Measures of success for social care are set by professionals for assessing the performance of professionals. Users of services see things differently and have alternative ways of assessing quality. The ‘Shaping Our Lives’ project has looked in depth at what users really want and what they think are the hallmarks of a quality service.

Plans have been announced to speed up the development of more than 1,600 new affordable homes on surplus public land in the south east and east of England. The three-year delivery programme, involving the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships, will include housing for at least 850 key workers.The Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, said the announcement meant the first benefits of the link between the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships, announced at the Urban Summit in Birmingham in October last year, were now being realised.

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Regeneration planners need to make it easier for schools to contribute to coherent local strategies rather than leaving them to work at arm’s length from renewal programmes. That is the conclusion of research carried out for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation by a team from Newcastle University.Their report says schools often remain disconnected from regeneration initiatives in their surrounding neighbourhoods, and that policy makers who demand to know why schools do not get involved in a wider range of renewal activities may be asking the wrong question.The researchers from Newcastle spent two years studying the contribution of schools to regeneration initiatives in two areas of the north of England. They found that all local primary and secondary schools were involved in community-related activities, including breakfast clubs, making facilities available for community groups and organising courses to help parents become more involved in their children’s learning.

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This report from the Institute for Public Policy Research argues that housing poverty is the most extreme form of social inequality in Britain. It says successive governments have bowed to the pressure of nimbyism and ignored the consequences of growing inequality. The report calls for dramatic changes to close the housing “equity gap” and increase choice. Despite increased consensus amongst experts and politicians on the need for radical measures and new homes, there is often strong resistance to local change. The polarisation of housing provision also has a negative effect on school standards, public services, crime and neighbourhoods: all public priorities.The report shows that there has been a growing divide between people living in the north and in the South East and between the home owning majority and people who rent. The increase in the ‘equity divide’ has been the greatest cause of the growth of inequality: the value of the net equity of personally-owned housing increased from 36 billion pounds in 1970 to 1,525 billion pounds in 2001. Tenants living on estates of poor housing have fared worst and the most dramatic evidence of the housing crisis is the number of homeless households in temporary accommodation, which has risen from 5,000 to 80,000 since 1980.

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More secondary school teachers have degrees and more lessons are taught by teachers with degrees in their subjects than in 1996, according to the latest figures on school staffing. They also show that the problems in maths teacher recruitment have not been fully overcome.The 2003 Secondary Schools Curriculum and Staffing Survey – the first since 1996 shows a – 12% rise in the percentage of full time teachers with a degree and an 8% increase in the overall percentage of subject periods taught by full-time teachers with a degree in those subjects. There has also been a 4% improvement in the overall percentage of full-time teachers with degrees in the subjects that they are teaching.

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In an unprecedented move nine members of the Royal Commission on Long Term Care are calling today for the implementation of the recommendation, made in the Commission’s report of 1999, that personal care should be free.In England, Wales and Northern Ireland the state supports nursing care for the elderly but pays for personal care only on a rigidly means-tested basis. The Scottish Executive has already adopted the recommendation on free personal care. The nine Commissioners today welcome that move but say that the situation in the rest of the country is unstable and “if not dealt with in the near future will implode”.They point to what they call huge ethical, conceptual and practical difficulties in distinguishing nursing care from personal care in the cases of ill and disabled older people. They say too that the system of making decisions on entitlement to financial support dependent on the type of carer rather than on the care that is needed puts providers before patients.

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Delivering council services to the living room of residents through a TV screen is just one of the initiatives of the Community Information Programme developed by Knowsley MBC. All developments have been made possible by installing a broadband network.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister wants to set up twelve clusters of councils and regional development authorities to pilot the use of interactive digital TV. The clusters will be chosen to represent a cross-country selection with different service delivery and population requirements. The DigiTV (Digital Interactive Television) programme will seek to demonstrate that DiTV is a viable channel for the delivery of local government services. It will also contribute to improving public services and support the renewal of local democracy.The ODPM believes that Interactive DiTV can provide an almost universal platform in which citizens can interact with local and national public services using a user-friendly medium. It offers an opportunity to bridge the digital divide between the information rich who have Internet access and the information poor who do not. The new services should increase citizen interaction with councils and tackle social exclusion by developing an easily understood user interface and a discrete method of content delivery. It is also planned to develop links between DiTV and the Internet. This aligns closely with priority areas in eGov@local the national strategy.

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The leaders of Scotland’s local councils will today debate ways of dealing with anti-social behaviour put forward by the Scottish Executive. Looking ahead to the meeting the councils have stressed their commitment to ridding Scotland’s communities of the problem.The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities’ response to “Putting our communities First – A Strategy for tackling anti social behaviour” will be formally discussed at its leaders meeting. In welcoming the Executive’s proposals COSLA is calling for a balanced two-pronged approach to tackling the problem and is pointing out that not all anti-social behaviour is carried out by young people or by individuals from traditionally deprived backgrounds.In advance of tomorrow’s meeting COSLA President Pat Watters said nobody was more committed to ridding communities of the scourge of anti-social behaviour than Scotland’s council leaders and other elected members. It was corrosive and was blighting not just urban areas but rural communities as well

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A new report is calling for social services departments, the health service and schools working with disabled parents and their children to re-think attitudes and procedures which, it is claimed, are undermining family life. The report from a task force set up by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, found that inadequate support, unequal access to services and the negative views of staff were as much a barrier to good parenting as disability itself.The task force was made up of representatives from Government, social services, voluntary groups and disabled parents’ organisations. Its members spent two years taking evidence from parents, professionals and researchers and their final report identifies examples of good practice, but also lists a catalogue of policy and practice failures that placed disabled parents and their families under stress.

Read more on STUDY SEES POLICY AND PRACTICE FAILINGS IN SUPPORT FOR DISABLED PARENTS…