and a guaranteed interview scheme Young people leaving care in England will receive free prescriptions, and dental and eye services up to their 25th birthday, the government has said.A pilot to trial paid internships for care leavers in the NHS and a guaranteed interview scheme for NHS roles also forms part of a package of measures announced by the Department of Health and Social Care. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• The Guardian view on hope: with your help, charities can help to repair the social fabric

  22-12-2025 20:01
  Effective challenge to the alarming rise of far-right, anti-migrant politics starts with the grassrootsAusterity, cost of living pressures and a chronic lack of investment have damaged the physical and social fabric of some UK towns and neighbourhoods far more than others. In places where large numbers of people feel disheartened about living standards and prospects, and disenchanted by democratic politics as a result, a whole range of grievances can take hold. This year’s Guardian charity
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Pressure grows on DWP over ‘misleading’ response to carer’s allowance scandal

  20-12-2025 18:00
  Senior officials face criticism after review found systemic failings plunged hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers into debtSenior officials who oversaw a flawed benefits system that plunged hundreds of thousands of carers into debt are under mounting pressure over their “misleading” response to the scandal.Prof Liz Sayce, the chair of a scathing review into the government’s treatment of unpaid carers, last week called for an overhaul of management and culture at the Departmen
  
  Read more

• Young people will suffer most from UK’s ageing population, Lords say

  19-12-2025 07:00
  House of Lords report says tools such as raising pension age and increasing immigration will not be adequateYoung people will suffer most from the government’s failure to take seriously the unsustainable pressure on public finances and living standards created by the UK’s ageing population, according to the findings of a House of Lords inquiry.The report, Preparing for an Ageing Society, by the economic affairs committee, also found successive governments’ inaction on adult soc
  
  Read more

• ‘I lived out moments of my mother’s passing I never saw’: Kate Winslet on grief, going red and Goodbye June

  12-12-2025 06:00
  For her directorial debut, Winslet assembled a cast including Toni Collette, Timothy Spall, Johnny Flynn and Andrea Riseborough to tell a story inspired by her own family’s bereavement. The actors talk mourning, immortality and hospital vending machinesIn 2017, Sally Bridges-Winslet died of cancer. She was 71. It was, her youngest daughter said, “like the north star just dropped out of the sky”.It would have been even worse, says Kate Winslet today, had the family not pulled to
  
  Read more

• ICO promises legal action over ‘traumatic’ UK care-record access

  09-12-2025 07:00
  Information regulator reminds council leaders of need for compassion when releasing files on childhood careThe UK’s information commissioner has raised alarm over the “lengthy, traumatic and often demoralising process” people face when trying to access their care records, writing to local authority leaders to say his office will take action over legal breaches.The data protection regulator said people who grew up in the care system were waiting up to 16 years for access to thei
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Senior DWP civil servant blames victims for carer’s allowance scandal

  06-12-2025 18:06
  Neil Couling said failings by individual claimants ‘at the heart’ of crisis, despite a report finding DWP shortcomings ‘unacceptable’ One of the most senior civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has placed the blame for the carer’s allowance benefits crisis on victims, many of who have been left with life-changing debts.In an internal blogpost written for Whitehall colleagues, Neil Couling, the director general of DWP services, said individual
  
  Read more

• Children’s home providers in England putting profit over need, says Ofsted

  02-12-2025 13:00
  Watchdog says trend of care homes being registered in cheap areas, not where need is greatest, is ‘national scandal’The number of registered children’s homes in England has risen to a record high, but providers are increasingly prioritising profit over care needs, Ofsted has warned.The watchdog said new children’s homes were proliferating in areas of the country where housing was cheapest, suggesting the rise was driven mostly by profit and this was “bending the sys
  
  Read more

• Net migration is plummeting. Why can’t Labour say so? | Heather Stewart

  30-11-2025 12:40
  An honest debate is needed on this polarising topic as sectors such as social care struggle with recruitmentKeir Starmer’s response to the 69% plunge in net migration revealed in official figures last week was to remark: “That’s a step in the right direction.”Describing a reduction of more than two-thirds of any indicator in a single year as a “step” would be a creative use of statistics, putting it kindly. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• ‘Outdated and ever less fit for purpose’: five takeaways from the carer’s allowance report

  25-11-2025 21:07
  Dysfunctional DWP failed to notify some carers that they were accruing enormous debt for years, Liz Sayce’s damning report revealsFull story: Ministers urged to apologise after review finds systemic failures led to carer’s allowance crisisOf all the devastating passages in Liz Sayce’s 146-page criticism of the government’s failing carer’s allowance system, one above all leaps out. It describes how some felt so “overwhelmed”, ashamed and criminalised they
  
