On Air Now

This is the Coast

6:00pm - 10:00pm

  • 01723 336444

Now Playing

East Riding Director: Care System Must Change

With unprecedented demand and falling funding, senior figures within East Riding Council say things have to change.

"Pushed to breaking point."

That's the verdict of a senior East Riding Council Director.

The authority's Director of Digital, Change and Technology is Andy Parkinson.

He says funding cuts and unprecedented demand means the council's care system must change to keep up:

"We've been in a great place, but we cannot ignore the challenges now that we're facing. Rising demand is just something that every councillor is wrestling with, but for us right now, we are seeing unprecedented rates of looked after children. That's probably the fastest rate that we've ever seen, and if you look at some of our older people that we're trying to look after and support, we're now 42% increase in the number of over 60 fives living alone, in the East Riding, in a 10-year period.

"That just gives you a sense of the scale of what we're trying to deal with. So this has pushed our kind of care model to breaking point the way that we look after adults and children, in particular, in East Riding, has to now got to be re-designed. It has to be re-shaped to respond to that level of demand."

Funding for special educational needs, in the region, is some of the lowest in the country and faces further cuts.

Here's Councillor Phillip Redshaw:

"Families in the East Riding know what it means to struggle for support. They already see services under pressure when we receive some of the lowest SEND funding in England and are then told to accept a cut.

"The message to those families is very stark. It is make do, [it] is not sustainable, it's not fair."

Did you find this article useful?

This is the Coast is committed to providing a daily local news service for the Yorkshire Coast. We are a small locally owned and operated business which employs professional journalists and reporters. We do not receive any public funding or grants and we are entirely funded by our local commercial operations. We enjoy fabulous support from local businesses who work with us on their advertising and marketing campaigns, but the cost of providing high quality, well researched, fact checked local news coverage is significant.

If you appreciate what This is the Coast does, and would like to help support our journalism, please consider supporting us on a monthly basis today.

A small contribution from all our readers would really help support independent journalism for the Yorkshire Coast.

More from Yorkshire Coast News

Comments

Add a comment

Log in to the club or enter your details below.

Follow Us

Get Our Apps

Our Apps are now available for iOS, Android and Smart Speakers.

  • Available on the App Store
  • Available on Google Play
  • Just ask Amazon Alexa
  • Available on Roku

Today's Weather

  • Scarborough

    Sunny intervals

    High: 7°C | Low: 5°C

  • Filey

    Sunny intervals

    High: 7°C | Low: 5°C

  • Whitby

    Light rain

    High: 7°C | Low: 5°C

  • Bridlington

    Sunny intervals

    High: 8°C | Low: 6°C

  • Hornsea

    Sunny intervals

    High: 8°C | Low: 5°C

  • Driffield

    Sunny intervals

    High: 8°C | Low: 5°C

News