Easter holiday food support for families

Families in Devon who receive benefits-related free school meals for their children will continue to be supported with food costs over the upcoming Easter holidays. Approximately 21,500 children have been sent supermarket vouchers worth £30 to spend during the two-week break to replace the meals they would have had at school during the day. Vouchers are being sent to families this week, so please check you’ve received them and redeem them as soon as possible before they expire. Please get in touch with Devon County Council.s free school meals team if you were expecting to receive a voucher but didn’t. Email freeschoolmeals@devon.gov.uk or call 0345 155 1019. If you didn’t previously qualify for free school meals but your income has recently reduced or stopped, please visit Devon County Council's website or call 0345 155 1019 to check if you are eligible for this support as soon as possible. More information about the free school meals holiday voucher scheme is available on Devon County Council's website- https://www.devon.gov.uk/educationandfamilies/school-information/school-meals/

Teignmouth Letters

Sunday 14th April 2024 - 12 noon It’s time for a re-paint! Coming along and join in….. 🖌️ Equipment will be provided - feel free to bring a picnic/snacks to make it a real community event We willl also be preparing the sign for painting on Sunday 7th April at 12 noon for those who wish to help.

Teignmouth Hospital

Save Teignmouth Hospital Looking at the state of the NHS, the last thing most of us would say is that we have too many hospitals. Devon has an older than average population and a lower than average number of Hospital beds. Our Ambulance Service has to deal with longer distances, country lanes and fewer hospitals to take people to. In the last year or so, herculean efforts have been made to reduce ambulance queues, but it is still happening. The BBC reported on Jan 5th 2024 that NHS data showed that in December “Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust had the fourth-worst ambulance handover delays in England, with 57% of patients waiting more than 30 minutes.” Meanwhile in Teignmouth the pre-covid plan of closing Teignmouth Hospital is still on the cards. No-one suggests that Teignmouth doesn’t need a new GP surgery, but that shouldn’t mean that we close the Town’s Hospital. Cllr David Cox and I and many others have been working for years to get this decision reviewed. At Devon County Council in under two weeks (24th Jan) we have the last chance to save Teignmouth Hospital. A meeting of the Health and Adults Social Care Scrutiny Committee will consider the evidence and consider whether to refer the closure to the Secretary of State. It all sounds very obscure, but this is the last opportunity to save the Hospital from closure. All across Devon we have lost too many of our Cottage Hospitals. Cottage Hospitals fill a need to have a local place close to patient’s homes, where there are services and often convalescent beds that allow people to transition home. Now I think most agree that being at home is the best place to recover, but that isn’t always possible for everyone. Teignmouth Hospital was the first purpose-built NHS hospital and has served the people of Teignmouth and surrounds for a good number of years. Without it, locals will need to go further afield, to the Urgent Treatment Centre in Newton Abbot, or to the Dawlish Minor Injuries Unit – except that the MIU is still shut, and the UTC is too often full to capacity and closed for new patients. And so more people and ambulances will be waiting in Accident and Emergency in Torbay or Exeter…

Reward Offered

Teignmouth Lib Dem Town Councillors have offered a £200 reward for information about the people who vandalised the Alexandra Terrace community garden. The garden has been a source of pride among the Guerrilla Gardeners volunteers who have been looking after it. They were upset to find that vandals had caused damage, over the festive holiday. Cllr Dan Comer, who started the garden project and was elected a town councillor last October, said: “Residents has been left shocked and upset after vandals trashed the community garden created by volunteers. “As a group of councillors we are offering a reward, if the culprits are caught, we would like to see a restorative justice solution. We don’t want harsh punishment, however we should ignore the vandalism.” Cllr Penny Lloyd said: "We are getting volunteers to make Teignmouth look good, we don't need this vandalism."

