Breakout Room Discussion
Challenges with capacity and on the front line Organisational impact
Organisational impact:
Overall Breakout Room Discussion:
- Finding it hard to recruit staff as no one has the basic training required or in many cases the basic life skills to be trained to deal with benefit advice etc.
- More pressure on the voluntary sector having to bridge the gap where public sector funding has been cut or removed i.e. adult social care
- Lots of changes including project funding from council coming to an end (Bradford council at risk financially)
- Prioritising referrals but more crisis support needed, people unable to afford food, fuel and other essentials immediate support needed but this feels like a sticking plaster – needing to offer longer term support to address deeper issues
- Blending of services/funding (without double counting figures) to ensure comprehensive support can be offered
Client impact:
Questions posed to the group are below:
- Are you seeing the make-up and severity of client need changing? How?
- Can earlier interventions be initiated, to mitigate against people reaching crisis point (Is this already in place? Working or not working?)
- Is there any further support you could benefit from to work smarter? - to achieve efficiency and effectiveness.
Overall Breakout Room Discussion:
- More clients with mental health issues since Covid, some feel the pandemic has increased mental health issues and social isolation and some felt it was already happening, but this compounded the issue
- Social isolation is becoming a huge issue
- Clients are more informed now and therefore expect more. We are a victim of our own success
- Household Support Fund is ending soon but the needs of vulnerable families will continue – who will fill this gap?
- Need to have good safeguarding knowledge and the ability to refer on/signpost for additional support for those at risk
- We are flying by the seat of our pants due to Council cuts. Many facing bankruptcy. They are providing some funding but asking for more for less money
- There is more reliance for funding from energy networks, and so the competition for this funding is increasing. There are also issues with funding from Ofgem as their reporting requirements are more stringent – some reports required weekly – DNO vulnerability funding
