Campaigners are gathering online and at Westminster today to highlight the issue of care funding. Photograph: Graham Turner/Guardian
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Today's top SocietyGuardian stories
• Prisoners leaving jail will have to join Work Programme to claim benefits
• Smoking deaths will not fall without political action, doctors warn
• No 10 and Treasury divided over curbs on child benefit
• Health reforms: coalition reveals limits on non-NHS work
• NHS reforms risk assessments 'open to speculation' if published
• Police privatisation must be stopped, says Lord Prescott
• Schools concerned about child neglect
• Polly Toynbee: Yes, legal aid will be cut, but not where it hurts the silks
• Diane Abbott: Young, black and unemployed - the tragedy of the 44%
• Nicholas Watt: George Osborne's child benefit change never meant to happen
All today's SocietyGuardian stories
In tomorrow's SocietyGuardian section
• Donated organs can boost understanding of conditions such as dementia, but those who want to give face many obstacles. John Carvel reports
• Clare Allan asks, should we involve ourselves in neighbours' mental health issues?
• The coalition had the perfect instrument to target family allowances away from the rich, says Tom Clark
• Pubs, hairdressers and shops are among the public places that will screen harrowing images of abuse against women
• Lady Gaga can teach us about bullying, says Stephen Carrick-Davies
• Public managers should embrace technology as a tool to drive change and collaboration, writes Annika Small
• Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson is using his home town to test his theories that humans are innately co-operative
On the Guardian Professional Networks
• Live Q&A from 1pm: How to build sustainable donor relationships
• Peterborough and Stamford hospitals trust faces £60m loss
• Somerset council takes back services from Southwest One
• Social housing shortage puts Scottish homelessness targets in doubt
• Hilary Tompsett explains how professional development for social workers will be affected by the impending closure of the General Social Care Council
• Telling funders why you do what you do will help foster genuine understanding, says Annika Small
On my radar ...
• Social care funding. Older and disabled people, their families and carers are today gathering at Westminster to highlight the issue of funding care – and what's being billed as the world's first "twobby" (that's a Twitter lobby) is taking place simultaneously online, read more via the hashtag #twobby. This post on the Care Lobby 2012 site explains how people can get involved online. On his Social Care Insight blog, Tony Butcher explains why he's supporting the campaign:
If we want to provide the best possible quality of care for the most vulnerable in society then we need the best possible workers to provide that care and support. Yet care workers have been described as 'vulnerable workers' by the TUC and there seems to be little political action on improving the image of care work to encourage more people into the sector.
And the issue of social care will only become more pressing over time, more people will need care and support services as the population continues to live longer and WE WILL NEED more workers to provide that support.
Government should be about leadership yet ALL political parties seem to prefer to run and hide when it comes to dealing with social care.
And on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation blog, Emma Stone adds:
Adult social care is a long-neglected and poorly-understood issue. It affects many of us now personally, through our family and friends, and through work. It will affect most of us at some point. This is about all of us – it's not just about 'them' older people or disabled people. There have now been several government commissions, consultations, papers, reports and expressions of intent around social care.
... Frustration is mounting as people in the care sector – especially people who use and give care and support – see the prospect of real reform receding. Cross-party talks are under way and those involved need to know just how important social care is to us all. That is why the Care and Support Alliance is organising today's lobby and asking MPs across all parties to end the care crisis, and to act now to reform the care system in England.
• NHS reforms. It's a busy day on the NHS reforms live blog , as Claire Phipps covers the day's developments - including the return of the health and social care bill to the House of Lords, where peers will discuss two new amendments tabled by the health minister Earl Howe yesterday; plus the second day of the information tribunal hearing the appeal against the information commissioner's ruling that the Department of Health must publish its risk registers on the reforms. And find out what happened when the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, made a visit to the Royal Free hospital in north London yesterday . As Phipps puts it "clue: it didn't go very well for him".
• An interesting post by the Resolution Foundation's Gavin Kelly on the New Statesman blog on the background to the child benefit saga. He asks, Do you prioritise fairness for individuals or for households?, and adds:
The Child Benefit proposal is an uncomfortable hybrid: it's based on individual earnings (means testing child benefit for higher rate tax-payers) but in a very clunky and arbitrary way it nods towards considering household income in that it asks each claimant whether their partner pays the higher rate of tax. The result, as has been widely pointed out, is that the single-earner household on £45k risks losing up to several thousand pounds while the dual-earning household on a combined income of £80k loses nothing.
At the heart of the issue is the point that tax and benefit reforms can prioritise fairness for individuals (Clegg's argument), or they can seek to respect the principle of individual taxation whilst advancing greater equity for low and modest income households with children - which is in essence what tax credits seek to achieve (at the price of far greater complexity). But they can't do both at once.
On his Social Policy blog, Professor Paul Spicker writes:
The main argument for cutting Child Benefit seems to be that it will help to cut the deficit. If the government wanted to increase the burden on richer families, it has the option of clawing back the benefit through the tax system. It would make more sense to tax all higher rate payers, rather than only those with children. If the government was serious about cutting the deficit, they would be raising tax. The fact they are not talking about raising tax is a strong indication that this is not really about balancing the books. They are focusing on public spending, which is quite a different issue.
• A gold star for Hounslow council's use of social media, as reported by the Snipe London blog. When asked on Twitter:
How do we arrange for lovely Chiswick to be removed from your skanky borough?
The borough replied:
we've no plans to remove Chiswick from lovely Hounslow. We'd be interested to know what particularly you find 'skanky'.
(thanks to @FlipChartRick for the link)
Other news
• BBC: Councils paid to boost parenting
• Children & Young People Now: Young voices must be heard in decisions on youth service provision, says DfE
• Community Care: Poor staffing levels undermine human rights in nursing homes
• Independent: We have two weeks to save the NHS, say leading academics
• Inside Housing: Cashback scheme should help tenants find work
• LocalGov.co.uk: Kemp to stand in Liverpool mayoral elections
• Public Finance: Local audit contract winners revealed
• Telegraph: Cancer screening 'risks being a casualty of NHS reform'
• Third Sector: Councils are passing on disproportionate cuts to charities, says leaked report
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