By Jon Cleaver

The Coventry based care provider, The ExtraCare Charitable Trust, has won a top award in the Healthcare and Medical Research category at the 2009 National Charity Awards event held recently in London, for its work in improving the lives of people with dementia.

Called the Enriched Opportunities Programme, it has been running since 2002, and is implemented by specially trained support workers known as 'Locksmiths.'

Research carried out with residents who have participated, found that the trend towards improved cognitive function of thinking, reasoning and understanding skills, is prolonged for a longer period, and showed that residents were much less likely to feel depressed, and they rated their quality of life significantly better.

A JILTED wife who torched the Warwickshire home of her husband's mistress as she slept upstairs has been sent to a secure psychiatric unit.

Parish council clerk Alison Watson, of Walton, near Lutterworth, was yesterday made subject at Warwick Crown Court to an interim hospital order under the Mental Health Act.

She had previously pleaded guilty to arson being reckless whether the life was endangered.

Watson will be taken off remand at Peterborough Prison and sent to Annesley House in Nottingham, a low security unit, for an assessment period of up to 12 weeks.

Judge Christopher Hodson told her: "The psychiatrists who have seen you are all of the opinion that you are suffering from a mental health illness, and that this disorder is of a nature and degree which makes it appropriate for you to be detained in a hospital for treatment for your own benefit and the safety of others."

As previously reported, Watson used firelighters to torch the home of Valerie Forde, in Rowan Close, Binley Woods, in February, a month after finding out her doctor husband Duncan had been having an affair with the nurse for three years. Both work at University Hospital, in Coventry.

A 17-year-old girl and three 16-year-old boys were arrested on suspicion of causing danger to road users, following a pile-up on the A46, between the TGI island and Tollbar Island, on Sunday evening.

At about 6.40pm, a green BMW 518, a green Ford Fiesta and a silver BMW X3, which were all travelling in the direction of Binley Woods away from the Toll Bar Island, were involved in a collision.

Warwickshire Police officers are investigating whether an object was placed on the carriageway prior to the smash taking place.

Emergency services were scrambled to the scene.

The latest attempt to get permission for a mobile phone mast follows the rejection by the City Council last year of an attempt by Vodafone to build a mast at the bottom of Leaf Lane next to the Pub's Car park.

Families armed themselves with blankets and hampers to help create the world's largest picnic on bank holiday Monday.

TWO initiatives submitted by University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust have been nominated for Regional Health & Social Care (HSCA) awards.

The trust's Centre for Reproductive Medicine and VitalPAC Project Team are both in the running for gongs.

Selected from 293 applications across the West Midlands, both projects beat off fierce competition to become finalists in the following category:

VitalPAC - 'Innovative Health and Social Care Technology Award'

Centre for Reproductive Medicine - 'Innovative Health and Social Care Technology Award'

Gavin Moran, Philip Bentham, Chris Wileman, Karl Wardzynski, Michael Cox, James Kenney and driver Nick Cook, all from the water company's traffic management section based in Finham, took part in the Three Peaks Challenge to raise funds for the charity Water Aid.

Joe, Grace and son Roberto, aged 21, of Deerdale Road, Binley, Coventry, have been in the city for eight years.

TELEVISION viewers are invited to go behind the scenes at Coventry's state-of-the-art University Hospital tonight.

A new series of the medical documentary The Real A&E will follow doctors, nurses and ambulance crews in Coventry as they give life-saving treatment to patients.

The programme, which was filmed between February and April this year, will feature some inspirational and shocking stories.

Craig Millward, 22, of Leaf Lane, Cheylesmore, Coventry, was warned by a judge that if he broke the law once more, he would be jailed.

Coventry Crown Court heard Millward headbutted and smashed a window at the Earl of Mercia, in High Street, Coventry, on March 27, after bouncers refused to let him in because he was so drunk.

MORE than one hundred jobs have been saved in Coventry after a buyer was found for the city's Isle of Capri casino.

About 120 workers at the casino were told this week that their jobs were safe after the company was sold to one of the country's biggest gaming firms.

Everyone's a winner..Phil Urban, managing director of Grosvenor Casinos, which has snapped up the Isle of Capri casino in a £650,000 deal, with Daniel Gidney, chief executive of the Ricoh Arena.

The young patients were showered with chocolate eggs thanks to generous donations from city recruitment firms Hamlin Knight Recruitment Agency and Select Appointments.

THE PEOPLE who run Cheylesmore Community Centre in Coventry want to tear down the 1930s premises and replace then with a landmark new building.

Centre manager Paul Jamieson says the ageing buildings limit the activities that can be organised and are expensive to run.

As a first step he and the centre management committee asked building and civil engineering students at Coventry University to come up with ideas for a replacement on the site of the existing centre in Arundel Road.

Coventry's No Messin' Live! event will take place on Friday 17 April from 12-4pm at the Alan Higgs Centre (Bell Green Road off Allard Way) and it is completely free.

Young people can turn up and try their hands at DJing, music, motor biking, skateboarding, dance, computer animation, boxing, wrestling, penalty shoot out, the art wall, creative creatures, beach soccer, and football free styling.

A TEENAGE motocross enthusiast has been left devastated after thieves stole two of his bikes worth about £20,000.

Jack Taylor, aged 17, was in tears when he discovered the machines had been snatched from the back of his van the night before a big race in France at the weekend.

The apprentice brick-layer, who lives in Binley Woods, was just starting to establish himself as a major force in the amateur sport when the thieves struck.