´óÏó´«Ã½

A day in Bridgend yesterday where I learned an awful lot, including:

1. In Litchard Primary School, If and when they get their share of the 'extra £61m' made available to schools, over the next three years they'll want to spend it on the staff they need now to deliver the Foundation Phase properly.

2. They were pleased by the prospect of any extra cash but I didn't see the bunting out.

3. What they really want is for the man who used to be on the board of governors and now happens to be First Minister, to make sure more of the money earmarked for schools by the Assembly Government is put in the hands of the headteacher to spend as he and his team see fit.

4. Lauren Rose grazed her knee and Curtis had never heard the name Betsan before.

I asked Carl Sargeant before heading off to Bridgend whether the £61m announced yesteday means the gap of £500 between how much is spent per pupil in Wales and in England is closed, even a bit? He didn't take the opportunity to answer one way or the other.

On to Angel Street, home to Bridgend County Council.

1. Council leader, Mel Nott, was on is way to a meeting to discuss what the cut of 1.4% in Bridgend's budget will mean for frontline services.

2. He talked very clearly about co-operation as a way of making efficiencies and savings and protecting those frontline services.

3. He mentioned adult social services specifically as a difficult area.

4. When Swansea Council hit the headlines last week for considering the outsourcing of their adult social services, they pointed to Bridgend as a council that was doing the same.

To what extent does the 'extra £35m' made available for social service provision help them out? It may solve some problems. It won't solve them all.

Just up the road Les and Dilys Meadows live at home, which is where they want to be.

1. Dilys couldn't live at home if it wasn't for the help she gets from the council's Social Services team three times a day.

2. Les, quite possibly, has the sharpest, wittiest tongue in Bridgend.

3. He couldn't look after Dilys at home if it wasn't for the help and respite he gets from the Crossroads project.

4. Les is afraid that there plans afoot to privatise the sort of care Dilys gets.

5. He really, really doesn't want it to happen because he's quite convinced it would be worse.

Carl Sargeant talked quite a bit yesterday about co-operation between Wales' 22 local authorities and "the need to do things differently".

He talked about these being "difficult, extraordinary times," about pressures and hard decisions to be made by those 22 authorities.

How about taking the bull by the horns and getting rid of the smaller authorities, he was asked? Why not go through a "short and dirty" process of amalgamating councills like Merthyr, Blaenau Gwent, Ynys Mon with their neighbours?

No thanks, seemed to be the response. "It would certainly be dirty but I can tell you now, it wouldn't be short".

"Doing things differently" it is then. Good luck with persuading Les - and every Les and Dilys throughout Wales - that different is better, let alone cheaper.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?