11/01/2017 South Today - Oxford

That's all from the BBC News at Six, so it's goodbye from me

In tonight's programme: The cuts it's claimed will lead to more

people with dementia being put into full time care.

There could be less funding for services

like day centres - meaning increased

I know I could have gone under by now if it wasn't for this centre. I

was still have my mother living with us.

Also: the crime described as stealing from your friends,

why a council is determined to catch people committing fraud.

And later on, we revisit the adventures

of Portland Bill, the plasticine characters brought to life

Dementia says proposed funding cuts to day services in Oxfordshire

would result in more people being admitted into full-time

care and extra pressure on hospital services.

Around 10,000 people in Oxfordshire have dementia.

Around 800,000 people across the country are affected.

At present 46 day services share almost a million pounds a year

Proposals would see services having to bid for a share of ?125,000.

82-year-old Jenny has been using Daybreak Oxford's dementia

services twice a week for the past nine months.

But a possible cut in funding from the County Council

I know that if it wasn't for places like this,

There was no way I could still have my mother living with us.

It takes too much out of you, it puts too much of a strain

on your marriage, too much of a strain on the whole family.

I find on the days when she comes here, it's a different story.

Oxfordshire County Council currently funds 46 services like this,

catering for people with a range of needs at a cost

Under new proposals, all charities would have to bid

Daybreak Oxford says its services save the NHS and local authorities

money by keeping people like Jenny out of care homes and hospitals.

In terms of mental health beds, since 2002 I think we've lost six

out of the eight wards that used to exist in Oxfordshire,

there used to be seven day hospitals in Oxfordshire in 2002,

there are now none and it doesn't seem as though there are any

People with dementia should have the opportunity to have a good

Oxford Health denies there's a lack of care for those with dementia.

It says it's been commissioned to help people live independently

for longer and that is offering a more integrated service working

with social workers, care home staff, GPs and families

The county council says it proposes to carry on funding its own dementia

services which are run by the voluntary sector

The Cabinet will decide later this month on the future of daytime

The council says there is scope for a change following this

Police are investigating a rape in Oxford last night.

on Harcourt Hill and then raped in Raleigh Park.

Police are looking for information about a man seen running

They're also linking it to a car accident involving a Black VW Golf

A 38-year-old man from Oxford has been arrested.

A report into mental health at Campsfield House Immigration

and Removal Centre shows an increasing number

of inmates are claiming to be victims of torture.

Inmates are offered counselling and the report praises

the high number of nurses with mental health qualifications.

Detainees spoke positively about health care in general.

Police are looking for a driver who moved an ambulance

Staff were in the back carrying out emergency treatment

It's thought the man released the ambulance's

handbrake to move it and then drove his car

It happened on Pelican Lane in Newbury two weeks ago.

The man's described as white, in his 50s,

Detectives say the patient could have suffered

It was a very reckless act to undertake.

Obviously the ambulance could have moved forward,

the individual would have had no proper control of that vehicle at

the time and anything could have happened.

It could have hit a pedestrian, could have hit another vehicle

and it could have put the lives of the patient

and the crew in the rear of the ambulance at danger.

Councils are turning to Investigation Units to tackle

West Oxfordshire district council is the latest to give its backing

to team dedicated to curbing abuse of the system including council

Fraud is estimated to cost the authority more than

Last year, in Oxford, the city council recovered

Katharine Da Costa has been looking into the problem.

Investigation units like the one in Oxford cover many areas including

tenancy Ford, council tax, business rates and the abuse of social

housing and the right to buy scheme whereby someone buys a council house

when not entitled to. With such high demand for affordable housing in the

city, it is a key priority. In the last financial year, the recovered

nearly ?4 million. 21 social housing properties were recovered and 33

right to buy applications were turned down. On top of that, last

year the council secured 15 prosecutions, this most serious

offenders can face ten years in prison and unlimited fines. A couple

of years ago, they were investigating housing benefit fraud.

