The use of B&B accommodation to house homeless families is up 37% on the previous year. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
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Today's top SocietyGuardian stories
• Homelessness jumps by 14% in a year
• Save our NHS rally: thousands march in health bill protest
• NHS bill: last-ditch opposition as coalition bids to push it through
• Remploy factory closures to put 1,700 disabled people out of work
• Hollywood films encourage teen binge drinking, says new study
• Sexist remarks and wolf-whistles could become criminal offences
• Alzheimer's drugs also work for those in later stages of illness, study finds
• David Cameron has broken promises on benefits, says Ed Miliband
• Polly Toynbee: Why it's a bad time to be a British woman
• Kay Boycott: London's housing crisis demands more than a mansion tax
All today's SocietyGuardian stories
On the Guardian Professional Networks
• Live Q&A from 1pm: Choosing the right legal structure for your social enterprise
• Careful project management and joined-up working will be vital if the new, split immigration organisations are to be effective, say Andrew Hooke and Paul Ellis
• Telehealth equipment should be bought like iPhones, says health minister
• Social care white paper should allow social work to rediscover its mission, says Owen Davies
• Charity workers should not be deterred from flying to the aid of the world's poorest because of air passenger duty and should be exempt from the tax, argues Ajaya Sodha from Key Travel
• Five minutes with ... Nick Chapman, chief executive of NHS Direct
• How to ... tackle poor conditions for migrants in the private rented sector
On my radar ...
• The impending closure of Remploy factories. The government yesterday announced the closure of two in three of the remaining Remploy factories for disabled workers, with the loss of more than 1,700 jobs. As David Brindle points out in his story on the announcement, most disability charities back the move, saying that the sheltered factory model is long outdated. But the shadow work and pensions secretary, Liam Byrne, said the move was "the wrong plan at the wrong time" and has asked the government to answer 10 questions on the factories and their workers. On Twitter, Mark Brown of One in Four magazine also poses an interesting question:
How about each threatened #remploy factory looking at becoming #dpulo (disabled people's user led org) #socent ? Do you think it might work?
• Haringey, the inside story. Peter Lewis, who replaced Sharon Shoesmith as Haringey's director of children's services in the wake of the Baby P case, writes for Children & Young People Now about his three years in post.
When I got to Haringey I discovered what we all might have expected; many, many dozens of highly professional, committed social workers and other staff who had continued to come to work to take care of our most vulnerable children and families. Whatever had happened when things went wrong, some people were still getting it right and doing a good job.
Equally, there were some workers whose skills were frankly not going to make the difference we needed. They were not necessarily bad people; just out of their depth.
They needed to go, and go quickly. That, of itself, would create further short-term challenges while we recruited workers of the right calibre – not just social care staff but also child health workers, who were just as closely tied up in this work as anyone else. Together with Eleanor Brazil and Mark Gurrey, who had joined us as deputy directors for social care, and Jane Elias, the partnership director of operations at Great Ormond Street Hospital, we managed to get the right team in place.
Recruitment was indeed one of the toughest challenges. At the beginning, more than 45 per cent of social workers in critical areas were agency staff. Permanent managers were as rare as hen's teeth. We had to change that – but how? It became almost a war of attrition. Agency staff seemed to be paid more and had more advantageous working conditions.
• NHS reforms. Patrick Butler is hosting the NHS reforms live blog today, as the House of Lords debates amendments around the regulation of private patient income earned by NHS trusts; and Healthwatch, the proposed "national consumer champion" body which will represent patients' views of health services.
• The Guardian/Mixmag drug survey, launched last year. Mixmag has been running its survey, said to be where the world's policymakers turn for accurate information, for the last decade. For the first time, the Guardian has joined forces with the magazine to help produce what we hope will be the biggest, most comprehensive survey of its kind in the world. We'll be publishing the results next week - and as part of our coverage, my colleague Sarah Boseley asks:
Anyone (ab)using prescription drugs in the UK and want to talk anonymously?
Contact her via email sarah.boseley@guardian.co.ukor Twitter @sarahboseley
• 21st century philanthropy, the subject of a fascinating piece by Jon Henley . This quote from Beth Breeze of the centre for philanthropy, humanitarianism and social justice at the University of Kent, caught my eye. Following US investor Warren Buffett's suggestion that very rich people "should leave their children enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing", Breeze says:
Paris Hilton has done a great deal for philanthropy in recent years.
Other news
• BBC: NHS fights 'hitting patient care'
• Community Care: Council set to scrap children's director role
• Independent: Back-to-work programmes investigated 125 times
• Inside Housing: Former Ujima boss in court as £3.5m trial begins
• LocalGov.co.uk: Only 10% of people feel councils know how best to improve communities
• Public Finance: Savings from shared management 'exceed expectations'
• Telegraph: Future criminals 'can be spotted at age of two'
• Third Sector: Up to 30 staff could go at Mencap
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