Women’s Resource and Development Agency (WRDA) published the report ‘Women at the Cutting Edge’ on the impact of spending cuts on women’s community and voluntary organisations in Northern Ireland in November 2016.
The report spoke to the women’s community and voluntary sector and found:
- 90% reported an increase in demand for services in the last year. This was mainly due to increased financial need or poverty.
- 100% reported cuts to funding, and 2/3 lost 25% or more.
- 40% had to make redundancies or reduce staff hours.
- 30% had closed services
- 10% felt very confident that their organisation would still be here in 3 years’ time.
It includes 3 case studies of experiences in the sector.
The report makes the following recommendations:
- There should be a clear strategy to deliver on the public political commitments made to tackle the inequalities between women and men.
- Public funders should provide technical support on commissioning and
service level agreements to women’s organisations as a strategic part of
ensuring their sustainability. - There should be a full equality impact assessment of all funding cuts,
across all government departments, led by the Department of Finance.
