Charity should begin at the council.

Maggie Atkinson, the president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, questions how local authorities expect to eradicate child poverty if children's service workers are denied decent wages, in Children and Young People Now (July 16). She urges fellow council workers to campaign for a living wage on behalf of workers. “We are going to have to hammer this home until it gets through to everyone,” she says.

In Local Government Chronicle (July 17), Atkinson pushes for council staff to increase their benefit uptake to combat child poverty. She suggests that council online bulletins and magazines encourage staff and residents to visit their JobCentre Plus branch or Department for Work and Pensions advice sessions to ensure that they receive their entitlements. She says that lower-paid council staff would be among those not getting the in-work benefits they could be entitled to. “We need to make sure that our own staff have got a living wage.”

Meanwhile, top council officers appointed in recent weeks can rest assured that their pockets are well lined. The disclosed wages of new chief executives range from £127,000 to £200,000, according to LGC.

Knives get everybody nervous

Hospital staff dismayed that new legislation could make them legally required to report knife wounds to the police

BACKGROUND

• Cutting edge champion

• Benefit help for council staff

• What worked for us

• Public opinion: Campbell Robb

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• Snakes & Ladders

At least council staff will have their bellies lined with nutritious grub under a government plan to improve the health of public sector workers. The days of bingeing on a burger in your lunch break are numbered. Council canteens are to be encouraged to adopt a healthy eating standard, LGC reports. The recommendation is made in a Cabinet Office report, Food Matters. The aim will be to roll the scheme out across central government, HM Prison Service and the NHS by 2012, with all public bodies, including local government, signing up voluntarily.

Migrants in line to fill staff gaps

A shortage of care staff means that care homes could close unless workers are recruited from outside Europe, Community Care (July 17) reports.

Care bodies, including the National Care Association (NCA), have told the Government's independent advisers, the Migration Advisory Committee, that the requirement that only skilled workers can be admitted should be relaxed to ease the recruitment of staff from outside the European Economic Area.

“[Government accepts] there is a shortage of care workers but ... they don't accept [that] care workers are skilled workers,” says Mandy Thorn, of the NCA.

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