Category Archives: charities

Doing services differently report is launched

 Local innovations for Disabled
Support worker with older disabled person

 

Scope and independent think-tank nef have launched a new report called Doing services differently: local innovations for disabled people. We hope it will spark a new conversation with and between councils and charities, on how we can work together to deliver the support disabled people want, in order to lead the lives they value.

Councils and charities alike are facing unprecedented budget cuts coupled with increasing demands for services. A big challenge for both sectors is to understand how services can support disabled people at a time when cuts are the main driver of change.

Crisis in social care costs Britain over £5bn a year

Crisis will get worse, charities warn

Wednesday 26 September 2012

Britain’s fragile economy is losing more than £5bn a year as a result of a growing crisis in social care funding aggravated by the Government’s austerity measures.

People are giving up an estimated £4bn in pay – cash that would have been channelled back into the economy – because they are being forced to leave work to care for elderly or disabled relatives. The Treasury is also missing out on £1bn of taxes they would otherwise have paid, while carers are claiming some £300m in benefits to help cover their living costs.

The “missing” £5.3bn is equivalent to more than 0.3 per cent of Britain’s gross domestic product, charities warned last night. More than 300,000 people quit work in 2010-11 to look after relatives – and the number is increasing because of continuing cuts to care budgets, they said.

The extent of the losses to the economy was disclosed in a report from Age UK and Carers UK, building on work by the London School of Economics. They said the problem would worsen unless ministers reversed cuts to town hall budgets that were affecting services, and finally acted to settle the long-term funding of social care.

Serco set to take charge of ‘big society’ initiative

Charities warn against bid to run David Cameron’s programme for teenagers, the National Citizen Service

Members of Catch22 Unity in Nottingham

Members of Catch22 Unity in Nottingham. Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian

Serco, a leading private contractor, is in line to win a multimillion-pound contract to run the National Citizen Service, proposed by the prime minister as a “big society”, non-military version of national service for youngsters aged over 16.

The company, which recently announced global revenue of more than £4bn, has joined four charities in a controversial bid to run what has been described by the government as a key part of David Cameron’s big society vision. Serco and its partners hope to win eight of the 19 contracts currently up for tender, with an estimated value of nearly £100m over two years.