logo
Brainwave 'devastated' after vandals target therapy centre

Brainwave 'devastated' after vandals target therapy centre

BBC News10-03-2025
A national charity based in Somerset has spoken of its devastation after it was targeted by vandals.Brainwave, which supports children with disabilities, shared photographs on social media of its therapy building in Bridgwater doused in paint.The charity said the damage has created a dangerous environment for its service users.Chief executive Keith Sinclair described the incident as "senseless" and said it will have to be cleared up using "scarce" funding.
Mr Sinclair said the vandals accessed the centre's paint store and threw the paint over the building, car park and a vehicle. He said some fluorescent light bulbs were also smashed on the floor, leaving shards of glass behind."To get that up and to make it safe for our people and the people we support has taken a significant amount of time," he said."We've had some lovely feedback from people we support, offering their support in any way they can."
He added: "As a charity it's tricky enough for us as it is, in terms of the financial situation and the increase in National Insurance contribution costs for us... so to then have to put scarce resources into clearing up something that somebody's done, which in my view is senseless, is very difficult for us to understand."The centre will remain open for its users while the clean-up takes place and Mr Sinclair praised his team for their work on the affected area.Avon and Somerset Police said it was aware of the incident, and it would be looking at CCTV footage as part of its investigation.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Kill the single state pension age
Kill the single state pension age

Spectator

time6 hours ago

  • Spectator

Kill the single state pension age

When William Beveridge designed the welfare state in the 1940s, the state pension age was 65 for men and 60 for women. Life expectancy for a man was around 66, and around 71 for a woman. The pension was not designed to fund decades of leisure: it was a modest provision for the last couple of years of life, one that not everyone would receive. Today, life expectancy for a man aged 66 (the current state pension age) is around 85, and a woman aged 66 can expect to live until she is 88. The average person now spends close to a fifth of their life in retirement. What was once a short post-script has become a major chapter – and an increasingly expensive one. This is the backdrop for the latest statutory review of the state pension age (SPA), led this year by Dr Suzy Morrissey. Her terms of reference are technical: consider sustainability, intergenerational fairness, life expectancy, international practice. Behind the dry language sits a political question no one rushes to answer: when should people stop working, and who pays for the years they do not? You know the script here. Britain is ageing. The ratio of workers to pensioners is shrinking. Every review concludes that the SPA must rise. Every opposition grumbles about the cruelty of doing so. Every government, when in office, quietly nudges the age upwards. Nothing fundamental changes. What almost never gets challenged is the model itself: a single age at which everyone, regardless of class, health or occupation, is deemed equally ready for retirement. This is tidy for Whitehall. It is also daft. The Office for National Statistics reports that male life expectancy for a retirement age man in Surrey is 86 years; in Blackpool, it is 81. Healthy life expectancy – the years lived without major illness – shows still sharper divides. Yet we persist in pretending that the 66-year-old accountant in Guildford and the 66-year-old ex-dockworker in Hull should both cross the same finish line. That is unjust, and unsustainable. It loads the cost of longer-lived, healthier retirees onto taxpayers who may not live long enough to see much retirement at all. Here I can almost hear some readers reaching for outrage about contributions. Shouldn't a person's pension entitlement reflect their national insurance contributions? So a Surrey stockbroker who pays more NI than a Sunderland scaffolder has earned the right to draw the state pension for longer? This takes me to the biggest and most persistent misunderstanding in British politics: the state pension isn't really a pension. It's a benefit. And it's funded not from some pot of money patiently built up from each recipient's contributions, but from the taxes of today's workers. National Insurance is just a tax, and one that long ago lost any hypothecated link to the pension system. That means pension policy cannot be treated as a personal contract between citizen and state. It is a collective transfer between generations. Pretending otherwise, with talk of 'I've paid in, I deserve it back', hides the real choices – about fairness between regions, between classes, and between young and old. Other countries are at least edging away from the one-size-fits-all fiction. Denmark and the Netherlands now link their pension ages directly to life expectancy. Countries including Norway and Portugal offer some scope to offer earlier pensions to those who have done physically demanding work. None has yet built a fully 'variable' pension age, but the recognition is spreading: a uniform pension age does not match demographic reality. Britain should be bolder. One approach is to tie entitlement not to age but to years of contributions, recognising that someone who started work at 18 has done their share by 65, while the graduate entering at 25 has not. Another is to give more flexibility to those in arduous jobs: that Sunderland scaffolder is likely to be physically knackered in a way that his stockbroking compatriot is not. More radical still is to abandon the cliff-edge retirement model altogether. Instead of full-time one day and nothing the next, policy should support tapering – part-time, flexible work in the sixties and seventies, subsidised and encouraged so people can scale down, not drop out. This would help individuals, who gain income and purpose. It helps employers, who retain skills and experience. It helps the state, which saves on pensions and collects more tax. Above all, it acknowledges reality: ageing is a spectrum, not a binary switch from 'young' to 'old'. This is politically difficult, to put it mildly. I am recommending electoral hemlock, because it entails higher pension ages for some (who will be angry) and different treatment for some (ditto). No sane politician attempts major change to the state pension. The fury of the Waspi women still haunts ministers. Even tinkering with winter fuel allowances causes uproar. You'd be mad to do it, minister. But it must still be done. The fiscal maths is brutal. By 2075, pensioners will make up more than a quarter of the adult population. The cost of the state pension is projected to rise from around 5 per cent of GDP today to nearly 8 per cent. Absent reform, the money has to come from somewhere: higher taxes on a shrinking workforce, or cuts to other services. Intergenerational politics are already sour. Younger voters see themselves funding entitlements for older cohorts who enjoyed cheaper houses and more generous occupational pensions. A rigid single SPA deepens that resentment. That is the real political danger: not the fury of today's pensioners, but the alienation of tomorrow's workers who simply refuse to pay for the pensions of others. Dr Morrissey's review is framed as technical, but it is inescapably political. She has licence to say what ministers will not: that one pension age for all is outdated, unfair and unaffordable. A braver politics would seize that truth, and act on it. None of this is easy. None of it is popular. But it is necessary. The single state pension age should end.

