Chairman Vinny Featured in Community Care Magazine

Vinny is the Chairman of the group and has recently been interviewed for Community Care Magazine. The article is published in the 31st March edition.


Extract from the article:

Vinny Cowling, chairman of Doncaster based mental health user group Voice for Choice, has been dogged by slowness and bureaucracy in his attempts to secure a personal budget from Doncaster Council.  Cowling, who has borderline personality disorder and depression, needed an emergency personal budget recently when he had to replace his bicycle and seek counselling.  However, he could not access an emergency payment, forcing him to use public transport, which he has a fear of, resulting in him going into crisis, at increased cost to the state.

Last year, Doncaster’s personal budget rate stood at 7%.  But it is now up to 28%, just shy of the 30% target that Labour set for April 2011, says director of adults and communities Joan Beck.  She says the council anticipates “more people with metal health needs will be accessing personal budgets in Doncaster in the next few months”.