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.