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Enabling Information: A report on improving access and raising standards in information services for disabled people and their carers in Scotland.
The development of effective information and advice provision depends on adequate and reliable funding.
National information providers at UK level, and in Scotland, rely on grants made by central government. The trend in this funding involves a move away from funding on the basis of the core costs of the organisation to one which focuses on particular projects. This trend will inject more uncertainty into the present situation.
The final report by the project team on the NDIP project makes the point that compared with other areas, eg information about housing rights, the funding of organisations providing disability information is relatively generous. There is also quite a high level of funding of generalist advice services which can already meet many of the information needs of disabled people. For example, the Citizens Advice Bureau information system costs 1.5 million to produce annually.
One of the features of the funding of national organisations in Scotland is a wide variation in the level of funding between different organisations. Appendix 9 contains a list of grants made by the Scottish Office in the year 1993-94. The Working Group has felt constrained in the extent to which it can comment on these figures. Most of the organisations listed will be involved in active fund raising to supplement their grants, and they vary considerably in the level of their capital reserves. Furthermore it is not possible to specify what proportion of an organisation's funding is devoted to information services. The level of funding also bears some relation to the range of services provided by the organisation.
It can be seen from Appendix 9 that the funding of organisations which provide an information service as part of their remit ranges from 319,028 to Disability Scotland to 10,000 to the Disablement Income Group Scotland and 12,489 to DIAL Scotland.
The Working Group considers that the wide variation in funding at national level may be partly the result of the historical development of these organisations and that longer established organisations are often in a better position to receive funding