in brief

Roger Kline, former head of health at trade union MSF (now part of Amicus), is to join Unison as a consultant, working on special projects in the NHS sector.He starts on 1 July.Mr Kline's former deputy at MSF, Gerry Looker, is also working for Unison as a regional officer in Nottingham.

University College Hospitals trust has been prosecuted and fined for breaching health and safety legislation by leaving a sharps bin in a place accessible to the public.The Health and Safety Executive fined the trust£3,000 plus costs of almost£1,000 for failing to ensure the health and safety of people, due to a failure to control the risk of injury or infection by leaving the sharps bin in a place where it could be reached by members of the public.

Welsh health minister Jane Hutt has detailed plans to establish a strengthened specialised health service commission for Wales. Following the announcement last November that the NHS in Wales would be restructured, the decision was taken to establish an arms-length commissioning body, which will start work next April.The new body, which takes over from the Specialised Health Services Commission for Wales, which was set up in 1999, will be called Health Commission Wales (specialist services) and will provide advice and guidance on specialised secondary and regional services.

The Home Office and the Department of Health have published joint guidance for agencies involved in the strategic management of complex child abuse cases.The guidance comes in response to Lost in Care , the Waterhouse Inquiry report into the abuse of children in the North Wales care system during the 1970s and 1980s. It is aimed at the police and social services, and builds on guidance published by the government in 1999.

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