CAMPAIGNERS have vowed to make sure children and homeless people in Oxfordshire are still provided for despite county council warnings over further cuts.

The director of The Porch Steppin’ Stone Centre said cuts to homeless service support funding would mean his East Oxford homeless charity would need to secure more donations from people and businesses to fill the gap.

The county council has already planned to slash its housing related support from £3.85m to £2.34m by 2016/17.

The Porch director Jon Fitzpatrick said: “We are going to be expected to do a lot more with a lot less resources.

“Looking forward in the next 12 months we are going to look at raising more money.

“We are expecting the worst.

“The cuts will keep going in the next three years or so. We will look for secure funding over that period.”

Parents behind the Save Oxfordshire’s Children’s Centres campaign, which protested over plans to close 37 of the county’s 44 children’s centres in 2013, said they might revive the pressure group.

The county council withdrew those plans after 15,000 people and most of Oxfordshire’s MPs backed a petition against them.

Campaign leader Emma Taylor, a mum-of-two from Henley, said: “We are extremely concerned and keeping a close eye on the issue at the moment. We are considering reviving the campaign.

“Children and families are of the utmost importance to society and we need to support them as a matter of urgency.

“Bringing up children well and creating strong families is good for society in the long-term and it is short-sighted to cut that service.

“They are services that vulnerable people need. Others who can afford them will just buy these services, but those who can’t will be back where they were before the centres were introduced.

“It is wrong that they aren’t considered essential services, yet there are people high up in the council on quite high salaries.”