It was great to catch up with members of our #PowerToChange partners community group, on the morning of Friday 2nd February. The group were joined by Steve Meadwell from the Centre for Social Justice and Jacob Brown from NHS LLR .
As we caught up on the frontline work members are delivering key themes emerged:
- There is an increasing demand for frontline services as poverty continues to rise and services are cut back.
- Short term funding makes it hard to plan and leads to angst and anxiety for staff who are often a few months away from not having a job.
- The home working culture that has developed in city council, does not seem to benefit people in need or community groups who find it much harder to have face to face meetings with staff. This is something, where participants felt there should be dialogue between Council leaders and community.
- Taking on more volunteers has been one way of coping with above, but this then creates work , if you want to support them properly to ensure they do a good job.
- City seems to have a fair few community buildings, which have few or no staff. Could funding be found for youth and community workers to work out of them.
Jacob urged people to encourage young people and parents of young people to fill in the 5 minute survey, NHS LLR want to hear from young people (11-25 year olds) and their families about their experiences and views on healthcare.https://leicesterleicestershireandrutland.icb.nhs.uk/be-involved/young-voices-on-healthcare/
John, from The Ebb, briefed us on training he is providing with colleagues from the “Families Affected By Imprisonment Project.” This will raise awareness amongst practitioners and community groups of the issues faced by children and young people when a family member imprisoned. We agreed we would host a training session on Date: Friday 22nd March 2024
All too often these children and young people are the forgotten victims of the criminal justice system, and we need to stop them being invisible, so we can understand and plan how we can deliver practical help for them
Steve from the CSJ, shared how important it was for him and the CSJ to connect with grassroots group. He also encouraged us if we had not already to look at the “Two nations: the state of poverty in the UK” report they had recently published.
This report reveals a widening gap between those who can get by and those stuck at the bottom, a gap that was further stretched by the impact of successive lockdowns
For further Info:
CSJ Two Nations Report https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/library/two-nations
More info on our #PowerToChange community partners group https://www.leicestershirecares.co.uk/about-charity/news-events-/powertochange-partners-sign-partnership-agreement/