Many disbanded the fraud investigation services. In Oxford we

retained hours and the likelihood that we will recover 400 -- ?4

million suggests it was the right decision. It is important that fraud

is tackled and Pete -- people don't get away with it. Local authorities

are working harder than ever to make sure every pound spent on front line

services. West Oxfordshire and Cotswold district councils are

following in the footsteps by backing plans for investigation

units. The more fraud that is identified, that is money that isn't

as it were. It will help protect front line services and reduce the

cost to the taxpayer. It is estimated by 2020, no -- councils

will not receive any funding. They say a failure to detect Ford will

result in the loss of precious resources.

Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service is looking to recruit 40 on-call

There are currently 300 of them, making up more than half

They earn up to ?9,000 a year and receive the same training

Fit and healthy men and women aged 18 and over are being

Two poems written by an 11-year-old George Michael have been unearthed

by an old school friend in West Oxfordshire.

Penny Ling, who now lives in Longcot,

discovered them in her old primary school year book, written

by the singer when he attended Roe Green Junior School in North

As well as writing poems, he was just one of the

We all would soon pop songs and we were both in the school choir. We

both played violin. He didn't stand out, if he wasn't a show off. He was

just one of us. A nine-year-old boy from Swindon has

sent his special motorised wheelchair to a girl in Bosnia

who has the same condition as him. Oscar Moulding has

muscular dystrophy. When he got a new wheelchair

he wanted to give his old one to his friend in Bosnia where access

to such equipment is limited. Thanks to his state of the art

motorised wheelchair, Oscar Moulding can do most

of the things that make him fit in. Whether it's at home or at school,

since he was four-years-old. I play with my brother. I do all the

things that I want. I can race around in my chair a lot. If you

want to sit at the table, it doesn't matter how high the table is. He

needed those facilities to get the most out of life.

but when he grew out of it and got another one,

he wanted his old one to go to Bosnia.

His family are friends with a family there,

They raised the funds to ship it over.

Now little Sophija says it's going to change her life.

I can open the door, I can reach things. She can reach things by

herself and healthy people think that they took these things for

granted. She opened the door for her -- for the first time in her life

and she is almost nine. The families are in touch

regularly and Oscar has already seen Sophija

in her new chair. He's delighted he's

been able to help. I think of her like Oscar racing

around with her friends and going from class to class taking herself

off to dinner and into the playground. Just joining in with

life like everybody else does. Do you think it will make a really big

difference? It will change her life completely.

They raised enough money to pay for any future

maintenance, so the chair should be good for many years to come.

A simple act of kindness that's brought joy to two young lives.

Alexis is coming up with the weather forecast later in the programme -

Later, we revisit an 80s children's TV series.

Come with me the BBC South Today, where the weather is still to come.

We will travel to 1983 with Portland Bill.

A new centre using state-of-the-art simulators to train nurses

and midwives has opened in Reading at a time when the NHS is struggling

to recruit enough staff to care for mums and their babies.

Part of the problem is finding enough hospital placements

for trainees, so could technology be part of the answer?

The bump may feel real enough. But the patient most definitely isn't.

But this is no dummy. Linda gives birth like a real mum. So realistic,

it is not the time viewing. The centre has opened. We were able to

practice in our own time for our exams. It has been very valuable for

us to have this invested for us and for the rest of the students within

the university. My name is Claire, I am one of the nurses here. The

mannequins come in all shapes and sizes and just like a flight

simulator, the force trainees to make life or death decisions. The

whole point of the Centre is that students can reserve their skills.

They can learn in a safe environment and it is safe but also safe for

patients. Midwife numbers in the Thames Valley have risen 10% but

live births are up half as much. The biggest problem is finding hospitals

with the budget to find clinical placements for these trainees.

Simulation centres are very important because we can do a lot of

our training within the simulation centre and help relieve the pressure

of the amount of places we need in practice. The need for trainees to

metaphorically get their hands dirty, practising on real-life

patients, is not going away any time soon.

