Large numbers of teenage refugees are still being routinely locked up, two years after the Coalition Government promised to end the detention of asylum-seeking children, a report today discloses.

The social care system is at breaking point, with 88 per cent of social workers fearing that cuts are putting vulnerable children's lives at risk.

The heightened sensitivities that surround issues of race relations are clouding the clear verdicts that have been reached in Liverpool Crown Court, where nine men were found guilty of grooming under-age girls for sex.

Elderly and disabled adults receiving care were promised more power to make decisions about the support they get in today's Queen's Speech.

Delays to the discharge of NHS patients from hospitals have surged by more than 25 per cent in the past 19 months.

In this week's "no s**t Sherlock" news, we learn that parents spend up to a combined 100 hours a month ferrying their children around by car. To the AA, who compiled the survey, I say: this is, well, not actually news to those of us who are parents.

Social workers who must decide when a child should be removed from their family have an almost impossibly difficult task. All too often they are damned if they do, and equally if they do not, so it is hardly surprising that the number of children being taken into care has climbed inexorably since the death of Baby P at the hands of his mother and two of her friends five years ago. But although it is understandable, it is a development that should nonetheless be approached with caution.

The annual number of new applications to take children into care has passed the 10,000 mark for the first time, new figures show.

Transparency about a child's origins is encouraged, but not enforced

Starring: Charlie Creed-Miles, Will Poulter

Officers will only approach Mrs Tebbutt after she has had time to reacclimatise to life in Britain  

56-year-old released six months after Kenyan beach raid that left her husband dead – but will payment encourage kidnappers?

Nobody could really want to see "young lives wasted", so David Cameron was on safe ground yesterday when he called for the adoption process to be speeded up, particularly with regard to mixed-race and black children.

David Cameron said today that his plans to create a faster adoption process are not "a Prime Ministerial flash in the pan".