March On!

Well it's been an emotional week that has left me feeling drained. Wednesday night saw the full meeting of Lambeth Council to set its budget for next year, including 132% rise in Community Care Charges, cutting the eligibility criteria from Substantial and Critical to Critical only and cutting £3/4 million off the Voluntary Sector. If you clicked through the link in my last post you will see that we have been campaigning under the banner of Lambeth SOS.
The petition that ran off and online was signed by over 7000 people! And we decided to march from our offices to the Town Hall in time for the meeting. We thought we would be lucky to get 150 people. Over 350 disabled and older people, and their carers turned up and marched with placards and whistles through the centre of Brixton in rush hour. Now that's user involvement! It was awesome. I was a marshal so could take a good over view of the progress of it. At one point I got quite emotional knowing that so many people cared and had turned out to help us show the Council how much.
You can read the rather partisan account of the rest of the evening's happenings here:
South London Press Article
Sadly not one Labour Councillor voted against the proposals, although four did not attend the meeting, which could be seen as a sign of opposition. So the campaign continues, and my job, although not definitely coming to an end at the end of this month hangs in the balance.