Hundreds of children stuck in hospital because of lack of community services

Hundreds of children are in hospital unnecessarily on any given day because they do not have the right support to go home, according to an analysis of NHS England data.The discharge delays mean patients affected are missing out on childhood activities and youngsters needing hospital care are waiting for beds, the children’s commissioner’s report found.More than 260,000 young people spent three or more weeks of their childhood in hospital and 1,300 were there for more than a year.Medical advancements have meant more patients with complex or life-limiting conditions can live longer but community services such as children’s social care, housing, education and home nursing have not kept pace, it said.Dame Rachel de Souza, children’s commissioner for England, said in a statement: “For all the debate and attention given to hospitals, waiting times and social care, children are rarely mentioned

‘Luxury takes time. We don’t have time’: The former top military officer on a mission to fix the Dutch housing crisis

Elanor Boekholt-O’Sullivan is on a mission. The new housing minister of the Netherlands is charged with building 100,000 homes a year and breaking through a planning deadlock to combat one of Europe’s worst housing crises.The Irish-born 50-year-old is new to politics. Until a fortnight ago she was the country’s top female military officer, famous for getting flak jackets redesigned for women’s bodies and holding her own in a male-dominated sphere.Now she is clear

Ministers confirm locations for seven new towns in England

Ministers have confirmed the locations for seven new towns, which include under-developed inner-city land, a historic village and an existing new town.The programme is being billed by the housing and communities department as the most ambitious housebuilding project in England for half a century, with the planned construction of between 15,000 and 40,000 homes in each new town.The new towns are intended to be designed in a coordinated way, with schools, access to healthcare, public transport links and walking and cycling paths to be created at the same time as the homes.Only one of the locations will be created around a small existing community, as was the case with the various generations of new towns built after the second world war.Up to 40,000 homes are planned around the Bedfordshire village of Tempsford, which is near the A1, with the new building on a former RAF base

‘You lose yourself’: inside the mental health crisis hitting gen X women

My generation had great role models, free university and the morning-after pill. We should be running the world. Instead, two-thirds of us are facing mental health problems – and it’s not all about the menopauseLooking at the women in my own immediate friendship group, ranging in age from 50 to 63, we have lived through every flavour of chaos. Apart from the haywire hormones and feelings of invisibility, there are also the life-changing events that happen at this life stage – post-divorce relocation, caring for a parent with dementia, a breast cancer diagnosis, redundancy. Some of my friends are also supporting adult children with mental health problems, who are still living at home

MPs threaten fresh inquiry into carers allowance scandal amid redress delays

MPs have threatened to launch a fresh inquiry into the handling of the carers allowance scandal after unpaid carers spoke of being “stuck in limbo” by the government’s response.The warning came amid concerns over delays in Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) plans to offer redress to tens of thousands of carers who were unfairly issued with overpayment bills based on discredited official guidance.Debbie Abrahams, the chair of the Commons work and pensions select committee, said MPs were actively considering opening a fresh investigation over what she called a “torrent of missteps” by the DWP in its response to the scandal.In a scathing letter to the social security minister Stephen Timms Abrahams raised issues over the culture of DWP management and questioned whether senior officials shared ministers’ commitment to address carer benefit injustices.She said the DWP’s failure to tackle the issue “with due care” would cause many to “conclude that [it] is not serious in its public commitment to do so, which is extremely damaging to the existing issues of trust with the department”

Family courts in England and Wales ‘not good enough’ for women and children, minister says

Family courts are “not good enough” and have treated women and children unfairly for decades, a government minister has said.Announcing a major overhaul of the family justice system in England and Wales that will play a central role in “rebalancing” the family courts, Alison Levitt said often brutal legal showdowns will be replaced with a “problem-solving”, child-focused model.Part of a move across the Ministry of Justice to tackle court backlogs, the department said child focused courts – which centre on child welfare and seeks out-of-court resolutions – have reduced child trauma, cut a backlog of cases and reduced waiting times.They will now become the standard model for all section 8 cases, which involve child arrangements including where that child lives, who they have contact with and how long they spend with each parent.The Labour peer, who was Keir Starmer’s principal legal adviser when he was the director of public prosecutions, said that she had been repeatedly accused of sexism since she became a minister last autumn, including as a result of the proposed repeal of the legal presumption that both parents should be involved in their children’s lives in the Courts and Tribunal bill, which passed its second reading earlier this month