East Sussex County Council budget cuts

3 July 2018

Care for the Carers’ CEO, Jennifer Twist, responds to the confirmation of reduced funding across East Sussex for unpaid carers for 2018-2019:

Having campaigned against cuts to East Sussex County Council (ESCC) budgets for carers and the vulnerable people they support, we were saddened last week to hear that the proposals would be going ahead. The impact will be far reaching.

As the Council has recognised, some of the savings from this year’s budget are a false economy, and will cause the public purse greater expense later. We understand though that ESCC had limited choice in making such severe cuts – central government is simply no longer allocating them with enough resource to meet local need.

Care for the Carers’ funding for this financial year has been reduced by £59,000. This means that the way we work will slightly change, although we plan to manage the reduction with as little impact as possible on the services that carers most rely on. We will do this by:

• Reducing the size of our senior management team
• Spending less on CareLine magazine
• Spending less on Carers Forums and Carers Voices
• Not delivering the Carers Toolkit training for carers

We are also working closely with ESCC, the NHS and our voluntary sector partners to make sure that we collectively make the most of the resources we do have. We are asking our national partners and local MPs to raise at government level the serious issue of the crisis in health and social care funding, and we are fundraising to enable us to provide more independently funded support for carers.

We’ll keep you updated as plans develop, but if you’dlike to chat to us about your concerns, or if you need help in your caring role, do get in touch with us.

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