Charity and Voluntary Sector
DCMS: Sainsbury's last week launched their 1 Million Kids Challenge, aimed at getting 1m children from around the UK involved in the Paralympics, by giving them the opportunity to try out a paralympic sport. As part of their commitment to promote a healthy, fitter lifestyle across all ages & abilities, Sainsbury's will also be supplying free sports equipment to schools.
Sainsbury's also announced its Paralympic Legacy Fund, a joint initiative with the British Paralympic Association (BPA) which will support Paralympic athletes at the 2012 Games & beyond and will be partly funded through profits from a specially designed Paralympic Games shopping bag.
CLG: Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, has ‘announced a new fair deal for voluntary and community groups, wrapped up with cutting reams of red tape on local councils’. Mr Pickles is proposing a 'social responsibility' deal which will ask that councils give greater support for local community groups, including:
* seeking to avoid disproportionate reductions in funding
* giving at least 3 months' notice if they plan to reduce or end funding or other support
In order to reduce bureaucracy for councils Mr Pickles is ‘scrapping 56 pages of statutory guidance on local priorities issued under the previous Government’. The guidance spells out how councils should engage with the people in their area, how they should feed back information, and even a definition of what a 'local person' is.
The new 'Fair Deal for the Voluntary and Community Sector' will help ensure that all councils will give voluntary and community groups the opportunity to work together to provide services in new ways (consultation closes on 14 June 2011.
The new 'Fair Deal for the Voluntary and Community Sector' will help ensure that all councils will give voluntary and community groups the opportunity to work together to provide services in new ways (consultation closes on 14 June 2011.
PC&PE: The Commons Treasury Select Committee is to reopen its inquiry on the future of cheques given continuing public concern about possible moves to phase out this method of payment by 2018. Treasury Committee Chairman, Andrew Tyrie MP, said:
"…… Since our last inquiry we have been inundated by letters from the public telling us that they rely on cheques. Many charities, small business and vulnerable people - including pensioners - depend on cheques. Their needs must be considered. ……. I was shocked, when the Payments Council last gave evidence, that they had not conducted a rigorous cost benefit analysis. We asked them to go away and do some number crunching. In this new inquiry we can now examine their latest conclusions and work."
HL: Charities including Citizens Advice, Community Links, CPAG, Crisis, Family Action, Gingerbread, Homeless Link, RNIB, Shelter and Toynbee Hall have written a joint letter to the Minister of State for Pensions, Steve Webb MP, expressing deep concern about DWP proposals to abolish parts of the Social Fund.
The letter to the Minister highlights the huge scale of need for these payments. While there were 640,000 applications for a Community Care Grant, and 3.65m applications for a Crisis Loan in 2009/10, evidence given to the Public Accounts Committee last year showed that on average, only 32% of ‘legitimate demand’ for Community Care Grants was met.
DUK: Research funded by Diabetes UK has for the first time successfully demonstrated the potential of an ‘artificial pancreas’ in preventing night-time hypoglycaemia in adults with Type 1 diabetes. The ‘artificial pancreas’ or closed-loop insulin delivery system automatically manages a person’s diabetes. The device regulates blood glucose levels by releasing insulin when alerted to high levels of glucose, and withholding it when levels are low.
Press release & links
AUK: Rising costs are leaving half of older people living on the breadline as Age UK launches a new campaign to encourage older people to claim their benefits.
Pensioners are hit particularly hard by climbing inflation rates because they spend a larger percentage of their budget on food & fuel, as shown in Age UK Enterprise's Silver RPI; over the last year the cost of food has shot up by 6.2% & energy has increased by 4.2%.
Pensioners are hit particularly hard by climbing inflation rates because they spend a larger percentage of their budget on food & fuel, as shown in Age UK Enterprise's Silver RPI; over the last year the cost of food has shot up by 6.2% & energy has increased by 4.2%.
Despite this, as much as £5.4bn in pensioner benefits goes unclaimed each year:
* Just under half of all pensioners are entitled to pension credit, but a third of people don’t claim it.
* Up to 1.97m pensioners are still missing out on council tax benefit which (if claimed) could boost their income by an average of £728 a year
