I've mentioned this before on the board. Mrs Don is Treasurer and a trustee of the local branch of Home Start which is a charity which provides support to families with children under the age of five. Over the last few years, they have been asked to pick up more care and safeguarding duties from social services as social workers are finding themselves absolutely swamped by their growing workload and shrinking resources (reportedly they cannot find time for home visits these days).
The charity just had notification that their funding from the Welsh government (which accounts for about 1/3 of their budget) is in jeopardy as a result of austerity cuts. This will naturally have a major impact on their operations.
The charity is very efficient at providing services. All the case workers are volunteers but there is a small paid team who co-ordinate operations and there are travelling, training, insurance and other expenses that have to be met. For every £1 spent it delivers between £7 and £10 in services thanks to the volunteers.
The bitter irony is that this kind of setup is exactly what "Call me Dave" had in mind when he called for the voluntary sector to help out as part of his long forgotten "Big Society". The trouble is that around here, finding another source of tens of thousands of pounds of funding is nigh-on impossible.
The reason why the charity is already so stretched is that government cuts to social services have already massively increased their workload. Now further cuts means that the charity won't be able to fulfill their obligations - it's a mess.
At the core of all of this is the government's apparent insistence that the least well off in society (like children under the age of 5) really shoulder their share of the austerity burden whereas those at the other end of the scale get to benefit from reductions in the top rate of income tax :rolleyes:
The charity just had notification that their funding from the Welsh government (which accounts for about 1/3 of their budget) is in jeopardy as a result of austerity cuts. This will naturally have a major impact on their operations.
The charity is very efficient at providing services. All the case workers are volunteers but there is a small paid team who co-ordinate operations and there are travelling, training, insurance and other expenses that have to be met. For every £1 spent it delivers between £7 and £10 in services thanks to the volunteers.
The bitter irony is that this kind of setup is exactly what "Call me Dave" had in mind when he called for the voluntary sector to help out as part of his long forgotten "Big Society". The trouble is that around here, finding another source of tens of thousands of pounds of funding is nigh-on impossible.
The reason why the charity is already so stretched is that government cuts to social services have already massively increased their workload. Now further cuts means that the charity won't be able to fulfill their obligations - it's a mess.
At the core of all of this is the government's apparent insistence that the least well off in society (like children under the age of 5) really shoulder their share of the austerity burden whereas those at the other end of the scale get to benefit from reductions in the top rate of income tax :rolleyes:
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1JdANXf
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