Telecare and telehealth are enabling councils to save millions of pounds on care for the elderly while helping them to keep out of hospital and care homes and stay in their own homes. New technologies for supporting elderly people in their own homes have been trialled extensively in the last few years and the trials are showing conclusively that technology works.
Read more on TECHNOLOGY IMPROVES CARE FOR THE ELDERLY AND CUTS COST…
This report commissioned by the Rural Services Network concluded that existing measures are inadequate to the scale of the problem.
The research confirmed expectations that fuel disadvantage is having a deep impact affecting more than 70% of rural households. It also showed that this figure could be deeper still but for the finding that a large percentage of rural households are switching their heating down or off in winter months and going without other things, such as food, to reduce their fuel costs.
The Government has called on private and institutional investors to engage with the developing social investment market and benefit from more balanced portfolios and new approaches to corporate social responsibility.
There is a need for a new investment market that measures returns in social as well as financial value to close the gap between business and charity.
Twelve projects have been launched to pilot the National Citizen programme. The projects will run for eight weeks and they will include a residential element involving tough physical challenges and a community element, where young people will develop social action projects to help their communities. The programme is part of the Big Society agenda.
By Sandra Buckley
Commercialisation is not a new concept in the Higher Education (HE) sector. For well over ten years there has been much talk about the marketisation of universities, including varying levels of concern and opposition. However, in the face of HE budget cuts of £200million and individual institutions expecting an average funding shortfall of 26%, the financial pressures are now more acute than ever before.
A new BIG Fund is to manage a £100 million fund that will help the charities, voluntary groups and social enterprises to weather the immediate storm of the public spending cuts.
Read more on BIG FUND LAUNCHED TO PROTECT THIRD SECTOR FROM CUTS…
Editor Michael Clarke
Choice pervades our society: it is founded on political rights to choose and our economy on market choices, but we have now reached the point where choice is extended almost everywhere.
Read more on CHALLENGING CHOICES, IDEOLOGY, CONSUMERISM AND POLICY…
The new economics foundation has warned that the spending cuts detailed in the Comprehensive Spending Review will result in a poorer, more hard-pressed society, not a bigger one.
The report Cutting It: The Big Society and the new austerity, provides an analysis of the prospects for the Big Society in the context of the Spending Review. From the analysis it claims that the Government wants the Big Society to pick up the pieces left by its public spending cuts, but the scale and speed of the cuts will leave civil society with an impossible job to do and not nearly enough support.
Read more on THINK TANK WARNS SPENDING CUTS WILL HARM BIG SOCIETY…
MLA has brokered an agreement between publishers and library services which allows extended use of free or low cost reference materials.
Ten new online resources have been licensed for English public libraries and local authority museums and archives to help build their collections and offer improved information to the public.
Read more on NEW AGREEMENT WITH PUBLISHERS GETS MORE ON LINE IN LIBRARIES…
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