Tag Archives: ukcuts

Bedroom tax hits 60,000 families with carers

December 31, 2013   Alzheimer’s, benefits, Carers, Older care, ukcuts

About 60,000 families living in council homes where there is someone caring for an elderly or disabled relative have been caught out by the “bedroom tax”

Andy McSmith Author Biography Tuesday 31 December 2013

Answering a written question in the Commons, the Employment minister, Esther McVie, revealed: “Around 60,000 households affected by the removal of the spare room subsidy policy are in receipt of carer’s allowance or have an underlying entitlement to carer’s allowance.

The revelation follows a letter from the Disability Benefits Consortium, which represents 50 charities, pleading for disabled people and their carers to be exempt from the removal of the spare room subsidy

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Increase in funding for Norfolk’s mental health services ruled out

December 29, 2013   Carers, mental health, Norfolk

The GPs in charge of NHS purse strings have ruled out any significant increase in funding for mental health services, despite calls for more investment in Norfolk and Suffolk.

Saturday, December 28, 2013
11:04 AM

Health spending plans have been a target for public protests during 2013. Health spending plans have been a target for public protests during 2013.

The organising committee of a campaign to defend mental health services has pledged to lobby clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), and the acting chief executive of Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) has also called for more funding in recent weeks.

However, the five CCGs that cover Norfolk and Waveney have scuppered any hopes of a major increase in funding for mental health services at a time of increased demand.

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MP’s blast over welfare ‘cruelty’

December 20, 2013   Carers, disability, ukcuts, welfare

The hardships being suffered by Blackpool residents were laid bare to Prime Minister David Cameron during a heated exchange in Parliament.

Blackpool South MP Gordon Marsden used yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Question Time to put pressure on Mr Cameron about the impact welfare reforms are having on ordinary people.

He said: “As the Prime Minister sits down for Christmas dinner to’ chillax’ with his family and friends, will he spare a thought for my Blackpool constituents, and half a million others, whose Christmas is mired in the incompetence and random cruelty of DWP’s benefits sanctions.

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