Potholes

Nearly £1.8 million was paid nationally to motorists in compensation for pothole damage last year and the number of pothole claims is rising. Here in Devon, there were 1,505 potholes waiting for repair on 1st December, and over 1,200 damage claims submitted to County Hall with a combined value in excess of £1.1 million. For a claim against Devon County Council to be successful it would have to show that loss or damage was caused as a result of the council's negligence

Cost Of Living Support - Maximise your benefit income

Research from the Department of Work and Pensions confirms that some 63 per cent of eligible people over state pension age and 52 per cent of working age people do not claim all their means-tested benefit entitlement. The result of this, revealed by research in April 2023, is that the staggering sum of almost £19 billion is left unclaimed in means-tested benefits every year. • Check what benefits you are entitled to on the gov.uk website: gov.uk/check-benefits-financial-support • Use the Turn2Us benefits calculator to find out what benefits you could get: www.turn2us.org.uk • Citizens Advice Teignbridge: https://citizensadviceteignbridge.org.uk • Gov.uk Cost of living support factsheet: https://www.gov.uk/.../government-support-for-the-cost-of... • Gov.uk Help for Households campaign website: costoflivingsupport.campaign.gov.uk You may be able to get other kinds of support, including: • Help from the Household Support Fund from Teignbrdge District Council: http://www.teignbridge.gov.uk/.../household-support-fund/ • You may get a reduction in council tax from Teignbridge DistrictCouncil if you are on a low income. Phone 01626 361101 • Pension Credit calculator: gov.uk/pension-credit-calculator • Understanding Universal Credit: understandinguniversalcredit.gov.uk Foodbanks HITS https://hitsfoodbank.org 01626 906371 THAT www.thatfoodbank.com 01626 437310 NHS Healthy Start If you’re more than ten weeks pregnant or have a child under 4 years old, you may entitled to get help to buy healthy food and milk. www.healthystart.nhs.uk Energy Saving Devon Energy Saving Devon can help you make your home more energy efficient to run. They can see if you are eligible for a grant. www.energysavingdevon.org.uk

Stinging Rebuke by Ombudsman on Devon County Council

The Local Government Ombudsman investigating complaints against Devon County Council has issued a stinging rebuke to the authority for its late responses and failing to act and ordered thousands of pounds in compensation to be paid. In one case, the Ombudsman even had to threaten to issue a 'witness summons' to secure a response from County Hall after the council stalled for five months on supplying information. Since April this year, the Ombudsman, an independent Government body which investigates serious complaints against councils, has found against the county council in 26 cases and ordered compensation payments running into thousands of pounds are paid to residents. The majority of the complaints upheld against Devon County Council relate to failures in children's services and specifically children with special educations needs. As David Cox has reported before - Devon County Council has been failing to manage Children's Services for the past 13 years with another Government inspector, Ofsted, ordering improvements and changes to ensure children in Devon are kept safe. And it's not just this year the Ombudsman has criticised the county council. In his letter to the chief executive of Devon County Council, the Ombudsman said: "In more than a fifth of cases, the council was late providing evidence of compliance with recommendations it had agreed to. Disappointingly, the same concern was raised in last year's letter. "In one case, the recommended review of adult safeguarding procedures took over seven months longer to complete that originally agreed." Uncovering the stinging criticisms and failures, it begs the question whether the council is taking the Ombudsman reports and letters seriously. It seems to me they have been swept under the carpet at County Hall. The Conserative executive running the council are understandably embarrassed by their complete failure to make improvements and then to even undertake the actions the council promised the Ombudsman would take place. This is yet another shameful example of the complete chaos at Conservative-run County Hall. It is a further reason why, the Government should step in and take over running Children's Services. Clearly, the council is lost in the wilderness and continues to fail, continues to let down vulnerable children and is cheating children with special needs of the support they need." Eight years ago, the council promised to share Ombudsman decisions with councillors and the authority's Standards Committee so findings of failure could be scrutinised locally and improvements ensured. However, says Cllr Connett (who proposed the policy), that decision appears not to have been put into action and critical reports from the Ombudsman have not been shared with councillors. Cases such as 'Miss Y' who the Ombudsman ordered the county council to pay £5,260 after it had 'let down' their child. In another case, 'Miss X' received £2,550 due to extensive delays which caused 'distress and uncertainty over a five month period' Another complaint was upheld by the Ombudsman who ordered a payment of £4,950 in that case and further payments of £1,700 and £2,550 in two other separate cases. A number of the complaints relate to the snail's pace the council takes in sorting out Educational Health and Care Plans for children with special needs. By law, these should all be done and dusted in 20 weeks, the Devon County Council is taking about a year to complete many of these plans. The Ombudsman said in one case: “We expect councils to follow statutory timescales set out in law and the Code. We are likely to find fault where there are significant breaches of those timescales." Devon County Council said last month (November 6th) in a news release that "Since August 2023, no child in Devon has been waiting more than a year for their EHC plan to be issued. The national average for meeting the 20-week timeliness target is around 50 per cent, but we are below this."