Society daily 17.06.11

Sign up to Society daily email briefing Today's top SocietyGuardian stories • Public sector pensions: Work longer and pay more, says Danny Alexander • Southern Cross staff asked to sign away rights • Hospital trusts failing to meet referral targets • Allyson Pollock: A return to pre-NHS fear • Social workers ignored warnings over rapist, 11 • CBI criticises Cameron for backing down over public service reforms • Cancer 'more likely to kill in deprived areas' • Plan to ban civilian police staff from striking angers PCS union • Children who watch parents drink 'are twice as likely to binge on alcohol' • Peter Beresford: Issues of dismissal highlighted in wake of Baby P tragedy • Martin Kettle: David Cameron has just learned that he can't defy eternal truths • Comment is free readers on ... age discrimination at work All today's SocietyGuardian stories Other news • The Court of Protection has ruled that an 18-year-old man with autism and severe learning disabilities who was regularly placed in a padded seclusion room more than six times a day was unlawfully deprived of his liberty , reports the Independent. It says the man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was taken as a 16-year-old to a residential school for children with complex needs. The teenager went with his mother's permission but a dispute broke out in 2010 between care workers and the boy's family after specialists began regularly relying on a special cell known as "the blue room" to control his behaviour. • The RNIB is keen to merge with Guide Dogs but has been given excuses "that simply aren't true" to avoid it, Lesley-Anne Alexander, chief executive of the RNIB , has told an audience of senior charity executives. Third Sector reports that Alexander told a Charity Leaders' Exchange event this week that Guide Dogs had refused offers of a merger or more collaborative working because it feared it would harm its fundraising profile. • Boys as young as 10 are turning to bulimia to lose weight , according to the Telegraph. It says new studies show the eating disorder is now more common among preteen boys than girls. • A charity established by Enid Blyton's daughter to maintain the British author's generosity is to close after nearly three decades of work because of the phasing out of cheques , reports the Telegraph. The Enid Blyton Trust for Children , established 29 years ago, has distributed more than £500,000 to children's charities across the country. But its 75 year-old founder, Imogen Smallwood, has decided to retire, partly because banks were insisting she use "new technology" rather than pay her bills by cheque. Calling all social care workers My colleagues on the Guardian Professional Networks want your views on the future of social care , and how the Guardian can best support the sector. The survey should only take five minutes and everyone who completes it will be entered into a price draw to win a £50 Amazon voucher On my radar ... • The end of an era on the NHS live blog , as today will be its final day as a rolling minute by minute blog. The blog has built up a really strong community and there have been some great comments posted today . As well as some teary-eyed nostalgia, the blog will today focus on breaking news on NHS reforms , and will continue on a daily or weekly basis. • A timely post on the Full Fact site examining public sector pensions . It asks, Does the average civil servant sit on a pension pot worth half a million pounds? See also some good analysis from Nicola Smith on the TUC's Touchstone blog , who looks at the latest labour market trends. • This interesting blog post by Karl Wilding on charity mergers, Why aren't more voluntary organisations merging? (see Third Sector news story above). Wilding reaches the conclusion: "Given that the evidence from numerous for-profit mergers (such as Time Warner and AOL) is that shareholder value is destroyed rather than created, maybe the problem isn't so much that nonprofits aren't merging, but that our expectations of why, when and how much nonprofits should merge are wrong. Which might imply that merging as a strategic response to a crisis – behaviour New Philanthropy Capital research argues is the most common driver underpinning mergers – is unlikely to lead to better outcomes for beneficiaries." • Centrepoint, England's biggest youth homelessness charity , where frontline staff are facing redundancies and pay cuts as the charity struggles with the fallout from Whitehall spending cuts. Inside Housing rather cheekily headlines the piece Staff facing pay cuts at prince's youth charity , due to the charity's links with Prince William - now we wouldn't want to confuse Centrepoint with any other youth charities linked to princes, would we? • Thoughts on the Southern Cross crisis from a social enterprise perspective by Peter Holbrook, who asks Can Big Society ride to the rescue of Southern Cross? "I'm suggesting that we form a new CIC Ltd by share; let's call it 'Fair Care'. We appoint an executive board with a power-house chairperson who government will listen to and we make government a shareholder, perhaps with a golden share. We recruit sector specialists who have turned around care services before ... We bring in a couple of former local authority CEO's or directors of social care, some social financiers – and have a couple of government seats on the board. And then we bring in the experts who can sense check a business plan in a tight time frame. The 'Fair Care' CIC board is socially driven, bespoke and fit for purpose, but it doesn't deliver – it oversees delivery and commissions from local and national charities. It's a kind of 'network rail' solution only much, much better. Equity investment could potentially come from church resources and perhaps from charity reserves – particularly those involved in older people's care. Investment could flow from private sources and from government too. ...Crisis is a great opportunity for innovation, fresh thinking and for the delivery of new approaches. Let's hope the government sees the opportunity beyond the crisis. I'm asking our sector to come forward with more ideas, more questions and to contribute to the debate. I believe this could be an opportunity for social enterprise – and for the principles in Big Society – to shine." • This post by Ian MacQuillin , of the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association, on the UK Fundraising blog, which has prompted some debate on Twitter this morning. MacQuillin argues against microdonations : "For the past 20 years, charities have waged a largely successful campaign to move donors from ad hoc cash giving to committed regular giving. The benefits to charities are so obvious and so well rehearsed that I won't waste space by repeating them here. So why the celebratory, triumphant tone about a fundraising method that aims to turn the clock back to the late 1980s? The government's giving white paper is full of examples of this reversionary trend. There are plans to make it easier to give a few spare coppers when paying your supermarket bill, donating a couple of quid (or less) when drawing money out of a cash machine, and making a donation here and there by text. These ideas seem to be driven by a belief in 'nudge theory' – that you can influence social behaviour with a little nudge here and there, making it slightly easier for someone to do something – in this case by rounding up a pound or sending a text. The cumulative effect of all these nudges will be a major shift in behaviour – in this case many more people giving. Or so the theory goes. The problem is that we are nudging people in the wrong direction. My real fear is that we are nudging people into doing less for charity, not more." • Interactivism , an inspirational event in London today and tomorrow, which aims to bring together older people and developers together with social entrepreneurs to come up with ideas and products designed to break down accessibility barriers for older people online . Ideas have already been submitted and whittled down to a top 10, and teams at the "hack event" will work together on one of the ideas, which they will present to a judge on Sunday. See Twitter for more via the hashtag #interactivism Meanwhile, the Vodafone Foundation has launched a new competition for apps to help people with disabilities . The Smart Accessibility Awards are looking for the best smartphone apps across four categories: social participation, independent living, mobility and wellbeing. There's a prize pot of €200k, to be split equally between the four winners. On the Guardian Professional Networks • The chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support , Ciarán Devane, takes issue with political blogger Guido Fawkes , following his earlier article about use of material from the charity at Wednesday's prime minister's questions • NHS Direct is considering paying Facebook and Twitter for targeted advertising • Thousands of public sector workers face moving over to the private sector, whether by choice or by force. Neil Merrick speaks to those who have already made the switch 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? Sign up for the daily Cribsheet round-up