The charity, the Disabled Living Foundation, has been named as one of the bodies chosen to try out a scheme designed to ensure good quality information is available across the health and social care sectors. Forty organisations have been selected from more than 120 applications to pilot the information accreditation scheme for the Department of Health.
The scheme will act as a quality mark so that both professionals and the public will know that the information they are using is reliable. 

A committee of MPs is warning that there is real risk that Government targets for house-building and regeneration will not be met because the local government planning system cannot cope. A report released today by the Communities and Local Government
Select Committee finds council planners will be unable to manage the volume or variety of tasks that are required between now and 2020. 

The lives of people facing long waits for NHS psychological treatments are being damaged by the delays according to a group of leading mental health charities today. They say mental health problems can get worse and that relationships break down. Some
people are forced to take time off work or even give up their jobs. 

Local authorities say an Audit Commission report into factors influencing the jobs market for local authority chief executives does not give the full picture. The Commission’s discussion paper, ‘Tougher At The Top’ says poorer performing councils
increasingly hire chief executives with a track record, but there is no evidence that those brought in from other authorities are any more effective in delivering improved performance than those promoted from within. 

The impact of Post Office closures on older members of local communities has been detailed in new figures from the charity Help the Aged. They show that almost a third of older people have seen their nearest post office close.
The charity’s report also found that a fifth of older people, or about 2.3 million people, needed to travel at least half a mile to a mile further to find a replacement for their local branch when it closed. 

Almost half of Healthcare Assistants believe they are poorly or very poorly valued and two thirds of them have thought about leaving the NHS according to a survey published today. It comes from the largest public sector union, UNISON which is calling for “just a little respect” for the work of HCAs in caring for patients.
The study reveals that eight out of ten of the workers want regulation of their role so standards can be set and patient care outcomes improved. 

A charity has highlighted what it claims is a shortage of skilled workers to treat the one in ten children in England and Wales who have severe mental health problems. In its response to the Government’s independent review of mental health services for children and young people, Young Minds, brands services as “inadequate”, especially for children with learning difficulties and for older teenagers. 

There is new evidence of the growing confidence among local authorities about the Third Sector’s ability to deliver services. Research has found more than half of elected councillors believe charities can deliver public services as cost effectively as councils can.
The online survey was conducted by the think tank nfpSynergy and found that 58 per cent of councillors and half of the local authority staff that responded support that view. 

The Government is being counselled against using centralised policies to tackle gang violence and knife crime. A report from the New Local Government Network argues that focusing on Whitehall-driven targets fails to take account of the diverse nature of many gangs and it says local areas should be able to take action based on local factors.
Councils, the report says, should have control over local neighbourhood policing and the freedom to develop strategies to tackle gang violence. 

Local authorities and other organisations should be doing more to promote the benefits of the programme-led apprenticeship scheme, according to a report today from Ofsted. It found that the
apprenticeships were producing learners who were better prepared for the workplace but that participation in the scheme had declined, leading to concerns that more needed to be done to promote and understand the programme.