I volunteered as an adviser with my local C.A.B for six years and although it was hard work at times it was the perfect role for me. The bureau closed a couple of years ago due to lack of funding. I tried some befriending work for a while but a few months ago offered my services to another local charity which supports vulnerable families. I helped with various things but mostly helping parents to claim DLA for disabled children. It's a great charity, it's been there for 27 years. These are parents who need support desperately but social services deem to 'low level' to receive their help. Parents with learning difficulties, serious health problems, domestic violence, homelessness, bereavement, some of them caring for children with complex disabilities. But social services are already overstretched.
As I write the charity is still here, but short of a miracle will close by the end of Summer.
Once again it is the vulnerable; children, disabled people, people already on the breadline who suffer again for the failure of the greedy bankers and the politicians who supported them.
I sincerely hope I will be posting back soon to say funding has been secured, I fear I won't be.
Written by
pinksugarmouse
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Have you tried the Red Cross PM? They are always wanting helpers and have various divisions? No-one can close them down without causing an international incident!
It is incredibly, short sighted to pull the funding on charitable organisations offering support to families that do not meet the criteria for statutory bodies.
The support given by the organisation you are working for, in all probability kept families ticking over, remove the support and potentially they will hit crisis level and need the intervention of more costly and overstretched statutory services.
I'm so sorry that this is happening to your charity. Have you tried your local council? I used to help run Cub Scouts with my husband and our group used to secure funding from our local council to run the services for our group. It wasn't a lot but it helped with paying the heating bills for our Scout hut and stuff like that.
Thanks Thora but you see it's the council who are making all the cuts. They have been pressured to do it because their budgets have been cut by the slash and burn Government.
The charity managed to secure some funding from another source last year, but that is only interested in funding 'new projects' so they didn't get it this year.
As for me personally I am considering another path. I am looking at a counselling course, that way if I can't work at a charity I can work privately.
Yep, I agree with you...it's Central Government cutting local authority funding. I know our scout group used to let the council use our hut as a polling station every year but when they imposed a charge for emptying the bins, even though we are a charity and it's supposed to be free collections, we had to charge them for using our scout hut so that we could pay for the bin collection. It's a daft situation but we had no choice.
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Another eye opener from our favourite government , NOT
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