A potential voice for a section of society often overlooked, or else, ignored. Best wishes.

Birmingham Against The Cuts's avatarBirmingham Against The Cuts

The Care Leaver’s Network have a meeting in Birmingham regarding the potential closure of childrens’ homes in the city. Please note that this meeting is for care leavers only.

Wed 14th November 2012 7pm – 9pm
The Elizabeth Fry Room
The Priory Rooms
Quaker Meeting House
40 Bull Street
Birmingham
B4 6AF

A Childhood in Care?
Be a part of this Ground Breaking Care Leaver Network

  • Open to Care Leavers of all ages, whether you’re 18 to 88
  • Discussions on Birmingham City Council’s proposal to shut children’s homes
  • The CLA argue that decisions on residential or foster care should be based on individual needs and not financial considerations
  • A one size fits all approach to caring for our most vulnerable children does not work
  • If you are a care leaver and have a view then come along to the meeting
  • Find out more about the CLA
  • Meetings are…

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    Ideally everyone should pay into the taxation pot. If one pays tax and council tax it is undermines any argument about opting out, scrounging and the like. Of course society – a real society worthy of that name – offsets those contributions so that the poorest don’t have to starve or risk gaol in order to belong.
    This additional tax on poverty must be addressed at national level, that is the proper job of Parliament.

    Birmingham Against The Cuts's avatarBirmingham Against The Cuts

    The last consultation meeting on Birmingham City Council’s plans for its Council Tax benefit scheme took place on Thursday in the city centre.

    As at previous consultation meetings there was enormous anger at the proposal to make people on income support and Job Seekers Allowance pay an average of £5 a week council tax. It was pointed out that with cuts in other benefits such as housing benefit, and general reductions in benefits as part of the Universal Credit, these people were absolutely unable to pay more without facing starvation.

    Many people contended that with the costs of debt collection, and the increase in crime, family breakdown, and homelessness the policy would cost more than the money raised. A recent survey showed that councils expect 50% of people will refuse to pay the new charge. Other councils such as Walsall, Dudley and Solihull have decided to absorb the…

    View original post 121 more words

    Birmingham Against The Cuts's avatarBirmingham Against The Cuts

    The Hardest Hit, a campaign group for disabled people and charities are holding an event in Birmingham on 26th October:

    West Midlands Event: Birmingham MP Question Time

    When: Friday 26th October, AM
    Where: Birmingham City Centre

    The Hardest Hit team in the West Midlands are organising a free Question Time themed event for the morning of Friday the 26th of October 2012 in Birmingham City Centre. We are expecting representatives from the three main political parties and Birmingham City Council to attend and answer your questions. The discussion will focus on a range of topics including government cuts and reforms to benefits and local services. This will be the culmination of a number of smaller Hardest Hit activities being organised around the region during the week of action that is starting on 20 October.

    Disabled people, their families and carers from across the West Midlands are invited and put their…

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    Birmingham Against The Cuts's avatarBirmingham Against The Cuts

    The campaign with Communities Against the Cuts to get the council to fund the £120,000 that Birmingham CAB needs to keep its offices in Northfield, Tysley and Kingstanding will continue with a petition session by the CAB, Gazette Buildings, 168 Corporation Street, Birmingham, B4 6TF on Tuesday 23rd October from 12noon-2pm.

    Without this funding, the CAB will be forced to close its offices around Birmingham. The loss of these advice centres could not come at a worse time for Birmingham residents, as welfare reforms threaten to overwhelm advice services even before these cuts and the loss of legal aid income restrict their ability to help people further.

    So come and join us on Tuesday, even if just for 20 minutes on your lunch break, and help gather signatures to present to the council to demand they find the money to keep CAB open and stand up to this coalition…

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    Birmingham Against The Cuts's avatarBirmingham Against The Cuts

    Today’s unemployment figures show that the government has failed to manufacture falling unemployment figures in Birmingham and the West Midlands, though they have managed it nationally, with the coup d’etat being the reduction in youth unemployment to under 1million. In Birmingham though, youth unemployment claimant count rose to 14,450 – a rate of 23.4%.

    The government uses workfare and other training schemes to reduce the headline unemployment figure (the Labour Force Survey) and increasing numbers of people who are sanctioned are not included in the lower claimant count number. The move to a 4 week minimum, 3 year maximum sanction regime from the 22nd October will further act to reduce the claimant count, by reducing people to destitution.

    With unemployment rising in the West Midlands, can we expect to see an increased push to force people into unpaid workfare schemes to claim unemployment is falling? Will we see…

    View original post 421 more words

    Not soup kitchens for the destitute feckless but a life-line for ordinary hard working men, women and their children – perhaps your neighbours, perhaps… you.

