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The government is to double the funding for an early intervention scheme tackling violence among young people, as part of a “public health” approach to combatting knife crime and other offences.

The money for the early intervention youth fund, which was announced in April by Amber Rudd as home secretary, will be increased from £11m to £22m over two years, her successor, Sajid Javid, said.

While up to one in five mothers have problems such as postnatal depression and post-traumatic stress disorder linked to childbirth, many are going untreated because specialist NHS care for them is so limited and the “gap” in help so wide, the research found.

The secret report, the first in-depth audit of how much care there is for maternal mental illness, found that in many areas of England, services are patchy, and in many others there are none at all.

The health and social care secretary has pledged almost half a billion pounds to transform technology in the NHS in an attempt to reduce staff workloads and improve patient care.

In his first speech since being appointed to the post, Matt Hancock listed technology as one of his top three initial priorities and evangelised about how it could help achieve improvements in the other two – workforce and prevention of illness.

About £412m will be made available to transform technology in hospitals, to improve care and give more patients access to health services at home. A further £75m will be available for trusts to replace paper-based systems with electronic systems, which Hancock said could reduce medication errors by up to 50%.

The national unit that supports the family drug and alcohol court(FDAC), an initiative that aims to help addicted parents and their children, will close in September because of a lack of support from local authorities and funding from central government.

The unit, hailed by Sir James Munby, president of the family division of the high court of England and Wales, as one of the most important developments in family justice in the last 40 years, needs £250,000 a year to survive.

FDAC offers an alternative and, research suggests, a cheaper and more successful form of care proceedings for children at risk of significant harm by parents suffering substance misuse. Alongside a team of social workers, psychiatrists, substance misuse specialists and domestic violence experts, the court uses a problem-solving approach that works to enable parents to keep their children. Families involved are seen by the same judge every two weeks to monitor their progress.

One child in every class in the final year of primary school is severely obese on average, an all-time high, official figures show.

Public Health England (PHE) said that one in 25 (4.07%) of 10- to 11-year-olds in year six in 2016-17 were severely obese, meaning they are at risk of serious acute and chronic health problems.

The statistics, published on Tuesday, also identified an upward trend in the proportion of year six children who are overweight and those who are obese.

He served for five years and 308 days as health secretary – a long time in politics – but Jeremy Hunt’s record breaking tenure saw him oversee a notable funding and staffing crisis.

However, his final act of securing a £20bn budget increase for health by 2023 was better than many dared hope for – though less than experts said was needed.

His successor, Matt Hancock, joins at a turning point in the health service’s fortunes and Mr Hunt has left more than a few problems for his successor at the Department of Health and Social Care.

Here The Independent looks at the issues he might face.

People who look after a loved one are legally entitled to a needs assessment to see whether they are eligible for additional help.

But in 2016-17, 13,071 out of 370,000 carers were offered an assessment – just 3.5% of carers.

The Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) said it recognised the need to increase awareness of the service.

The number of working homeless has nearly doubled since Shelter last looked at the figures in 2013. There are now about 33,000 “working homeless” – or 55% of all households in temporary accommodation – compared with 19,000 in 2013, it estimates.

The charity blamed the 73% increase on high private-sector rents, the ongoing freeze in housing benefit, unstable tenancies and the shortage of social housing.

Save the Children UK expects its income to fall by £67m this year after it withdrew from government funding amid claims of sexual misconduct by senior staff.

The development charity became mired in allegations that it failed to investigate sexual abuse and inappropriate behaviour by the charity’s former chief executive and former policy director.

Its accounts for the year to 31 December 2017, published last month, revealed the charity anticipated income loss in 2018, but it did not say by how much.

The number of patients waiting for an operation on the NHS has reached 4.3 million, the highest total for 10 years, official figures show.

Growing numbers are having to wait more than the supposed maximum of 18 weeks for planned non-urgent surgery such as a cataract removal or hip or knee replacement.

In May, for example, 211,434 patients had been on the waiting list for more than six months, up from the 197,067 who were in that position a month before and up by almost half compared to a year earlier, the NHS England data shows.