Next Gen News

In from the cold: Ray Lewis; plus, preview tomorrow's SocietyGuardian supplement

Today's top SocietyGuardian news and comment

Guardian investigation: call for inquiry into hospital death rates

GPs to waive privacy of mentally ill gun owners

Baby P doctor missed 'unique opportunity' to save his life

Nick Clegg calls public sector pension scheme 'not fair and unaffordable'

Yarl's Wood staff criticised for poor investigation into child sex case

Ethnic minorities believe top professions are closed to them

All today's SocietyGuardian content

Other news

• The government's chief adviser on child protection, Sir Roger Singleton, has quit, reports Community Care.

• Theresa May will today announce that plans for a database of adults who want to work with children have been abandoned, according to the Daily Telegraph.

• Chris Grayling has announced that incapacity benefit will be abolished within four years, with claimants being moved on to other benefits with stricter requirements to find work, reports the Daily Mail.

Eastside story: the return of Ray Lewis

Ray Lewis, the controversial social entrepreneur and founder of the youth charity Eastside Young Leaders' Academy (a Guardian Charity Award winner) is back.

His re-emergence - Lewis will be an unpaid adviser to a Boris Johnson-backed youth mentorship programme called Capital Men - comes two years after he quit in disgrace as a deputy mayor of London after questions over the accuracy of his CV and allegations about his conduct (which he denied).

The London Evening Standard suggests Johnson has been especially keen for Lewis's rehabilitation. It quotes "sources close to the mayor" as saying:

"Some people may not be suited to the straightjacket of modern political life but they can make a valuable contribution. A bland, beige, faultless politician would never attract the wrath of the press but neither would they get anywhere near the kind of kids Ray deals with."

Lewis is also branching out into showbiz. He is shortly to appear in a Channel 4 documentary challenge - The Wager - in which he will mentor a long-term unemployed person back to work, in competition with the ubiquitous Emma Harrison, the founder of welfare to work giant A4e.

Lewis tells the Evening Standard that the academy is "going from strength to strength". This represents something of a turnaround. Back in November 2008 Lewis reported that Eastside was in dire straits:

"Seven donors have pulled out, run for the hills because apparently I am too leprous. I had to make a third of my staff redundant. Also the credit crunch took Lehman Brothers, so we lost the £130,000 a year they were giving us. We've taken one hell of a bash here at the academy, and unless we find new funders, we will not survive the next 12 months."

According to the last set of results filed to the Charity Commission (to March 2009, but lodged with the commission only in January 2010), Eastside lost a quarter of its £750,000 annual grant income in the months after Lewis's dismissal. It seems Eastside is still in existence. But it appears to have mislaid a prominent supporter: the Cabinet office minister Frances Maude is listed as an Eastside trustee by the charity commission; there is no sign of him on the Eastside website.

I read...

• Tim Williams on coalition housing policy: "Come to think of it, the government doesn't need an inquiry. It just needs to read this blog..."

• The King's Fund's John Appleby on hospital death rates: "Hospital size isn't everything..."

• An assessment by Dermot Finch, at the Centre for Cities, of what's going to happen to regional development agencies - and the future of the London Development Agency...

Preview of tomorrow's SocietyGuardian supplement

The rise and rise of 'hyperlocal' community websites

Mark Johnson on how ex-offenders are key to improving the criminal justice system

Brendan Barber: public sector cuts spell economic disaster

How football memories can help people who have dementia

Guardian awards

Guardian Public Services Awards 2010

Guardian Charity Awards 2010

SocietyGuardian events

National Commissioning conference 10. Beyond efficiencies, doing things differently. 15-16 June, Lowry Hotel, Manchester. Speakers include: Solace chief executive David Clark, former Department of Health lead on social care personalisation John Bolton, new King's Fund chief executive Chris Ham, Social Care Institute for Excellence chief executive Julie Jones, and Turning Point chief executive Lord Adebowale.

The Public Procurement show. The UK's leading event for public sector procurement. 15-16 June, ExceL, London. Speakers include: Nigel Smith, chief executive at the Office for Government Commerce; Philip Blond, big society guru and director of the ResPublica thinktank; Allison Ogden-Newton, CEO of Social Enterprise London; and Larry Elliott, economics editor of the Guardian.

SocietyGuardian Social Enterprise Summit

We are starting to plan this year's Society Guardian Social Enterprise Summit. Last year's summit was a great success - you can read about it here. Once again we are looking to showcase inspiration, innovation and practical ideas on how social enterprises can deliver public services. Whether you are from the public sector or from a social business, we want you to tell us who you'd like to see and what you would like to see discussed. Email to charmian.walker-smith@guardian.co.uk. You can Follow Guardian Social Enterprise on Twitter

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