Society daily 21.06.11

Sign up to Society daily email briefing Today's top SocietyGuardian stories • Mental health services in crisis over staff shortages • Winterbourne View to close after abuse claims • Duncan Smith attacked over women's pensions • Clarke forced to abandon 50% sentence cuts • Cocaine addiction linked to brain abnormalities • Repossession hotspots revealed • Hospitals to be forced to admit medical errors • Polly Toynbee: This doublethink on absent fathers will hurt mothers • Marcus Trescothick: Depression and me • Patrick Butler's Cutsblog: Memo to public servants - a pay cut or your job? • What persuaded King's College Hospital to let the TV cameras in? All today's SocietyGuardian stories Other news • The family of an elderly woman with dementia who was left lying in a darkned room in soiled sheets has been awarded more than £6,000 after the council was found to have let them down, reports the Telegraph. The Local Government Ombudsman described it as a "particularly appalling incident" and found Bristol city council guilty of maladministration in dealing with complaints by the resident's son. • Animal Aid plans to take out a series of newspaper adverts urging the public to stop giving money to Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation, the Alzheimer's Society and Parkinson's UK unless they end their support for animal testing, according to the Independent. It says the charities are warning that vital medical research could be set back by decades because of the boycott campaign. • The chief inspector of prisons says one in six young offenders are back behind bars within a month , reports the BBC. Nick Hardwick said just one in three young offenders had accommodation, education, training or an employment placement on their release. • Cheques are more important to fundraisers than mobile phones , Mark Astarita, the chair designate of the Institute of Fundraising and director of fundraising at the British Red Cross, tells Third Sector. • Low levels of housing supply will prevent 100,000 people getting on the housing ladder in 2011, according to Inside Housing. It says a Chartered Institute of Housing report also questions whether the private rented sector will be able to meet demand caused by the lack of social housing and barriers for first-time buyers. On my radar ... • My colleague Amelia Hill, who is appealing for people to share experiences of Britain's psychiatric wards and views on why psychiatry has a poorer reputation than other medical specialities. • When David Cameron met Mark Britnell - an update. The prime minister told the Commons last month he "had never heard of" Britnell , the head of health at accountancy giant KPMG, who said the government's reforms would transform the NHS into a "state insurance provider, not a state deliverer" of care. It later transpired that Britnell had been a senior health service official in Cameron's Witney constituency . The Health Policy Insight blog has continued investigating and Freedom of Information requests have unearthed details of a 2007 meeting attended by both Cameron and Britnell. HPI editor Andy Cowper writes : "This new evidence now shows us one of two things. Either Mr Cameron is highly forgetful and unusually incurious about who the power-players are in the NHS, and also pays scant attention at meetings about NHS finances that directly affect hs constituents. If so, that is scarcely reassuring. But that is the positive interpretation. In that case, Mr Cameron's words misled the House, but arguably without malice. Or Mr Cameron's desire to have a 'clean win' on a point of contention at Prime Minister's Questions saw him take a poetic liberty with the actual events that happened. That is the negative interpretation. And there are less polite ways to phrase it." • This excellent on from Sue Marsh's Diary of a Benefit Scrounger, which asks Why do we have a minister for disabilities? Marsh accuses the present incumbent, Maria Miller , of ignoring the widespread opposition to the coalition's disability benefit reform plans: "Maria Miller has not supported us, she has not consulted us, she has not replied to us and she does not speak for us. Not only that, but she misrepresents us! The very people she is elected and salaried to represent. She uses false statistics and claims that we support her government's plans. Recently she claimed that more people claim higher rate DLA for alcoholism than blindness. Not only was she wrong, but the implications of "worthy" and "unworthy" disability from a minister whose job should be to do just the opposite is shocking." • Lollipop ladies , who are the subject of a new Unison campaign . In this post for the Labourlist blog, union leader Dave Prentis writes: "There can be no doubt that lollipop ladies and men save lives, so why are councils making these dangerous decisions? Sadly, crossing staff are not required by law, so they are a soft target for councils - hit by some of the biggest budget cuts in living memory - to make savings on. We say this is a false economy - average pay is just £3,000 a year - a drop in the ocean for councils. So what is the government doing to protect school children? They are grossly underestimating the scale of the problem. During a debate on school crossing patrols in the House of Commons, sparked by the cuts in Dorset, the government suggested that it knew of no other patrols under threat. Clearly this is not the case - it is time the government protected children and got a grip of this growing problem." Unison has also launched a survey on school crossing patrol cuts . • Clare Chapman, the HR chief of the NHS , who is to return to the private sector . Chapman, who has held what is one of the country's biggest HR roles since January 2007, is moving to a senior post with BT next month. • The Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), which has today launched a new social investment fund . The CAF Social Impact Fund will take donations from philanthropists and offer loans to charities to help them "become stronger and expand". Repaid loans will be "recycled", enabling donors to support more charities. • Statistic of the day: 83% of public sector workers are subject to a pay freeze - compared with 16% of their private sector counterpart. See the CBI's new report Navigating Choppy Waters, the CBI/Harvey Nash Employment Trends Survey (pdf) In tomorrow's SocietyGuardian supplement • Fallout from the government's Work Programme has angered welfare-to-work charity boss and Tory peer Barnoness Stedman-Scott. She tells Alison Benjamin why it risks failure • Foster carers cannot take the place of parents, writes Dawn Howley • Photography exhibition captures refugees' contribution • An Australian tenants' union sends a warning to the UK about the fixed-term tenancies strategy currently going through the Lords • Personal budgets let peole receiving social care select the services they want. But there is evidence choice is being compromised, writes David Brindle • Faith alone won't build council houses , argues Peter Hetherington • The NHS must engage with the voluntary sector , says Anna Dixon • Novelist Paul Wilson is also a supported employment manager. He tells Helen Carter why it's an inspiring role • Government plans to roll all work-related benefits into one universal credit will leave thousands of single parents out of pocket • Private hospitals are no place for people with learning disabilities , writes David Brindle • Jane Dudman on why government attacks on public sector workers risk alienating the very people it needs to push through reforms On the Guardian Professional Networks • Why public mistrust of private companies providing healthcare puts social enterprises at a disadvantage • Live Q&A from 1pm: How the voluntary sector can get money out of grant-making foundations • Both feminism and social enterprise need to go beyond the convention of what defines them and be open to new ideas, says Allison Ogden-Newton, chief executive of Social Enterprise London SocietyGuardian blogs Patrick Butler's cuts blog Joe Public Sarah Boseley's global health blog SocietyGuardian on social media Follow SocietyGuardian on Twitter Follow Patrick Butler on Twitter Follow Clare Horton on Twitter SocietyGuardian's Facebook page SocietyGuardian links SocietyGuardian.co.uk Guardian cutswatch - tell us about the cuts in your area Public Leaders - the Guardian's website for senior managers of public services The Guardian's public and voluntary sector careers page Hundreds of public and voluntary sector jobs SocietyGuardian editor: Alison Benjamin Email the SocietyGuardian editor: [email protected] SocietyGuardian.co.uk editor: Clare Horton Email the SocietyGuardian.co.uk editor: [email protected] Interested in education policy and news too? 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