Social work news

English council may ask parents of children taken into care to pay half of costs

06-10-2024 16:05

Derbyshire authority proposes asking for up to £113 a week for children in care under voluntary arrangementsA cash-strapped English council is considering charging parents of children taken into local authority care half of the weekly cost of looking after them.Derbyshire county council said “unprecedented financial challenges” meant it had little option but to “maximise alternative sources of income” to try to reduce the strain on its children’s services. The

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Children raised by friends or relatives are being ‘plunged into poverty’, says UK charity

06-10-2024 12:00

A lack of financial and emotional support for kinship carers could push up to 18,000 children into an already overstretched foster care systemChildren are being “plunged into poverty”, a charity says, because of a lack of support for kinship carers – relatives or family friends who step in to look after children after a crisis.Kinship carers, who are often grandparents, are twice as likely as other adults to rely on food banks and four times as likely to fall behind o

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Coroners warn of risk to lives without urgent reform of NHS adult care

06-10-2024 08:00

Health secretary Wes Streeting told to speed up changes as inability to free up hospital bed linked to deaths of patientsHealth secretary Wes Streeting has been urged to speed up reforms to the adult care system in the wake of patient deaths after two coroners warned him of the impact insufficient care beds and service provision are having on the NHS.Last month, coroners sent two prevention of future deaths (PFD) reports to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) after the inab

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Private firms ran almost all care homes forced to shut for breaches in England

06-10-2024 07:00

Study finds more than 90% of facilities for children and 98% of those for adults that were closed down were run for profitAlmost all the care homes shut down for endangering children or vulnerable adults were run to make a profit, according to a landmark study examining the long-term impact of outsourcing care to the private sector.Research published last week by Oxford University reveals that 98% (804 out of 816) of the adult care homes closed by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in England to

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Press release: New Government tech deals boost the business of cancer detection

06-10-2024 01:01 via gov.uk

New UK-created therapies for cancer will be trialled in the UK – furthering the nation’s life sciences industry as one of the great drivers of economic growth.

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