COUNCIL care staff are beginning to “crack” under pressure as cash-strapped services buckle under the growing strain.

The comments came as it emerged that the county council faces an uphill struggle to achieve a balanced budget by the end of the year, with demand for key care services exceeding the budget available.

The top tier authority has reported a projected overspend of £12.7m in the care service areas after the first financial quarter, with efforts now underway to close the gap.

Setting out the scale of the problem, Anne Burns, the cabinet member responsible for children’s services, said the budget was “under tremendous pressure” because families and communities were also under pressure.

She said: “We can’t say to children that come into the system ‘You can’t come because we haven’t got any money’.

“We have taken a lot of money out of budgets from all over the county.

“We have also taken money out of children’s services budget and it is showing now because our staff are under tremendous pressure.

“We used to have three or four members of staff that we could talk to, but they are not there anymore.

“And our staff are finding out that they’re on their own with a lot of pressure on the shoulders of the staff that we have left – and I think that they’re beginning to crack.”

Members of the cabinet discussed the council’s finances at a meeting in Carlisle.

Council leader Stewart Young stressed that the council was only three months into the financial year and that “things do change”.

The Carlisle councillor said that that “every effort” was being made to achieve a balanced budget at the year’s end, though this would be “challenging”.

He said: “Like all other councils which provide care services we continue to see pressures in demand related to children looked after, the provision of care packages for young adults with complex needs, and pressures on home to school transport budgets, particularly for those children with special needs.

“But we are not simply accepting the projected overspend, which in the service areas comes to £12.7m after the first quarter.

“We are not accepting that that’s what the outcome will be because, unless these are addressed, they will create additional pressures for the following year.

“While we me be able to offset some of those pressures with savings elsewhere those savings are, by and large, one-off savings.”

This is the ninth full budget year of significant reduction in Government funding with much uncertainty over future funding.

The cabinet heard that the focus must be on delivering the £22.7m savings already agreed for this year’s budget.

Mr Young said the forecast for hitting the targets after the first quarter was “strong”.

He added: “I think we all accept that, after nine years of savings and reductions, it does get harder to deliver them.”

Since 2011/12, the council has had to make £272m worth of

savings.

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