Bristol City Council and the NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group has published the latest Joint Strategic Needs (JSNA) report, which provides detailed data on people’s health in the city.

This year’s budget has been over-shadowed by Brexit, with NCVO having described it as being one that will tide us over until we leave the EU.

While the government has hailed it as being the ‘end to austerity’, the only significant areas of spending have been on road improvements and the health service and many national VCSE organisations have expressed disappointment at the number of missed opportunities in the budget.

It’s crunch time for Brexit; this month Theresa May announced that the government’s deal was 95 percent complete.

Brexit has proven notoriously difficult to predict – and not just in terms of the referendum outcome. The direction that the political processes could take is also subject to a number of factors, each of which could see it take a drastically different turn.

The Government has launched its new Loneliness Strategy in a bid to tackle what it calls “one of the greatest public health challenges of our time”.

Under the strategy, GPs in England will be able to refer patients experiencing loneliness to community activities and voluntary services by 2023.

Voscur has contributed to a recent call for evidence on the future of social care from the House of Lords. You can read our response below. To find out more about the call for evidence, visit: www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/lords-select/economic-affairs-committee/news-parliament-2017/social-care-call-for-evidence

The Charity Commission has updated its guidance on how workers or volunteers can report wrongdoing at a charity.

The updates mainly focus on broadening the definition of safeguarding and what should be reported.

The Charity Commission has released a new Statement of Strategic Intent, which sets out its core purpose and priorities for the five years to 2023.

It says that the new purpose will “…ensure charity can thrive and inspire trust so that people can improve lives and strengthen society”.

The new measurement looks beyond income, accounting for a range of essential costs that reduce people’s spending power such as rent, mortgage payments, childcare and disability costs.

These are measured against the positive impact of people’s liquid assets on alleviating immediate poverty. These include savings and – where relevant – stocks and shares.

Bristol City Council has announced its next steps for reversing the £5 million in savings from its Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) budget for 2018–19.

The reversal follows a High Court challenge brought by two families in which the judge ruled that the council should have consulted on the decision before it was made and that it was therefore unlawful.

The next steps are as follows: