News

Disabled passengers are being treated unacceptably at four major UK airports, the aviation watchdog has said.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) assessed all airports in Britain, with London Gatwick, London Stansted and Birmingham airports told they needed to improve accessibility for disabled passengers.

Manchester was the only airport to receive a “poor” rating. Some passengers on incoming flights were left waiting on planes for more than an hour before assistance arrived.

The court of appeal has overturned a ruling on payments for care workers who carry out “sleep-in” shifts for clients with learning disabilities, potentially averting a crisis that employers claim would have jeopardised the care of vulnerable people.

A court ruled last year that care workers should be paid the national minimum wage (NMW) for every hour of a sleep-in shift, rather than a flat rate – in effect doubling the cost of a shift to £60. It said providers should be liable for six years of back-pay to carers.

On Friday, the court reversed the back-pay decision and ruled flat-rate payments were fair, meaning sleep-in shift care workers could receive the full rate only for those hours during which they were awake and assisting the client.

Plans to save hundreds of lives by making everyone in England a potential organ donor could fail because hospitals are so short of transplant surgeons and specialist nurses, the NHS’s own analysis of the policy has revealed.

Lives could be lost because teams of organ retrieval specialists are already under “extreme stress” and understaffed transplant centres are struggling to keep up with existing demand, according to NHS Blood and Transplant’s(NHSBT) impact assessment of switching to a system of presumed consent.

The number of people caring for a family member has reached 7.6 million, a sharp increase of one million compared with a decade ago.

Data analysis by the Social Market Foundation, an independent thinktank, shows that millions are now giving up their time to for free to look after elderly relatives, a partner or a sick or disabled child – with the number spending 20 hours or more caring for a relative up by 4% between 2005 and 2015.

More than 2 million Britons are at risk of dying early because they have at least one potentially fatal illness, such as diabetes or high blood pressure, as well as coronary heart disease.

Research has revealed that 90% of the 2.3 million patients in the UK who suffer from heart disease also have another condition that could shorten their life – a total of 2.07 million people. More than half (57%) of the 2.3 million have at least three “multi-morbidities” – a total of 1.31 million people.

Amid mounting concern over student suicides, some universities have found a surprising solution to their long mental health waiting lists – they are reducing or outsourcing their counselling services in a move apparently designed to shift the burden on to the NHS.

Unable to keep up with rising demand, they are rebranding their mental health student support as “wellbeing” services. Some universities plan to maintain a reduced number of counsellors, but others are sending students to local NHS services. Professional counsellors are being told to reapply for jobs as wellbeing practitioners, or face redundancy.

1.2 million carers in the UK are living in poverty, researchers have warned. Campaigners say many of the carers are providing specialist care for long hours and no pay, with little or no support financially or socially.

In a highly significant judgement the High Court ruled that the Work and Pensions Secretary had discriminated on the grounds of disability against unpaid carers who look after severely disabled people for more than 35 hours a week.

The ruling applies to around 1,400 people who are in receipt of the Carers’ Allowance.

One in four unpaid carers haven’t had a day off in four years, new research has found, prompting warnings that people are reaching “breaking point” as they struggle to take even a day away from care responsibilities for years at a time.

A report by Carers UK found that carers — defined as those who provide unpaid support to a family member or friend who has a disability, illness or mental health problem or is ageing — are struggling to spend time with partners and children or to see a doctor for their own health conditions.

The number of recognised young carers in the UK has risen by more than 10,000 in four years, prompting concerns that they are taking up the slack from increasingly pressured adult social care services.

An analysis of the most recent government figures by The Independent shows that in May 2017 there were 41,870 16-to-24-year-olds who qualified to receive the carer’s allowance, compared with 31,080 in 2013 – an increase of 35 per cent.

Those aged 16 and 17 saw an even bigger rise during the same period – up by 54 per cent from 1,400 to 2,150.