Council Cuts Cornwall

Reports in the media suggest that at Cornwall Councils emergency budget meeting, today, the Supporting People budget could be cut by £5.6m - around 40% of their budget.  The Government have cut the grant to the Council by a much smaller 12%.

Regardless of the reports and today's meeting, it has already been decided that there will be no more funding for the Floating Support service provided accross Cornwall by Stonham Housing after 31st march.  Thats a quick saving of £3m, about 100 redundancies and huge numbers of vulnerable clients left without vital support to enable them to maintain their tennancies. 

No other services do this same job in Cornwall, and being surrounded on three sides by the sea, there are no similar services in neighbouring areas. 

The client group is wide ranging but includes drug users.  The Government's Drug Stategy acknowledges the important role Supporting People services play with this group, but this important Floating Support service can be wiped out locally in one hit.

Its clear that this quick saving will be a short term gain to the local authority and will probably cost them (or the tax payer) dearly over time, and cost other services like the NHS etc..

Other Supporting People services have yet to decided on but face 're-stucturing' at best. 

Things seem to go from bad to worse and can't even be entirely blamed on our new coalition government!