Today's Globe: shock use, mumps, child advocate, uninsured cancer patients

A state report identifies multiple failures by staff members of a group home that allowed two emotionally disturbed teenagers to be given dozens of electrical shocks at the direction of a caller posing as a supervisor. The report says none of the six staff members in a Stoughton residence (left) run by the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center on the night of Aug. 26 acted to stop the harrowing events for three hours, despite ample reasons to doubt the validity of the caller's instructions to wake the boys in the middle of the night and administer painful shock treatments, at times while their arms and legs were bound.

Massachusetts health authorities are on high alert for cases of the mumps, the painful viral illness that has reemerged in Maine and Maritime Canada in recent months, despite decades of vaccinations.

Governor Deval Patrick today will create the state's first Office of the Child Advocate, a watchdog with power to investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect and to monitor state agencies that provide services to children, state officials said yesterday.

Uninsured cancer patients are nearly twice as likely to die within five years as those with private coverage, according to the first national study of its kind and one that sheds light on troubling healthcare obstacles.