    Birmingham Against The Cuts's avatarBirmingham Against The Cuts

    The Trussell Trust, which runs 172 food banks around the UK, has reported a doubling in the number of people seeking its support to feed themselves and their families as benefit cuts, delays and sanctions, the recession, rising food prices and frozen wages hit poor people in the UK. Between April and September this year, nearly 14,000 people in the West Midlands visited a Trussell Trust food bank, and many more will have been to others, like the Gateway Family Services food bank in Edgbaston.
    Such is the increase in demand that Birmingham Central Foodbank have launched a Harvest Campaign to encourage donations.

    This comes alongside news from a survey by the Guardian Teacher Network that large numbers of pupils are coming into school hungry, with nearly a sixth of teachers saying they spend up to £25/month of their own money on basic foodstuffs for the students…

    View original post 288 more words

    The power of education lies in harnessing the latent potential resident in most people to effect strong, lasting, positive change in their lives and conditions. Evident from this article.

    Ann Walker's avatarLifelong Learning Matters

    WEA students Cathy Thomas and Sarah Nichols spoke at the launch of the Independent Inquiry into Family Learning last Friday.  NIACE organised the event on the theme of Forgotten Families: How learning in families contributes to a range of policy agendas.

    Their tutor, Tracey Martin, and WEA Organiser, Trish Hollies, accompanied them as they joined the Princess Royal, members of the House of Lords, family learning practitioners, government department representatives and other adult students. I was also invited to speak about Family learning and its role in widening participation in adultlearning.

    There’s more information about the Inquiry at http://www.niace.org.uk/current-work/family-learning-inquiry.

    Carol Taylor from NIACE interviewed Sarah, Cathy and Emily Fearn, another successful adult learner from Croydon, as part of the event. Their moving first hand accounts showed the impact of family learning.

    Cathy and Sarah, who are both from Yorkshire, wrote their own pen portraits before the event:

    Cathy in her own words

    I’m a 33-year-old, married mother of…

    View original post 728 more words

    CAB – yet another service used by people like me, like you, who don’t have corporate legal services and a secretariat to back us up. Yet another service that will be noticed when it’s gone.

    catc2012's avatarcommunitiesagainstthecuts

    If the Labour Council do not quickly provide the £120,000 to keep open the three Citizens Advice Bureaux in Northfield, Kingstanding and Tyseley, the CAB in Corporation St (Gazette Buildings), will be the only one left in Birmingham. And this one is only open on three days itself, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.
    Having done very successful stalls in Cotteridge and Northfield, and already having handed in a 427 name petition to the Northfield Ward Committee, Communities Against the Cuts teamed up with Birmingham Against the Cuts to hold a stall close to the Corporation St CAB today, at the Old Square.
    Despite the footfall being down in that area due to the roadworks and diversion of bus routes, over a hundred names were collected in less than two hours. It was once again remarkable how many people not only knew about the CAB, but how many had used their services…

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    Comprehensive report, excellent video – absolutely cracking!

    Birmingham Against The Cuts's avatarBirmingham Against The Cuts

    Around 2,000-3,000 people gathered on the streets on Birmingham last weekend to demonstrate for an alternative economic strategy to austerity, as the 2012 Tory conference started in the ICC.

    Birmingham Against The Cuts joined Birmingham NUT to meet on the High Street to march up to join the TUC, who had moved the start location to Victoria Square. We waited until 11am to pick up anyone who didn’t know about the change, and then marched up the High Street and New Street to Victoria Square, joined on the way by students from the local universities, making this an impromptu education feeder march of around 100 people. This was very lively with chanting and although it was a Sunday morning there were a fair number of people around whose attention we definitely drew.

    At Victoria Square the TUC had formed up but waited for us to arrive, and we joined…

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    askparentsfirst's avatarAsk Parents First

    The following was published as part of the previous post about the parent victory at West Heath Primary, but it deserves its own post, so here it is again with a bit of added detail;

     

    A recent Local Authority Fortnightly Academy Summary Sheet shows that 63 Primary Schools are in the process of converting. With the 19 that have already converted this represents a total of 27% of Primary Schools in Birmingham. The vast majority of these are being forced to convert and will have been acting in total secrecy from parents and the community. Only the DfE and the Local Authority know in advance which schools are being targeted for forced academy conversion, but this information is deemed confidential until the deal has been done. 34 schools in the process of converting are named, but 29 schools are unnamed because they are still negotiating with sponsors and…

    View original post 540 more words