If you've got young children, did they have you up in the night?

Many parents struggle to get their babies and toddlers

into a good routine but, for some families, the problems

BBC South has had special access to the work of

Southampton's Sleep Disorder Service.

It's just for children and, in recent years, the clinic

It's under the leadership of one woman, Dr Cathy Hill.

She's on a mission to give desperate mums and dads a good night's rest.

Imogen has a typical light tap routine. She however wakes

repeatedly through the night. She sleepwalks around the house and

frightens her parents. Even though the wise up wide-open, she is sat

bolt upright and is rocking. She walked down the stairs, completely

asleep. Southampton's specialist leet service treat children with

complex sleeping disorders, the hardest cases. By the time we see

bees families, quite often those problems have been going on for many

years. The parents have forgotten what it is like to sleep. Building

on work that began in 1980, Cathy has done much to develop the

service. It is now based in Southampton hospital and sees

children from around the UK. The strongest, most powerful trigger the

sleepwalking, if you have got those other tendencies there, is not quite

getting enough sleep. Cathy is quick to diagnose imaging with behavioural

insomnia and sleepwalking. Children will have a night terror or

sleepwalk within one or two hours of falling asleep, and what is

happening is that the child's brain is half asleep and half awake, so it

will do complex things like walk around, climb, but they have no

memory of it or no awareness of what they are doing. The brain is

obviously. That is the slave wage of sleep when our brains are vulnerable

to do this funny switch. -- that is the stage of sleep. She has really

gone into not just image and ask, down to what she's doing at bedtime,

why she's getting up. She gave us advice we need. We will. By

measuring from just between your eyes to the back of your head. In

Southampton, this high-tech sleep lab is used to investigate the most

difficult disorders. Cathy designed it based on similar setups in

Australia, adapting adult testing to sue for younger patients. Some of

her other patients do not need help with sleeping but with staying

awake. Falling asleep in class, falling asleep as soon as we get in

the car, falling asleep at home and at times, in weird places. This is

nothing unusual among college students per right now Chloe is

medicated to stay awake. Her narcolepsy need careful management.

My eyes are watering. Carefully timed daytime sleep has been part of

her routine out the three years whether she is but a condition

called cataplexy has been harder to solve. She collapses, she drops

things, she cannot hold onto anything, all her grip is gone. Her

head will go and she would just collapse and she slurs her words,

her mouth goes to one side. She copes with it very well. It is what

is, it makes who she is, and there is nothing we can do about that

other than support her. We have a cheesy strapline. We want them to be

at and achieving. Six weeks on, imaging and her family have made

progress. You might not have heard of them but sleep fairies are

everywhere. I just want to say well done for good sleeping. Cathy has

suggested Imogen should have happened sleep very. She visits a

night-time when image and sleeps well, leaving encouraging little

letters. She has a sleep Ferrador that the fairy visits. I have had to

be a bit more strict bedtime. The last couple of weeks have been great

so we're doing really well. A full night's sleep for everybody.

Onto sport and big night of football for Southampton in the League Cup

semifinal and a trip to Wembley up for grabs.

It's 30 years since Southampton last contested a League Cup semifinal

and, such is the way that the footballing fate works,

that was against Liverpool - the same opponents they face this

evening in the first of two legs for a place in the final at Wembley.

For Saints, it's part of a hugely busy January

in which they could face as many as nine games.

The halo has slipped slightly for Claude Puel's side

in the last few weeks - three straight Premier League losses

were followed by a frustrating FA Cup draw at Norwich at the weekend.

This game against Liverpool, a good team, it is a good thing for us. We

need to try to have good result. It is a fantastic opportunity for us.

We did well to stop it was only a draw in the end. A really good

performance. Sometimes, the temptation can be to rotate the

squad. We know that Claude Puel well has rotated to some effect.

