The social services inspectorate has listed 21 systematic failures to protect the most vulnerable children and warned that these might 'get lost' as responsibility for inspection is passed to Ofsted.
The government has accepted the recommendations of a review by Westminster City Council chief executive Peter Rogers of local authorities' role as regulatory enforcers.
Overspending NHS trusts will no longer face deductions from their resource allocations as the Department of Health has moved to change the rule two days before the end of the financial year.
Politicians suffer from myopia and tunnel vision they look only to the short term and take a blinkered view of the issue in hand. This is a sentiment with which many people would agree.
The Budget confirmed how much or little the Comprehensive Spending Review will have to play with. Whatever juggling goes on, something's got to give. But which government pledge will it be?
The latest strategy to get NHS waiting lists down is 24 hours a day surgery. But critics say it might endanger patient welfare, and boosting resources elsewhere would be more effective. Noel...
Ministers have quickly rejected key recommendations from Sir Michael Lyons' review of local government, including a revaluation of property prices and an end to capping.
MPs have described the NHS's workforce planning as a 'disastrous failure' after discovering that it exceeded the planned number of nurses by 340% between 1999 and 2004.
The Private Finance Initiative could be costing the NHS an extra £480m a year as private equity providers enjoy a 58% return on their investment, according to research from Manchester Business School.
Ministers must close female prisons and replace them with community-based units to prevent the criminal justice system becoming a 'social dustbin' for vulnerable and abused women, penal experts have...
It no longer seems so much 'if' as 'when'. Bizarre, amazing, doomed call it what you will, but the Rev Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness look set to become first and deputy first ministers of...
The Parliamentary and health service Ombudsman has found the Department of Health guilty of 'maladministration' in its bungled attempts to correct an earlier error.
NHS staff in Scotland are to receive their entire 2.5% pay increase in April following a surprise decision that conflicts with the phased deal on offer to their counterparts in England and Wales.
Two heads are better than one when it comes to leading a major culture change in children's services. Sally Gainsbury meets the joint presidents of the Association of Directors of Children's Services...
GPs should be able to provide their patients with free social care services, even if their local authority has deemed them ineligible for such help, the Department of Health has said.
The prime minister and chancellor this week backed a radical welfare overhaul that will hand over responsibility for millions of long-term benefit claimants and billions in public cash to private...
Number 10's online road-pricing e-petition was a huge hit. Not in terms of the likely fate of that policy but because it encouraged nearly 2 million people to put their point of view. Not a bad...
Hospitals could fail the Healthcare Commission's annual health check if they do not treat elderly patients with dignity and give them adequate help with eating.
Unacceptable race inequalities persist in mental health services despite the injection of £16m of public funds committed to tackling the problem, campaigners said this week.
Senior hospital doctors believe that major NHS reforms, such as payment by results and Patient Choice, will fail to improve the service patients receive, according to a British Medical Association...
