Refuge hits out at budget cuts

THE LOCHABER charity which helps women and children suffering domestic abuse says the slashing of its money from Highland Council is forcing it to look at cutting staff costs.

Coming as it does just a fortnight before International Women’s Day, there has been anger after the council agreed to reduce its grant to Lochaber Women’s Aid (LWA) by 10 per cent – more than £11,000.

The cut was just one of a raft of measures approved by the local authority at its budget meeting in Inverness last week, which approved a £15 million package of savings to tackle a black hole in its finances.

The cut for four women’s aid groups across Highland region amounts to £78,494, with the Fort William-based LWA seeing its council grant of £112,377 reduced by £11,238 for the coming financial year.

In its own assessment of the impact of the cuts, Highland Council officials said it would be ‘moderate’, although admitted it would increase pressure on the women’s aid family teams as a result.

However, comments from the council’s Lochaber leader and vice-chairman of its corporate resources committee, Andrew Baxter, that he had been informed the LWA could cope with the budget reduction, prompted an angry backlash from the charity’s service manager, Lorraine Revitt.

In a letter this week to all Lochaber councillors, Ms Revitt said the cut would, in fact, have a significant impact on LWA staffing and its service delivery. ‘We currently have a staff of eight and support around 135 women and children each year,’ she told them.

‘We are the only service in Lochaber providing specialist domestic abuse support and deliver a high quality, personcentred support service for some of the most vulnerable people in our community.

‘Over the past few years we have received standstill funding from Highland Council and the Scottish Government, despite our overheads rising each year.

‘A 10 per cent cut to our funding equates to just under £12,000 and to say “we can cope” with this is not accurate.

‘We have reduced our overheads to a minimum over the past few years and we now have no alternative but to look at staffing costs as our only resort. Over the next few weeks we will be faced with looking at a variety of staff cutting measures to implement this reduction.

‘We have already taken the decision to stop our weekend telephone support service and reduce the number of safe support accommodation available within Lochaber from three properties to two as we cannot continue to sustain running at a planned deficit and drawing on our ever-decreasing reserves.

‘We have therefore no option but to implement a cost-cutting exercise which will mean eight staff taking a direct cut in pay and a reduced amount of time for one-to-one support for vulnerable women and children.

‘While we pride ourselves in delivering a high-quality service, we need to be realistic on what we can now deliver.’

Ms Revitt said that community awareness sessions, sessions in schools and some social groups for women and children may now have to be reduced to prioritise one-to-one support for women and children in crisis.

At the start of the month, Women’s Aid members across Scotland were elated at the passing of the new Domestic Abuse (Scotland) bill by the Scottish Parliament.

‘You can imagine then our frustration when, only two weeks later, our local council takes the step to reduce the funding to frontline services which are at the forefront of supporting the women and children who will benefit from this new law,’ said Ms Revitt, who added that the charity understood the council’s need to make savings.

But she warned: ‘Lochaber Women’s Aid will continue to deliver a domestic abuse service in Lochaber, but we wish to stress we are not “fine” with the reduction of funds and it will impact on the service we can provide.’

Both SNP opposition councillors for Fort William and Ardnamurchan, Blair Allan and Niall McLean, say the cuts to Lochaber Women’s Aid funding will affect some of the most vulnerable members of the local community.

Mr Allan told us: ‘From what the LWA says, this will mean a clear diminishing of the service and is particularly frustrating, coming as it does in the current climate surrounding the abuse of women.

‘It also flies in the face of further ground-breaking legislation from the Scottish Parliament on domestic abuse.’