The budget is expected this afternoon and the expected cuts could have a big impact on social care. We'll be covering all the social care implications on the Community Care site but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on events as they unfold
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2 year pay freeze for public sector workers with £250 pay rise for lowest paid
Disability Living Allowance: rate will stay same but medical assessments to be introduced from 2013
Child benefit frozen
Health in pregnancy grant abolished
We will be going through the detail as soon as documents published on Treasury website.
Ruth Smith Editor at Community Care
Twitter: @ComCareRuth
Email: ruth.smith@rbi.co.uk
Our story on the Chancellor's speech is now up
What do you think of the universal public pay freese to curb the "excesses" of the past?
And while the VAT rise may be offset for those in low-paid employment by other measures, do you have concerns about it's income on some service users?
I find it very interesting they want to make lone parents go back to work as soon as the youngest child reaches school age. Oh, dear. I can think of a few people that will not like that. I wonder what they plan to do to help these people into employment, some of them have never worked. It's like saying, really, if you don't want to work you have to make sure you have children under the age of 5... And you know, with the squeeze on public sector pay all of the sudden the prospect of independent Social Work practices starts to be really appealing to me.
Medical assessments for DLA claimants 'will backfire'
Unison: Osborne 'declaring war' with pay freeze
Two more stories up. There seems to be a lot of concern around the medical assessments for DLA.
We're trying to crunch the numbers to see what the true impact of pay freeze and other tax/benefit changes willbe for social workers.
As someone who is due to qualify in October, I guess I'm wondering if there will be a job for me at the end of my course, given the emphasis on cuts in the public sector and the reduced budgets being talked about. I didn't really want to work for an agency, but am starting to wonder if I may have to initially at least.
Regarding the welfare benefit cuts and moves to get single parents into work- where will the jobs they want people to go into instead come from, I wonder?
Really annoyed at the way this Govt and previous lot have been spreading propaganda about the 'feather-bedded' public sector (where many social workers work) to soften the general public up to accept pay freezes and redundancies for us. Yes, a bit of an advantage re our (not hugely generous) pensions looking more secure than some, but that's it! Much low pay and poor working conditions and doing of jobs that no-one else would be prepared to do, eg social work. Most people (eg the hundreds of thousands of social care staff who provide hands-on services in domiciiliary and residential fields) in the public sector are incredibly low paid and will not get much pension at all. I have friends who work or worked for Fords - free car every six months for life! And perks are rife in other areas whereas we get none. Which is fair enough (it is public money that pays us), but is in stark contrast to the picture that is being painted of bloated plutocrats making a mint. How can we combat this misinformation?
it's really annoyed me - the freezing of child benefit, the tests for DLA making lone parents go to work, what about those bankers and super rich why not hit them and why not put up the duty on fags and booze - grrrrr!!!!
but then again i did not expect roses from the tories!
I can only agree with the above posts. I think the demonisation of the public sector is tiring. The tests for DLA seem to be aimed at villifying people with disabilities. As it is, DLA forms can easily be verified and making a step of people who are disabled having to 'jump through hoops' is not a good use of money - not least the cost of these verifications.
Better to have means tested child benefit in my very humble opinion and the rise in CGT seemed way too half-hearted.
I'm sure I'll be able to add more when I've thought about it more and when my brain is a bit sharper!
cb:CGT seemed way too half-hearted.
I have to disagree with you to an extent here, over the last few decades until recently, many people made what they were told to be a wise decision at the time and put their savings into property instead of keeping it in bank accounts. That bit of money that would otherwise be put away for a rainy day or for retirement instead went into a second mortgage on buy to let, with the intention of using the proceeds from sale to fund retirement and the dangers that come with getting old and infirm. Previous proposals to hike CGT left many people fearing that after years of paying into property instead of savings accounts they would overnight lose 30% of what they had been paying into all these years.
These are not rich people, they are generally the people in the middle, the people who aren't eligable for state support, but are not quite rich enough to be able to absorb the cost. They are my mum and dad who earned at best £45k - £50k a year between them at the peak of their working lives (one still works). They are not greedy property capitalists, they were just trying to find somewhere safe for their money. So I am glad the government have taken the decision to keep the basic rate payers at 18%, because I feel that it is this group that has it hardest of all. Even on a £80k - £100k house, to hand 18% of the profit made on sale to the government (for doing what?) is still a fairly sizeable chunk.
Perhaps there was scope to put the higher band up another couple of percent however?
I add my voice to an extetent mutterings about the public sector having to take the brunt of cuts for the mistakes made of the private. However, I am aware and have experienced first hand the vast and disgraceful wastage and inefficiency by the two LAs I have worked in. Throwing out perfectly good office furniture and computer equipment, leaving lights and equipment on over night, heating on over summer and a very lax attitude to expenses. These areas need to be changed first and formost.
My LA figured out they could save £50k pa by simply emailing all staff a PDF version of their payslips rather than printing and posting.
queenb my guess is that agency workers will be hit the hardest because they cost most money upfront. I know they are not entitled to annual leave and sick leave therefore they are not necessary hugely more expensive, but in terms of actual payments they do cost more. We already worry in our team about this as half the staff are agency and they are the most experienced workers. If these workers do have to become permanent, then yes, you are likely to meet very high competition.
I wonder if these new measures will be accompanied by an expectation that all surviving services (public services I mean) will have to revolve around an ethos that the bulk of the interventions have to take place outside normal working hours. I was always surprised to see Sure Start and Children's Centres closing at 5, as if there was an expectations that parents will not be in employment. As an Aftercare worker I was visiting most my of kids during office hours because they could not be bothered to go to College anyway.And I really mean they could not be bothered as the transport and the grades were not an issue and they were getting EMA on top of their allowance. If this changes, then clearly our way of doing things needs to change too. I think you can turn off your5 lights only so early and after you unplug your computer you cannot save more from there anyway. I think most of the LA waste, at least from what I could see, comes from meetings that achieve nothing, plans and checks that nobody uses, preferred service providers for residential and foster care that are 50 - 60 miles away or even more. Social Work time spent in traffic or typing. Professional time wasted while children are waiting for months to get a CAMHS service that would see their welfare improving enough for concerns to decrease. I think some of those issues will be deal with by the proposed reform in Social Work, but to be honest I have lost faith that this can be achieved while Social Work is still under local government.
The crunch comes in November, when Osbourne announces the spending cuts for the big Government departments. If he sticks to "no cuts for health" it will mean about 25% cuts for some other departments, which will translate into major service cuts. Given the media sensitivity over Child Protection, it is certain that social care for older people (the other big social care spending area) will be severely hit.