Funding loss leads to job and course cuts

One of the UK’s leading social care research
institutes is being forced to cut lecturer posts and scrap plans
for a new academic course following the NHS Executive’s decision to
stop funding its work.

This
month, the NHSE terminated the Tizard Centre’s £700,000 a year
grant – around half its annual budget – because of “reorganisation”
within the NHS.

The
centre, part of the University of Kent in Canterbury, carries out
research into learning difficulties, mental health and older
people, and offers professional development courses. Despite the
university providing £300,000 in transitional funding over the
next year, the centre is to lose 4.5 of its 17 working time
equivalent lecturer posts.

A new
two-year, part-time diploma in community care practice, which was
due to start in the autumn, has been postponed for a year
disrupting the studies of front-line staff working in adult social
care, who had completed a two-year certificate and were due to
start the course.

Paul
Cambridge, senior lecturer in learning disabilities at the centre,
said he feared the course could now be scrapped
altogether.

“If
the financial pressures increase there is a risk this could become
permanent or be postponed again next year. The course was going to
lead to a BSc and progression for these students is being made
impossible,” he added.

He
said research projects would also suffer as lecturers spent more
time teaching, possibly taking on consultancy work.