  Read more

• Ministers urged to apologise after review finds systemic failures led to carer’s allowance crisis

  25-11-2025 13:23
  Unpaid carers were pushed into debt and distress and hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money wasted‘Outdated and ever less fit for purpose’: five takeaways from the carer’s allowance reportMinisters are facing calls to apologise and pay compensation to hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers after a damning review of the benefit system revealed some considered suicide to escape their debts.A report ordered by the government on the longstanding failures within th
  
  Read more

• Failures by Tory ministers and welfare officials led to carer’s allowance crisis, review finds

  25-11-2025 13:23
  Unpaid carers were pushed into debt and distress and hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money wastedUK politics live – latest updatesRepeated failures by Tory ministers and top welfare officials pushed hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers into debt and distress, and led to hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being wasted, a devastating review has concluded.The independent review of carer’s allowance benefit overpayments identified “systemi
  
  Read more

• DWP to reassess hundreds of thousands of cases in carer’s allowance scandal

  25-11-2025 01:01
  Damning official review finds many unpaid carers left with huge debt because of government failure‘It’s like the Post Office scandal’: victims of carer’s allowance crisis speak outThe carer’s allowance scandal – a timelineHundreds of thousands of vulnerable unpaid carers will have their cases reassessed after a damning official review concluded they had been left with huge debts because of government failure and maladministration.The review, due to be publishe
  
  Read more

• More then 2,000 trafficked children and lone child asylum seekers missing from UK councils’ care

  24-11-2025 01:05
  Charities say vulnerable young people are being failed by local authorities, the police and central governmentMore than 2,000 children who have been trafficked or who arrived in the UK alone to claim asylum disappeared from social services’ care last year, according to freedom of information data shared with the Guardian.The authors of a report, Until Harm Ends, submitted FoI requests to children’s services departments in councils across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
  
  Read more

• More than 2,000 trafficked children and lone child asylum seekers missing from UK councils’ care

  24-11-2025 01:05
  Charities say vulnerable young people are being failed by local authorities, the police and central governmentMore than 2,000 children who have been trafficked or who arrived in the UK alone to claim asylum disappeared from social services’ care last year, according to freedom of information data shared with the Guardian.The authors of a report, Until Harm Ends, submitted FoI requests to children’s services departments in councils across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
  
  Read more

• Keeping youths in care out of trouble | Letter

  20-11-2025 18:46
  Prof Mike Stein responds to news of a proposal to restrict the ‘over-policing’ of looked-after young peopleDiverting young people in care from the youth justice system and the associated criminalisation may help their future careers (Children in care who lash out may no longer face automatic arrest under UK review, 17 November). However, international research studies have shown that reducing the chances of young people being involved in crime to begin with are more effective.These i
  
  Read more

• ‘Possibly the most prolific sex offender in British history’: the inside story of the Medomsley scandal

  20-11-2025 06:00
  At a youth detention centre in north-east England, the paedophile Neville Husband raped and assaulted countless boys. Why was his reign of terror allowed to go on – and why hasn’t there been a public inquiry?When I met Kevin Young in 2012 he was in his early 50s, handsome, charismatic, smart – and utterly broken. The moment he started talking about Medomsley detention centre he was in tears.Young was born in Newcastle, in 1959. At two, he was taken into care, and his parents we
  
  Read more

• ‘It’s cruel’: relatives of residents react to proposal to close Lancashire care homes

  17-11-2025 19:26
  Elderly residents of care home left anxious after Reform-led county council started consultation over plans for its closureFor Marjorie Aspden, 95, Woodlands care home in Clayton-le-Moors in Accrington was the perfect place to spend her twilight years. When she looked out from the window of her room, she saw the woods that she played in as a young girl and felt a sense of contentment.Now she and hundreds of other elderly residents are facing uncertainty after the Reform-led Lancashire county cou
  
  Read more

• Melania Trump launches new initiative to help children raised in foster system

  13-11-2025 23:04
  Donald Trump signed order creating ‘Foster the Future’ to develop opportunities and online hub for resourcesMelania Trump, the first lady, is spearheading a new initiative aimed at improving career and education opportunities for children raised in foster care.Her husband, Donald Trump, signed an executive order on Thursday that creates a “Fostering the Future” program that brings together federal entities, non-profits, educational institutions and the private sector to d
  
