Care minister Helen Whately has announced Government plans for allowing relatives ‘to visit their loved ones in care homes “multiple times a week”’, sharing ‘further details of a pilot visiting scheme in an online update’; although it was ‘unclear’ when the scheme would start, earlier this week she ‘hinted that relatives of care home residents would be treated as key workers under the pilot scheme, to allow regular visits’, telling the joint science and technology and health and social care committees that ‘she wanted to enable regular visiting, “but it must be safe”’ (‘Care homes to allow

When Education Secretary Gavin Williamson recently spoke of his ‘plan to end “burdensome bureaucracy” in the adoption system’ and drew attention to the ‘“narrow-mindedness, or maybe even a snobbery, that only certain people fit the profile, only certain people can provide the loving home a child needs”’, he cited the case of Sandeep and Reena Mander, who tried to adopt a child via their local council agency, Adopt Berkshire, but were turned down because of their ‘cultural heritage’.

After ‘months of campaigning’, a young woman with Down’s syndrome has been given ‘the green light’ to challenge Health Secretary Matt Hancock in the High Court on the law that allows disabled babies to be aborted up to birth; under her maiden name of Crowter, 25-year-old Heidi Carter is calling ‘for a judicial review to change the law’ based ‘on the grounds of discrimination against disabled people.’ Mrs Carter, who is bringing the legal challenge along with another individual with Down’s syndrome and his mo

TV gardener Monty Don has told The Sunday Telegraph that ‘[w]olves should be reintroduced to Britain ...

A study from Exeter University has ‘found that people watching coral reef footage’ from Sir David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II ‘felt happier and less bored than they did before’, seeming to show that ‘his nature programmes are now scientifically proven to be good for your mood’ (‘Attenborough’s nature shows are proven to make people “happier”’, Telegraph, October 14, 2020). https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/14/does-attenborough-make-happier-nature-tv-scienti

President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, was ‘repeatedly’ questioned on her second day of confirmation hearings on ‘whether she would vote to overturn the criticial legal protection for abortion in America’; however, she ‘declined to clarify’ her ‘stance’ which, ‘while in line with precedent, did little to satisfy Democratic critics who feared her conservative views and strong Catholic faith could make her sympathetic to arguments that the technicalities of the [1973 Roe v.