Member News
By Tony Grew - 24th June 2011
The government has published its response to its consultation on changes to local welfare services.
As part of the Welfare Reform Bill, funds for Community Care Grants and Crisis Loans for general living expenses will be transferred to local authorities and devolved administrations by April 2013.
The government response acknowledges "understandable concerns about how the new services will operate on the ground" but also highlights "excellent examples of projects run both by social enterprise groups and charities that are already providing high quality support to vulnerable groups".
The department for work and pensions said strong partnerships between central and local government, community groups, charities and individuals will be key to proper delivery of services.
Local communities will be asked to develop and deliver local services tailored to meet the needs of their most vulnerable members and challenge local service providers to design innovative and creative schemes.
Pensions minister Steve Webb said: "For too long people have been let down by a disconnected welfare service and this is the first step in empowering local communities to design and deliver local services tailored to meet the needs of their most vulnerable members.
"This evidence will assist the development of the new services and demonstrates the potential for local innovation, strengthening and developing partnerships between local government and community based organisations."
The evidence on Community Care Grants indicates:
* The operation of a highly discretionary scheme remotely may not deliver the best use of a limited resource
* The lack of integration into the wider social care agenda means overall the scheme is likely to be poorly targeted – relying on people to apply may mean that some of the most vulnerable are not supported, and
* Modern social security structures are no longer the right place to deliver what is essentially a social care package.
The changes are desrcibed as being "at the heart of localism and the Big Society agenda".
Article Comments
Its Works and Pensions lies, the fact about this is the following:
The Sale of our Communities!
It is coming to your City or Town; it's the sale of parking meters to the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi, it's the sale of the northern motorways to a Spanish and Australian Roman Catholic joint venture's; it's public health and social programs, in England; it’s libraries, it's water treatment plants, schools, roads, airports, and power plants.
It's British Rail, these are revolving doors of corrupt politicians, local and national, big banks, and rating agencies. There are conflicts of interest. It's bipartisan.
It may already be there. We're talking about the sale of public assets to private investors. You may have heard of one-off deals, but what we'll be exploring with the Pennant is the scale and scope of what is a national, local and organized campaign to shift the way we govern ourselves. In an era of increasingly stretched local and national budgets, privatization of public assets may be so tempting to local politicians that the trend seems unstoppable. Yet, public outrage has stopped, giving way to a number of initiatives backed by corrupt local councillors, feeding from the hands of rich business people.
While there are no televised debates around this issue, there is no polling, and there are no elections, who wins it will determine the literal shape of ENGLAND. The local community organisations that are not run by local councillors and MP's are teaming up with the Pennant to do a series called 'Deceived by the elected, your community for Sale' showing the pros and cons, the politics and economics, of a new and far more privatized government.
Those of us that pay council tax do have a concern about the way it is being handed over to the business sector by corrupt incompetent elected councillors, who have their names listed has School governors, Union (GMB) lists, Co-op's- working for them and not their Wards that elected them, if the were elected, there is that much corruption in Leeds with the voting system, and no one is concerned.
Pennant is to investigate Councillor Ron Grahame, AKA Ron Blower and is wife also Councillor P Grahame from the labour party in Leeds East over these same issues.
Raymond Northgreaves
24th Jun 2011 at 7:11 pm
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