  Read more

• Private care providers in three English regions make £250m in three years

  12-11-2025 01:01
  More than third of profits analysed went to firms owned by private equity or based in tax havens, research findsPrivate companies operating care services in just three regions of England have taken more than £250m in profits in three years, with more than a third going to providers owned by private equity firms or companies based in tax havens.New analysis by Reclaiming Our Regional Economies warned that public money is being rapidly funnelled out of the care system into the hands of priva
  
  Read more

• Lancashire’s Reform-run council plans to close care homes and day centres

  05-11-2025 17:25
  Questions about potential conflict of interest as council’s cabinet member for social care owns private care companyLancashire’s Reform-run council has been accused of “selling off the family silver” with plans to save £4m a year by closing five council-run care homes and five day centres and moving residents into the private sector.One of the care home residents, a 92-year-old woman, said she would leave only by “being forcibly removed or in a box”. Con
  
  Read more

• More than 50 child asylum seekers still missing after disappearing from Kent care

  01-11-2025 13:00
  Council data obtained by the Guardian shows 345 children have gone missing in recent years, many probably taken by traffickersMore than 50 lone child asylum seekers who disappeared soon after arriving in the UK and while in the care of the authorities are still missing, according to data obtained by the Guardian.Many of the missing children arrived in small boats or hidden in the backs of lorries and are thought to have been taken by traffickers. Kent is often the place where they arrive. Contin
  
  Read more

• Foster carers across England facing widespread racism, sector leader says

  27-10-2025 21:07
  Government urged to act over ‘impact of far-right sentiment’ on children, foster carers and social workersSocial workers are experiencing unprecedented levels of racism, while foster carers whose ethnicity differs from the children they care for have been accosted in the street, a fostering leader has said as he called on the government to take action.Harvey Gallagher, the chief executive of the Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers (NAFP), said there was growing concern abou
  
  Read more

• Sue Barker obituary

  19-10-2025 17:47
  My wife, Sue Barker, who has died aged 79 of pancreatic cancer, devoted her life to protecting and improving the lives of vulnerable children. Over more than five decades in social work she brought her fierce integrity to some of the toughest cases in England and Wales.Born in the village of Royston, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Sue was the youngest of three children. Her father, Alexander Willett, was a coal miner; her mother, Eleanor (nee Cheetham), had been in domestic service. Conti
  
  Read more

• Penalties for unpaid carers in benefits scandal must be halted, says Ed Davey

  19-10-2025 09:00
  Lib Dem leader urges suspension of fines imposed on hundreds of thousands who fell foul of discredited rulesPenalties imposed on thousands of unpaid carers who fall foul of the discredited carer’s allowance benefit rules should be suspended until the government has fixed the system, the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, has said.A Guardian investigation last year revealed hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers were landed with huge debts – and in some cases prosecuted for fraud &nda
  
  Read more

• English councils to remain poorer than in 2010 despite funding rise, says report

  15-10-2025 19:06
  Exclusive: Impact of austerity cannot be undone by end of parliament despite above-inflation funding, analysis findsCouncils in England will still be poorer by the end of this parliament than they were in 2010 despite Labour’s funding increases, according to analysis by the Institute for Government (IfG).Funding cuts from 2010 to 2019 were so severe that they left gaps that could not be filled even by five years of above-inflation increases, leaving local authorities increasingly reliant o
  
  Read more

• ‘Frightened to get out of their cars’: Britain’s toxic race debates threaten overseas care workers

  14-10-2025 07:00
  Staff are being advised to travel in mixed groups and carry panic alarms as incidents of intimidation spreadThey have travelled thousands of miles to care for the most vulnerable people in society. But care workers recruited overseas to fill much-needed roles are increasingly facing racist abuse in the UK, industry insiders have warned, as the country’s immigration debate becomes increasingly toxic.Staff working with elderly and disabled service users have been advised to travel to work in
  
  Read more

• Badenoch accuses Labour of prioritising economic ties with China over national security – as it happened

  13-10-2025 19:22
  Minister calls Badenoch’s claims about Chinese spy trial ‘baseless smears’. This live blog is closedAt the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning the PM’s spokesperson said it was “entirely false” to suggest the government influenced the collapse of the China spying case because of concerns Beijing could withdraw investment in the UK, Downing Street said.Asked about reports in the Sunday Times which suggested a decision was taken high up in government to a
  
  Read more

Follow @UK_Care on Twitter!