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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.

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.

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.