This consultation is now closed. Thank you to everyone who took part. We will publish the findings, and our final budget, on our website in due course: Newcastle City Council plan and budget. If you have questions about this you can contact us at letstalk@newcastle.gov.uk (or FREEPOST Letstalk).
What we would like you to do
Over the next year, our priority is to deliver a balanced budget that protects residents and businesses as much as possible from the impact of the recession. Like all councils, we face some difficult decisions. Rising energy and food prices are taking their toll on local authorities in the same way they do on household budgets, and next year the council we need to save £23.2m. This short survey is to help us find out what you think about our proposal for children's social care, 'Keeping Families Safely Together', for 2023-24.
Here's a summary of what we propose:
Here's a summary of what we propose:
"We are transforming how we work with children and families to safely reduce demand for services and keep families safely together. We started this work in 2019 and want to keep going with it. It involves building relationships with children and families and not ‘doing things to’ them.
We have developed targeted services aimed at reducing demand for care, such as the Family Group Conferencing service, and our Family Valued programme. They work with children and young people to reduce risk and prevent entry to care, and with families, intervening earlier to strength family relationships or to reunify families where a young person has already entered care.
We want to keep this up, and get even better at it. As a result of working differently to keep families safely together, we intend to spend £1.660 million less in 2023-2024."
We are consulting on all our proposals between 22 November 2022 and 11 January 2023. Have your say by completing the short survey: Your Views, or by emailing us at: letstalk@newcastle.gov.uk. We have also produced a PDF copy of our questions, which can be found at the bottom of the page and can be printed off, completed, and returned to us at: FREEPOST Let’s Talk if this is easier for you or someone you know.
Here is the Integrated Impact Assessment (IIA) for this proposal, a summary of what we propose to do, and the impact we expect it will have: "Children's Services - Keeping families safely together"
Please do give us your views! If you would like to find out more about the budget as a whole, you can find the consultation for this here: Delivering For Our Communities - Our Budget 2023
People's Budget - our budget simulator
People's Budget - our budget simulator
The People's Budget is our online budget simulator, where residents can try out setting their own spending priorities for the city, looking at how we might make savings, generate income, and what to do about whether or not to raise Council Tax and the Adult Social Care Precept. To try it for yourself, click here: People's Budget 2023-2024
What happens next
After the consultation closes, in February 2023 Cabinet will be asked to recommend the post-consultation budget to City Council. City Council will debate and vote on the budget at their meeting in March 2023. We will publish the final budget proposals, including a report on the consultation findings, on our website: Newcastle City Council. Thank you for giving us your views.
