CYP Now - Analysis: Budgets - Critics spot gaps in funding plans

Spending proposals have been announced by the Welsh and Scottish governments, with a raft of pledges to improve services for children and young people. But, as Joe Lepper reports, some critics predict long-standing policies could fall by the wayside.

WALES

In announcing the Welsh Assembly Government's draft budget for the next three years, finance and public service delivery minister Andrew Davies pledged to create a "bonfire of inefficiency" to deliver real improvements for the people of Wales.

But many in the children's and youth sector fear plans to cut child poverty and money for children with disabilities may also get engulfed in the flames.

Former deputy social justice minister Huw Lewis is concerned that a key plank of his proposals to combat child poverty, called the Dignity programme, will never be funded.

Although £440,000 has been pledged to fight poverty for 2008/09 and a further £5.8m for the following two years, there is no mention of the programme, which targets Wales's most deprived families and tackles the reasons for poverty at an individual, family and community level.

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