DWP payment for people with reading issues could be worth £749
DWP payment for people with reading issues could be worth £749

Daily Mirror

time6 days ago

  • Daily Mirror

DWP payment for people with reading issues could be worth £749

If you need help with a wide variety of tasks, you could receive extra financial support People with reading difficulties and other conditions could be eligible for a cash boost of £749 from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Personal Independence Payments (PIP) can offer additional financial support for a wide range of conditions. ‌ Yet it's how these payments are calculated that is more crucial than the conditions themselves. This is because PIP assessments are not based on any one specific condition, but rather on how much that condition impacts you. ‌ When undergoing an assessment for PIP, the level of assistance you require to participate in certain activities will help determine your PIP amount. Citizens Advice suggests that if you need help with any of the following due to a condition, you should consider applying for PIP: ‌ Reading and understanding written information Washing and bathing Communicating with other people Eating and drinking Making decisions about money Moving around Planning a journey or following a route Managing your treatments Managing toilet needs or incontinence Mixing with others Dressing and undressing Preparing and cooking food How is PIP paid? PIP is usually paid every four weeks unless you are terminally ill, in which case it is paid weekly. It will be paid directly into your bank, building society or credit union account. PIP payment rate You will need an assessment to work out the level of financial help you will receive and your rate will be regularly reviewed to make sure you are getting the right support. PIP is made up of two components: ‌ Daily living Mobility Whether you get one or both of these and how much you might get depends on how severely your condition affects you. You will be paid the following amounts per week, depending on your circumstances: ‌ Daily living Standard rate: £73.90 Enhanced rate: £110.40 Mobility Article continues below Standard rate: £29.20 Enhanced rate: £77.05 Making a PIP claim You can make a new claim by contacting the DWP. You will find all the information you need to apply on the website here. Before you call, you will need: your contact details your date of birth your National Insurance number - this is on letters about tax, pensions and benefits your bank or building society account number and sort code your doctor or health worker's name, address and telephone number dates and addresses for any time you've spent abroad, in a care home or hospital

Children's NHS number could be used as ‘identifier' to find those at risk of harm
Children's NHS number could be used as ‘identifier' to find those at risk of harm

Daily Mirror

time08-08-2025

  • Daily Mirror

Children's NHS number could be used as ‘identifier' to find those at risk of harm

NHS numbers will be used in a pilot programme to share information about children between professionals in order to safeguard them under a new government plan The Government has declared it's speeding up its reforms to children's social care, with an additional £18 million being channelled into English councils and the launch of a novel pilot scheme. The scheme will use a child's NHS number to monitor them and their potential risk of harm across various professional sectors. ‌ The trial will explore the feasibility of using a child's NHS number as a "unique identifier" to track their interactions within health, educational, and police environments. This will allow these entities to exchange data and identify issues before they escalate. This NHS number for each child will mirror the function of National Insurance numbers for adults. ‌ ‌ As a result, it will offer a consistent marker to help those in charge of safeguarding and the welfare of children to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the child's circumstances. Thereby identifying at-risk children or those who may benefit from extra support. In contrast to National Insurance numbers, which are typically allocated when people turn 16, NHS numbers are generally given at birth. Moreover, they are currently used solely to exchange information regarding a person's health and dealings with the NHS. The pilot is already underway in Wigan, where the council and NHS England are integrating their systems. The effectiveness of this integration in facilitating the sharing of information about child protection concerns will subsequently be evaluated. ‌ The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has highlighted the numerous advantages of the unique identifier system, which go beyond spotting children at risk. It could aid in smoothing the transition to adult healthcare services and ensure comprehensive records are kept even if a child relocates within England or Wales. But, they've also flagged up some potential drawbacks, such as the impact on children within the child protection system. Additionally, they highlighted the potential exclusion of those without NHS numbers, and the lack of consensus among agencies regarding the age at which a person is considered an adult. Children's Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza commented: "The introduction of a unique ID for every child will help identify problems early on and prevent any child becoming invisible to services, so robust and effective implementation will be essential, using evidence of what does and doesn't work through this first pilot. ‌ "Children in care told me in my Big Ambition survey they want the same things as other children: love, safety and stability in their family life. "It's absolutely right that we prioritise supporting families earlier on when challenges arise, with the goal of keeping them together safely. I welcome this investment in caring for children and families but also in strengthening leadership locally, because my research has shown that decisions about children in care are too often driven by local capacity and resources, instead of what's right for those children's needs." The sweeping reforms will also require all local authorities to provide Family Group Decision Making services, which will involve extended family members in efforts to keep children with their families instead of placing them into care. Additionally, the service will introduce thousands more family help workers to assist families dealing with issues such as substance abuse or mental health problems. These initiatives are central to the proposed Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Children and Families Minister Janet Daby commented: "Time and again we're told how failing to share information and intervene early enough means vulnerable children fall through the cracks. "These deep-rooted problems are symptomatic of a children's social care system that has clearly been stretched to breaking point. We're putting an end to sticking plaster solutions through our Plan for Change by investing even more focus and funding into preventative services and information sharing."

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store