Richard Exell
Crime reduction charity NACRO has announced that it is due to make over 100 staff redundant because of “local and central government cuts and contracts coming to their natural end.” This follows a survey earlier this month by Clinks, the umbrella body for third sector rehabilitation organisations, showing that 68 per cent have staff on “or imminently facing” redundancy notices and that more than three quarters have already seen their grant incomes reduced.
Richard Exell
A new survey by Homeless Link, the coalition of homelessness charities, has found that “cuts in public funding are already having an impact – with services closing, fewer beds available and more projects having to turn homeless people away.” The annual Survey of Needs and Provision (funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government) reports that 50 per cent of homeless services in England have already had cuts and that 63 per cent of these believe it has had an effect on their clients. The most common impacts are staff redundancies, and services being reduced or closed.
Richard Exell
Does the government think improving the lives of people with learning disabilities is important? In 2009 the last government launched a three-year programme called Valuing People Now to improve the services used by people with learning disabilities. It involves local authorities and health, education and employment services and has been driven forward by a specialist team in the Department of Health. Now Community Care reports that the specialist team will be scrapped next month, leaving co-ordination to a cross-government board chaired by Paul Burstow, but with no officials responsible for driving the strategy forward day-to-day.
Scarlet Harris
Liverpool Council has announced 100% funding cuts to Rape Crisis. Liverpool Rape Crisis helped 522 women last year with a meagre £60,000 funding from Liverpool City Council.
To put this in perspective, the public funding received by Liverpool Rape Crisis in 2010 was less than the cost to the state of just one single rape. According to the Women’s Resource Centre, the estimated cost to the state of one rape is £73,487 – £13,487 more than the annual funding for the Liverpool Rape Crisis centre.
Richard Exell
News from Birmingham and Cumbria suggests that the local government cuts may threaten vulnerable children. At Cumbria County Council, children’s services account for nearly half the redundancies threatened by a package designed to save £50 million – 300 out of 611.
Richard Exell
Conservative-controlled Derbyshire County Council has asked workers if they are willing to take voluntary redundancy, with the aim of cutting 2,000 jobs. According to Community Care, the Council says their four-year programme to save £84 million was made necessary by the Spending Review; the magazine also reports that the workers invited to apply for redundancy include “frontline social workers.” Before the General Election, David Cameron repeatedly promised that the cuts would not affect “frontline services.”
Anjum Klair
Community Care reports on the National Housing Federation’s warning that about 400,000 vulnerable people could lose vital support under projected cuts by councils to their Supporting People programmes.
Richard Exell
Michael Gove has told Sir Paul Ennals, Chair of the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) that the Department for Education will cease funding the CWDC by 2012, after which its “ongoing core activities” will be transferred to the Department.
Nicola Smith
New research commissioned by Age UK suggests that 250,000 older people are set to lose care services as a result of spending cuts.
Nicola Smith
New research undertaken by Demos, and funded by Scope and the Barrow Cadbury Trust, has found that the Government’s proposed welfare reforms will see 3.5 million disabled people lose over £9.2 billion of support by 2015 pushing them further into poverty and increasing social exclusion.
