Society daily 17.03.10

Today's top SocietyGuardian stories Government funding warning over child protection reforms 25% of NHS trusts failing on hygiene, says watchdog Children's commissioner apologises to James Bulger's mother Row between Labour and Conservatives over public spending cuts intensifies Headteachers call for legal drug mephedrone to be banned Benefits claw-back forcing low income families into debt NHS 'superbug boss' goes to court of appeal for compensation All today's Society Guardian stories Highlights from today's SocietyGuardian Amelia Hill investigates the funding crisis facing British libraries Interview: Shadow children's minister Tim Loughton How 'citizen journalists' are taking control of local press coverage Sir Andrew Foster on going 'beyond Beveridge' Mark Johnson: children who offend need help not hatred All today's Society Guardian supplement stories Other news * Last month's Stafford hospital inquiry cost £1.7m, including legal fees of over £600,000 and consultancy fees of £390,000 , the BBC reports * Female police chiefs being promoted to 'glass cliff' positions they can't succeed in , reports the Daily Telegraph Health and safety fixation is catching Anxiety over hospital-acquired infection has led many NHS trusts to ban visitors and doctors from sitting on patients' beds , writes GP Iona Heath in the British Medical Journal. Heath is also in despair over reported bans on bringing flowers on to the wards . She writes: "How and why has this happened? Infection control is clearly a subset of 'health and safety' but needs to guard against taking on too much of its rhetoric and public face, which is increasingly characterised by its lack of humanity, common sense, and even humour." Fury over child protection fees Here's Jack Straw's statement to parliament announcing the abolition of child protection court fees . Some local authorities are furious. Straw suggests he is doing councils a favour by keeping the £40m-a-year fees subsidy in place until the £5,000-a-case fees are scrapped in 2011 . On the contrary, say councils, Straw knows that the £40m is a woeful underestimate, and is simply delaying implementation to protect Ministry of Justice budgets. With post-Baby Peter court applications at a record high, councils' children's services budgets are being shredded. By putting things off until 2011, say councils, the justice secretary (who has sat on the Plowden report, which recommended abolition , for the past six months) has successfully transferred the financial risk of taking children into care to local authorities for another 12 months. Inspection conflict Who to believe? The inspection regime for local government is working well, say two independent reports for the Audit Commission on its Comprehensive Area Assessment programme. CAA provides a focus on local priorities and outcomes, and is 15% less costly than the previous regime. Wrong, says the Local Government Association, which says CAA is too costly. It has done a "case study analysis of five authorities" that showed for one council the cost of inspection under CAA had gone up by 311%. Giving something back As official interest in council top salaries grows , another chief executive announces he is taking a pay cut. Steve Benyon, Isle of Wight chief executive, has asked to be paid less than £150,000 despite being entitled to £157,000. He told Isle of Wight County Press online : "My salary should have gone up to £157,500 but I was not comfortable with that, with other workers being asked to accept a 1% increase or the organisation saying it might be 0%. I took a voluntary pay cut that took it to just below £150,000. I didn't think it was appropriate to announce it. One or two people knew about it but I was not looking for praise." Good for Benyon. He follows Phil Norrey, CEO of Devon county council, who announced last month he was taking a similar cut . Both now bring their salaries beneath the £150,000 mark above which CEOs have to justify their salaries to the Treasury under new rules. Is it worth £8,000 to avoid a Whitehall grilling? Show me the money! Is money really an incentive for those who work in the voluntary and social enterprise sector? If it is, you're not supposed to admit it. But Craig Dearden-Phillips, who recently stepped down as founder CEO from award-winning social enterprise Speaking Up (where he remains chair) reckons there are times when filthy lucre definitely helps . In a discussion on his blog of how social businesses can grow, he candidly admits: "Social entrepreneurs, while not primarily financially driven are not driven-snow either. I include myself. Indeed, when we signed up with Impetus Trust in 2004 I immediately made a deal with my board which doubled my pay if we hit financial targets within three years. While this wasn't the sole incentive (we were talking £30k going to £60k), it did help to motivate me, especially when the going got tough. Had that deal not been there, I may have been more easily deterred. Perhaps we just need to be a bit more 'out' about the fact that social entrepreneurs need and deserve decent rewards as their ventures go through the pains of successful growth." 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