Baby food firms given 18 months to improve quality of products in England

Baby food manufacturers have been given 18 months to improve the quality of their products in England, amid mounting concerns that leading brands are nutritionally poor.The new voluntary guidance from the government calls for a reduction in sugar and salt levels in food for infants and toddlers.It also requests clearer labelling of products to address misleading marketing claims that make baby foods seem healthier than they are.This will cover products with labels such as “contains no nasties”, which are high in sugar. Others are labelled as snacks for babies, which goes against government recommendations that children aged six to 12 months do not need snacks between meals, only milk

Michael Göpfert obituary

My husband, Michael Göpfert, who has died of cancer aged 77, was a consultant psychotherapist and child psychiatrist in Merseyside. In 1985 he set up a new psychotherapy service at the Royal Liverpool hospital, with integration at its heart, ensuring that therapists from different disciplines each had some training in another therapeutic method.Michael saw that separating adult and child services when a parent had a severe mental illness meant that the effect on the children was often missed. He was an early proponent of this neglected area and edited the book Parental Psychiatric Disorder (1996). He worked closely with Barnardo’s Young Carers and its Keeping the Family in Mind service in Liverpool, now well established but innovative when it began

Obesity has a serious impact on health – it shortened my mum’s life | Letter

With reference to the letters on Rose Stokes’ article (I thought we’d entered the age of body positivity. Then came ‘shrinking girl summer’ – is everyone getting smaller except me?, 10 August), I would like to add a personal view. My lovely mom was overweight all of her adult life – between 17 stone and 18 stone. She could never run around and play with us children. In her 40s she developed diabetes and high blood pressure

Tell us: how do you cope with broken sleep during the menopause?

Insomnia and disrupted nights are among the most common, and one of the hardest, symptoms of the menopause. Hormonal changes can make it harder to fall asleep, cause frequent waking, or trigger night sweats that disturb rest.We’d like to hear about what has (or hasn’t) helped you manage these challenges. Have you sought medical support, such as a prescription for melatonin or HRT? Have lifestyle changes like exercise, diet, or relaxation techniques made a difference? Or perhaps you’ve tried alternative remedies or found creative ways of coping with broken sleep.We’re especially interested in the practical steps you’ve taken – big or small – and how they’ve affected your day-to-day life

‘I dream about toilets, I admit it’: the man on a mission to improve Britain’s loos

Poor accessibility, questionable hygiene, scattered needles and budget cuts … the UK is in the midst of a public toilet crisis. Thankfully, Raymond Martin is fighting backThe first thing Raymond Martin looks for in a toilet, he says, is cleanliness. Does the tissue paper on the floor mean this public lavatory has failed his inspection? “You have to understand that it’s a working toilet, it’s now mid-afternoon – a few bits of tissue on the floor is neither here nor there,” Martin says. “If there were cigarette packets, bottles on the floor – that I’d be worried about.” We’re in Knutsford, Cheshire, and Martin is on a toilet-inspection tour of the north and west of the UK

‘Mountain to climb’: how Labour is facing a crisis in youth unemployment

Getting started in the world of work was not easy for Rose Green. Having experienced half a dozen children’s homes from the age of 13 while growing up in care in north London, finding a career was the last thing on her mind.“Having that corporate parenting, it can be difficult,” she says. “Sometimes things like completing school, or uni, you’re faced with so much trauma that you haven’t really got the time to finish all of that.“You’re kind of parenting yourself, raising yourself