Almost half of hospital doctors polled said they wanted the Royal College of Physicians to seek withdrawal of the health and social care bill. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
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Today's top SocietyGuardian stories
• NHS reforms: seven in 10 hospital doctors reject bill
• Voters face 'confusion' over mayoral and police chief elections
• Homecare for elderly 'disgraceful', report finds
• Miliband promises to find jobs for unemployed young people
• Devon NHS children's services set for privatisation
• Third of incapacity benefit claimants ruled fit to work
• 3 million fuel-poor households by 2016, report claims
• Squatting law reforms 'could cost taxpayers £790m over five years'
• 'Ashley treatment' on the rise amid concerns from disability rights groups
• David Laws and Tim Farron: Osborne must help the squeezed middle and tax the top
• Barbara Ehrenreich: The poor: always with us, necessarily not us
All today's SocietyGuardian stories
On the Guardian Professional Networks
• Creative dynamism or race to the bottom? Eleven questions about extending public sector commissioning of private services
• A new film by the Family Rights Group aims to show parents what happens before, during and after a child protection conference. Cathy Ashley explains
• There's been a rise in applications for some volunteering programmes from gap year students choosing to stay on home turf
• A day in the life of … Dr Jane Collins, chief executive of Great Ormond Street hospital
• The government must introduce private sector rent controls to stop social cleansing on a grand scale, writes Jeremy Corbyn
On my radar ...
• The impact of NHS reforms, as explained by 100 people who work with and for the health service. See our 100 NHS voices interactive for all the interviews - from a car park host , who comments:
The chances are I'll no longer be working for the NHS. It's already started to happen: drivers have been put over to a private company. As soon as the bill is law it'll be a free-for-all. And car parking is a profitable business. I am one of the lowest-paid people in the hospital.
to a consultant cardiac surgeon, who says:
People are starting from the position that the NHS is broken – and it's not.
Meanwhile, Denis Campbell, the Guardian's health correspondent, explains what will happen if the health and social care bill goes through. Add your own views via Twitter using the hashtag #NHSvoices
• The Guardian/Mixmag drug survey, which launched yesterday. rom 1-2pm (GMT) Dr Adam Winstock, managing director and founder of Global Drug Survey, which contucted the survey, will be online between 1 and 2pm today to take your questions about the findings.
• Some shocking figures on carers' assessments in this guest post on the Small Places blog. Mark Neary, of the Carer's Solidarity Group, explains that the group submitted freedom of information requests to more t han 60 local authorities to find out how councils spend the money allocated for carers' grants, and how many carers assessments lead to either a weekly payment or one-off payment to carers. Neary writes:
In the last five years, I have participated in four carers assessments. They have been conducted by four different social workers (or carers champions, or carers services co-ordinators) but the script each time is identical. I have seen Blood Brothers four times, with Kiki Dee, then Stephanie Lawrence, then Linda Nolan and finally Melanie C in the lead role. Four different actresses but they all say the same lines and sing the same songs. A carers assessment works along the same lines:
"Would some counselling help with your burden of being a carer?"
"Possibly. I'm a counsellor myself actually but......"
"I can give you some numbers of some counselling organisations".
"Will the carer's assessment lead to some funding with that?"
"Er – no. But you can always ask your GP for a referral to the NHS counselling service...."
The outcome of these assessments (and they are usually a good 90 minutes long) is that I come away with lots of phone numbers; leaflets on the importance of a good diet and a good night's sleep and ..... nothing else. On each occasion, I have brought up that respite might be useful but each time have been told, that respite isn't part of the carers assessment remit – that comes under the caree's needs assessment. (I've never understood that one; surely it is the carer who needs the respite)
Six months ago, I discovered that local authorities receive an annual carer's grant from central government to provide services and support for carers. Across the country, these grants average about £1.7 million per council. My first thought upon this discovery was: where is the money going? I've heard stories of carers being offered free one off Indian head massage sessions; a free day's horse riding lesson; even a weekend course in kite flying. But all these activities seemed small change when I found out the sums involved in the carers grant.
The group found that Enfield, Glasgow, Kensington and Chelsea, Kingston and Lewisham did not give any of their carers' grant to individual carers or carers organisations, while Glasgow and Bexley councils conducted 1943 assessments between them, but did not make any direct payments to carers as a result.
• Some important points made by Trialia on Twitter in response to the Which? undercover investigation into homecare for the elderly:
I wish someone would stand up for we young disabled receiving home care too-same troubles exist. I often get visits missed without notice or so late I'm hypoglycæmic by the time I can eat something, & I'm 26 so get no age-related advocacy at all. My GP's tried to get me a night call pendant due to an overnight accident last year in which I dislocated 17 joints & had I been alone as usual would've had hypothermia by morning, but I'm still waiting, they act like I don't need it bc I can walk, albeit w/aids & morphine - that doesn't stop me falling down!
• An interesting post on the Dragon's best friend blog about social media experiments during the Department for Communities and Local Government's "enquiries week". The blogger, a former civil servant, notes:
Like many large organisations, DCLG uses its Twitter account as a means for getting information out, rather than as a means of conversing with people. The same is true for other departments such as The Home Office. If you look at the Home Office's Twitter Feed you'll see a minimal amount of interaction with other Twitter accounts – certainly no conversation. This for me reflects a mindset that is still stuck in the mid-1990s. For me, the most important word in the phrase "social media" is the word "social" – it implies a conversation. Compare that approach to that of Emer Coleman of the Government's Digital Service in Cabinet Office – who was more than happy to crowd-source ideas for new social media guidance via Twitter and engage in a conversation with people across the comments section of this blog.
Coming back to DCLG's corporate account, Enquiry Week marked a point when it started using its corporate account to live-tweet conversations from what was a week long "internal" event. It's good that they tested the waters with this, but I'm not entirely sure what some of the 30,000+ followers will have made of a series of tweets in a subject area that is only one of many within the department's remit.
Other news
• BBC: Man dies after 20 hours on trolley at Belfast Hospital
• Children & Young People Now: Children and families directorate slashed
• Community Care: Scottish foster carers paid worst rates in UK
• Independent: 28% of hospital trusts raise car parking fee
• Inside Housing: Revealed: councils' new borrowing power
• LocalGov.co.uk: Industry slams increases in streetworks charges
• Public Finance: Deficit plan could go awry, warns IFS
• Telegraph: Human resistance to antibiotics could bring "the end of modern medicine as we know it", WHO claim
• Third Sector: Chris Grayling insists Work Programme contracts do not muzzle the charity sector
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