Stark choice for health teams: Hip operations or cash for voluntary services?

“It makes me feel like I’m giving something back, rather than being an outcast. I’d lost my wife who died from cancer and my job on the same day.

“I was her carer for 18 months until she died and I had a breakdown.

“Since I’ve come to Rhubarb Farm I can hold my head up high.

“Having worked all my life no-one is prepared to give me a chance at 55 due to my depression and being illiterate.

“I’ve reduced my medication for depression since coming to the farm. Zara Jones

“I realised after I lost my wife that I probably suffered from depression all my life and her death brought it to a head.

“The farm has helped me by being part of a family again and feeling stronger and more confident.”

Citizens Advice South Derbyshire and City had also received £29,266 from the Derbyshire Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).

This will now be cut, along with funding for dozens of other volunteer-run organisations as health chiefs seek to balance multi-million pound budget woes.

The half-a-million funding reduction, although a fraction of the £51 million in savings the CCGs must make, within a budget of £1.5 billion, has proved to be the centre of debate among the public and national and local politicians.

The organisations, before this decision, had been spending £8.5 million a year on voluntary groups.

Its new plan, now approved, is to make a further £100,000 cut to infrastructure services in 2019, to cease £299,114 worth of discretionary grant funding by March, but will continue the remaining £262,255 discretionary grant funding and to cease funding for vSPA, which helps to signpost patients to