The North Edinburgh Save Our Services campaign are holding an Action Meeting on Wednesday evening – and there may be some good news at last for the six local community projects whose Health and Social Care funding was slashed by the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board last December.
While councillors agreed to cut services by £33 million in the year head, a lifeline was thrown to six beleaguered local projects. In a statement following Thursday’s council meeting, Councillor Cammy Day said: “We have also allocated additional funding to the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board to respond to increasing demands on social care and to support voluntary sector transition following the recent grants process.”
As ever with budgets, the devil is in the detail. That additional funding is £2 million, it was confirmed on Friday – but it’s not yet clear how this money will be allocated. It’s understood £200,000 has been allocated to transitional relief.
On Friday EIJB Chief Officer Judith Proctor told a meeting of EVOC’s Third Sector Strategy Group that she had not yet seen the details of the council’s budget so could not comment on the transition funding arrangements – but also pointed out that the city council alone cannot direct the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board on how it spends it’s income.
There is clearly some talking to be done and there are a number of questions, including:
- What proportion of the additional funding will be allocated to supporting the voluntary sector transition process?
- Is this relief funding solely for projects located in the North West Locality or is it city-wide?
- How quickly can the funding reach projects, some of whom have already lost staff and others who must make hard decisions very soon? One local organisation is understood to be issuing redundancy notices today.
Local politicians will be attending Wednesday’s meeting at Muirhouse Millennium Centre and it’s hoped they will have at least some of the answers. The meeting starts at 6pm.
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