Society daily 25.02.2010

Today's top Society stories Families face prosecution for 'mercy killings' Social housing to test green technologies Underclass of pre-school children emerging, says report Growing calls for Mid Staffordshire managers to answer for hospital failures Teenage pregnancies fall, but not far enough Comment: Co-operatives must not be used as a cover for privatisation All today's Society stories Other news • The Crown Prosecution Service's new assisted dying policy will concentrate on the motives of the suspect, not the person who died , says the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, in an article for the Times. • The Tories have appointed Eileen Munro, professor of social work at the London School of Economics , to advise them on how to cut bureaucracy in child protection, reports Community Care. The Tory take on child protection The Conservatives are today publishing their proposals to improve child protection. We'll have a more detailed analysis later at SocietyGuardian.co.uk but at a first glance, there seems little to distinguish it from the government's own strategy, outlined last year in the Social Work Taskforce report, which also aims to free social workers from the burden of excessive paperwork so they can spend more time with at-risk families. The Tory proposals contain 10 main commitments: • Reduce bureaucracy for frontline social workers • Help experienced practitioners stay at the frontline • Recruit top graduates and offer on-going training at all levels • Allow social workers to run their own practices like GPs • Create a chief social worker to give the profession a public face • Focus inspections on face-to-face frontline practice, not just data analysis • Publish serious case reviews in full so that lessons can be learned • Replace ContactPoint with a signposting system for genuinely vulnerable children • Instigate a universal health visitor scheme • Promote voluntary social worker schemes Read the full report later today at SocietyGuardian.co.uk SocietyGuardian events Managing New Realities 2010: integrated places - health, housing and social care for the community. London, Tuesday 2 and Wednesday 3 March. Speakers include: Lord Warner, Sir Bob Kerslake, David Halpern, Polly Toynbee. SocietyGuardian links Sign up to Society daily email briefing Society on Twitter SocietyGuardian.co.uk Public - the Guardian's website for senior public sector executives Get ahead: the Guardian's public and voluntary sector careers page Hundreds of public and voluntary sector jobs Email the SocietyGuardian editor: [email protected]