On the team news front, Puel said that he wouldn't be

playing want-away captain Jose Fonte, so Maya Yoshida

is set to continue alongside Virgil van Dijk.

Adam Larner is in the Liverpool side, Flamini, Sturridge.

You can follow all the action, of course, live on BBC Radio Solent

with Adam Blackmore and the former Saints manager, Dave Merrington.

Dorset's Scott Mitchell has seen his bid to win a second BDO

World Darts Championship end in tatters today.

The Bransgore farmer, who won the title two years ago,

crashed out this afternoon at the Lakeside to Belgian

Mitchell, himself seeded number two, suffered a 4-2 defeat after missing

He exits in the second round in Frimley Green.

Staying on a Wembley theme, Oxford United moved a step closer

to a quick return to the Arch in the Checkatrade Trophy.

Do you know any of these iconic names?

They're locations in the BBC Radio 4 shipping forecast.

But, as well as being coastal stations, they also became

the characters of a children's TV series, which first

Alexis Green went to meet the man who co-wrote the music

The 1980s saw the birth of the large number of children's TV programmes.

But one that sticks firmly in my memory is based on this lighthouse,

the adventures of Portland Bill. Oh, come with me to the rolling sea,

where the weather is calm still... It was the brainchild of John Grace.

Sadly, you passed away in 2004 but his colleague, Nick Parsons,

co-wrote the music. John entered a photographic competition and won it.

It was based on the three plus the scene characters. As a result of

that, he was contacted by a film fare who made the wombles in

Paddington. The director asked if you would like to make the series

and John said, I will write the script, would you like the music? So

we collaborated. It was a nice project to work on. One day, Ross

was having a terrible time, trying to scrap the steps clean. Most of

the characters were named after sea errors and coastal stations around

the British Isles. West 40s, north-westerly, six -- eight.

Portland Bill was the main character and manned the lighthouse. Two

Seabees altogether, 26 episodes and stories. The theme tune is the most

memorable. Come with me, to the rolling sea, where the weather is

common still. We will have some fun, the adventures of Portland Bill! It

has lasted for years and even now my students will come to me and say, do

you still write music for Portland Bill?

Overnight tonight, we are expecting very chilly conditions and tomorrow,

the chance of snow. A lovely scene today. Blue skies overhead. Very

chilly conditions overnight. The winds will increase in strength,

very windy. Coming in from the north-west, taking the edge of

temperatures, but mainly dry by the odd isolated shower. Temperatures

could drop as low as three Celsius. The winds will be very strong

tomorrow. Light spells first thing but clouding over very quickly and

the Met Office have issued the yellow snow warning. The risk of

heavy snow in many places tomorrow, which could cause is. Through the

day, rain first which will help temperatures rise joined the

morning. A northerly breeze digging in. The potential for snowfall. More

likely for air is not a boxer. Intense rain at times, up to 30

millimetres in an hour, and the strength of the winters well. You

need keep three key ingredients for snow, the cold air from the north,

the right wind direction and intense rainfall. The risk of snow

everywhere tomorrow evening, whisking eastwards and clearing most

places tomorrow night but then the big risk is following the snow and

rain. Temperatures tomorrow night, in the countryside, minus three

Celsius. In our towns and cities, minus one Celsius. A risk of snow

and ice with this feature drifting down the eastern part of the

country. We could see snowfall for the rush-hour. Really intense winds

coming in from the north, making it feel bitterly cold. The big risk of

snow tomorrow almost anywhere. Stay tuned to the forecast annual local

radio station. Don't forget to send us photos as well if you can.

I think my political beliefs are really quite straightforward.

I believe that our country needs to work for everyone.

Not just for the rich, not just for the privileged,

not just for those who know the right people or who've got

the loudest voices, but a country that really works for everyone,

has the opportunity to be who they want to be.

In order to make sure that the country works for everyone,

Standing up for the vulnerable, for the voiceless,

against those who feel that they're strong and powerful.

If you're doing the right thing, then you must do that however