NSPCC to redeploy half of laid-off staff

    Half of
    the 88 NSPCC employees due to be made redundant at the end of
    February are expected to accept alternative posts with the
    children’s charity, chief executive Mary Marsh told Community
    Care
    last week.

    The
    redundancies are the result of the project closures confirmed at
    the end of last year as part of an “alignment process”, which was
    outlined in 1998 at the launch of the Full Stop campaign.

    Marsh
    admitted that “some people may have a change of role that at this
    stage they are not sure about”, but added that others would get
    promotions and opportunities for development.

    She said
    that redeploying administration staff affected by the closures was
    proving more difficult as they often had stronger links with the
    local community and were more reluctant to relocate to a new
    area.

    Marsh
    said overall local service provision had not been reduced but had
    diversified to focus on preventive services as well as more
    traditional therapeutic services. She said the closures reflected
    the consolidation of fragmented services within this.

    “We know
    it is essential that the services we provide are of an adequate
    scale to provide the service we say we are going to – so size is a
    factor – and also to be sufficiently focused on one aspect of
    service activity.”

    Responsibility for completing the alignment and running the
    charity’s children’s services has now fallen to Jennifer Bernard,
    former chief executive of the now defunct social work training body
    CCETSW, who took up the newly created post of interim director of
    children’s services at the NSPCC at the beginning of January.

    Bernard,
    who has worked as assistant director of children’s services for
    Kent, said she was delighted to be working for a campaigning
    charity, and was looking forward to seeing what service delivery
    looked like from a different perspective.

    – An
    NSPCC employee suspended from work for forwarding confidential
    information is due to face a disciplinary hearing later this week.
    Social worker and British Union of Social Work Employees’
    representative John Powers was accused of breaching trust and
    confidence after he sent an e-mail to Community Care, including
    extracts relating to the charity’s closure plans from its intranet
    chat page.

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