Minister promises more funding for disabled young
Alison Bennett
Monday, December 10, 2007
An extra 90m will be ploughed into funding short breaks for disabled young people, children's minister, Ed Balls, has announced.
Speaking at an End Child Poverty conference, Balls revealed that the three-year commitment will go towards funding short breaks.
An increased grant of £8.4m for the Family Fund, to allow grants to be made to disabled young people aged 16 and 17.
The money builds on the £340m already announced in the Aiming High for Disabled Children Review.
Balls also reinforced the government’s commitment to ending child poverty, stating that it was just as strong as when Tony Blair made the pledge in 1999.
“It’s a big challenge to meet our target to halve child poverty by 2010 but we want to get clear, we don’t abandon targets when the going gets tough,” he said.
“We redouble our efforts and have to try everything harder over the next decade to meet our targets.”
But Kate Green, chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said that the goal of eradicating child poverty by 2020 seemed far away. “If the 2010 targets isn’t met, no one will take the 2020 target seriously,” she said.
