Welfare

Almost £2m Rough Sleeping grant awarded for health of homeless

22.10.19: A Rough Sleeping grant of £1.9m has today (Oct 22) been awarded to 6 projects involving partnerships between Local Authorities (LAs) and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). The government funding will go towards testing models that...

Government to protect domestic abuse survivors with local council support

21.10.19: Local councils to provide life-saving support to domestic abuse survivors thanks to new legal duty announced by Government. From next year, every council in England will have a legal requirement to support individuals who have endured domes...

Billingham Railway station to receive £2m for disabled access

21.10.19: Ben Houchen, Tees Valley Mayor, has announced a £1m investment to help add disabled access to Billingham Railway Station. The station, built in the 1960’s, is currently the only railway station in the Tees Valley with no disable...

The Health Foundation calls for government overhaul for a healthy society

16.10.19: The Health Foundation has today (Oct 16) urged government to consider policy changes to housing, transport and education after new report shows a risk to the future of young people. The report, A heathy foundation for the future, calls for...

Government announces £2m fund to tackle loneliness

15.10.19: A new £2m fund will be made available to organisations dealing with the loneliness issue across the country, the Minister for Civil Society, Baroness Barran announced today (Oct 15) Organisations that are at the ‘frontline&rsquo...

Buckinghamshire County Council launch online tool to check your adoption eligibility

14.10.19: This week, on National Adoption Week (October 14-21), Buckinghamshire County Council is launching a new ‘Adoption Ready’ tool that helps people see if they are suitable to become adoptive parents. People tend to wrongly assume t...

LGA responds to damning childhood obesity report

10.10.19: As part of her final work as Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Professor Dame Sally Davies, has published a report named ‘Time to solve childhood obesity’. The report is aimed at politicians and policy makers rather than parents and c...

Council re-think scrapping meals in the community

17.09.19: Subsidised meals in the community could be kept for some residents depending on senior councillor consideration. Over the summer, East Sussex County Council considered plans to remove the meals in the community subsidy in a bid to make almo...

Extra £28m announced to alleviate pressures on councils through Controlling Migration Fund

15.07.19: Councils across England are set to receive a further £28m to help ease pressures on local services following increased migration, from alleviating rough sleeping and community integration to targeting rogue landlords. The funding boos...

Interserve awarded place on £450m NHS framework until 2022

26.04.19: Troubled contractor Interserve has been awarded a place on the NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) framework for infrastructure and car park management. The framework is available to a range of public sector organisations and will operat...

Councils face £1bn-a-year funding gap for single homelessness as charities give government ‘wake-up call’

24.04.19: Local authorities in England have more than halved their spending on single homeless people since 2008 spending and are spending £1bn less a year, major research from homeless charities have found. St Mungo’s and Homeless Link s...

Gang of council officers given 17-year total jail sentence after stealing more than £1m from three London authorities

20.03.19: A group of corrupt council workers who invented welfare claims to steal more than £1m from three London councils have been sentenced to prison for a total of 17 years. The seven benefit assessors worked at Lambeth, Kingston, and Barki...

Councils turn away thousands of homeless youth due to lack of funding

03.05.18: A leading charity has today revealed that the majority of young homeless (or at risk of homelessness) people who reached out to local government were not met with “positive actions”, leading to their homelessness not “being suc...

‘More to be done’ to build public confidence in reporting suspected child abuse

16.03.18: More than two in five adults who have worried about the welfare of a child have not reported their concerns, new research has revealed. In a recent survey, over a quarter of adults said that they had been concerned about the welfare, neglect, o...

CQC calls on councils deal with children’s mental health ‘crisis points’

08.03.18: The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has criticised local and central government measures on children’s mental health, urging for more cooperation between health and care organisations. In a new review of the state of children’s ca...