For those who missed the 'exciting' 3 hours of entertainment at full council on Monday evening... if you have problems with sleeping do come and practice in the public gallery at such times.
The Notice of motion calling for a fair pay to match our neighbouring Towns in paying for social workers ( we are 30% less than Staffs County Council ) was defeated by the Tory Councillors. While I agree that there are other factors such as conditions, promotion prospects, opportunities for training, schools for their children etc are always important it is the pay that will influence the final decision. we have only recruited one senior social worker in the past 3 years which should tell us something. the offer of the golden hellos of £1500 and the promise of a bonus of £1000 if you stay for three years still puts recruits way down on the pay scales. It costs us a fortune extra to employ up to 40 agency staff to fill in and despite I am sure agency workers trying to cover, this is not as good as having permanent staff. Still we tried but lost.
Another one we lost was protesting at the loss of Educational Maintenance Allowance from last December which has removed support from about 4500 families in Walsall. I suspect that the numbers in wards like Blakenall are far higher than the average of 200 or so per ward. This is a kick in the teeth ot those young people from disadvantaged homes when we should be targeting them especially to encourage them into further education. Only one in a 100 goes for further education in comparison to 17 in 100 from other areas. The young people from wards like Blakenall can achieve as well as those from other wards... they do not have the parental support, self esteem and subsequently the ambition is lost. The removal pf EMA is a backwards step in addressing those inequalities.
News that 6 libraries will close as a result of budget cuts but this Sword of Damocles now hangs over the whole of Walsall and the library service The philistines in the cabinet do not realise that the battle to raise the dreadful level of educational achievement in Walsall is not helped by closing these lifelines to better education. I seem to recall in history those who destroyed libraries coming to a sticky end. Maybe this will happen to this lot.
Like many things that are happening under this hasty cuts regime we will live to regret and find it costs us dear.
One good point is that we all agreed that post offices are a vital part of any community. The move to privatised our Royal Mail service should worry us that very few post offices will be able to survive with that important source of income removed.
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