Martha’s rule now in operation at every acute hospital in England

Martha’s rule, which lets NHS patients request a review of their care, is now in operation in every acute hospital in England, health service bosses disclosed on Thursday.The system has helped hundreds of people receive potentially life-saving improvements to their treatment since its introduction began last year. It has led directly to patients being moved to intensive care or receiving drugs they needed, such as antibiotics, or benefiting from other vital interventions.It is named after Martha Mills, who died in 2021 at the age of 13 from sepsis after a bicycle accident. A coroner found she would probably have survived if she had been moved to the intensive care unit at King’s College hospital in London when she began deteriorating

Latte-swilling ‘performative males’: why milky drinks are shorthand for liberal

Another week, another somewhat fictional online buzzword to parse. This time it is the “performative male”, basically the idea that posturing straight men only read books to get laid, outlined in recent trend pieces including the New York Times, Vox, Teen Vogue, Hypebeast, GQ and millions of TikToks.According to the Times, this man “curates his aesthetic in a way that he thinks might render him more likable to progressive women. He is, in short, the antithesis of the toxic man.” Apparently these heterosexual men who read Joan Didion, carry tote bags and listen to Clairo are not in fact human beings who enjoy things but performative jerk-offs who don’t really care about any of that girly stuff and are just trying to impress their feminine opposites

Ministers urged to digitise adoption records to help reunite families

Ministers have been urged to digitise records essential to reuniting families separated by the UK’s unmarried mothers’ home scandal by campaigners who fear they could be lost in Angela Rayner’s local government reorganisation project.Hundreds of thousands of British women were coerced to give up babies at church-linked homes, which worked alongside statutory agencies, between the 1940s and 1980s.This week, ITV’s Long Lost Family: The Mother and Baby Home Scandal will feature the searches of people – including mixed-race and disabled adoptees – affected by forced adoptions, which the UK government has refused to formally apologise for.Away from the cameras, campaigners say digitising records across the UK will help survivors struggling to trace relatives and reveal the risk of inherited health conditions or from anti-lactation drugs used in homes.The Movement for an Adoption Apology (MAA), which fears records could be destroyed in the plans to merge English local authorities , has written to the families minister, Janet Daby, calling for digitised archives

Scrap two-child benefit cap to help lift 4m people out of poverty, government urged

A cross-party commission including former welfare ministers is urging the government to scrap the two-child benefit limit as part of an ambitious “once in a generation” plan to lift millions of people out of poverty.The Poverty Strategy Commission said billions of pounds of investment – including a boost to the rate of universal credit – was needed to reverse record levels of poverty in the UK, and tackle longstanding failures over rising hardship and destitution.The commission report represents a challenge to the government as it prepares to announce its own child poverty reduction strategy, amid concerns Treasury-imposed constraints will water down any changes that push up benefit spending.The commission said its wide-ranging proposals would lift 4.2 million people out of poverty, including 2

People over 60: how have you been affected by the housing crisis?

By 2030, the UK is set to become a “super-ageing society” with one in five people over the age of 65, and there is growing concern about how our elderly population will be impacted by the housing crisis.With rent soaring and home ownership out of reach for many, there are fears elderly people will increasingly be forced to live in homes they struggle to afford, that are unsuitable for their physical needs, or which exacerbate loneliness in their later years.Research from Crisis has found nearly one in five people said they wanted to retire but couldn’t because of their housing costs, and the number of older people in England facing homelessness has rising by over 50% over the last five years.We would like to hear from people over 65 about their experiences of the housing crisis. For instance, are you at risk of homelessness, or have been made homeless, due to rising living costs? Are you stuck in an unsuitable home but financially or physically unable to move?You can share your experience of the housing crisis and its impact using this form

Long Covid has more than 200 potential symptoms. Selective gullibility is one of mine

When things are grim, the promises made by the wellness industry sound very appealing. I worry about how vulnerable this has made meOrdinarily, I’m a sensible person – at least part-time. A journalist, an asker of questions, a checker of sources. Historically, a big fan of research.But three years into a debilitating chronic illness, I am willing to try anything to get well