ON TUESDAY, many people spoke at your cabinet meeting about the vast range of cuts included in your latest budget.

Three of them spoke about domestic abuse and the county council funded services that had helped them escape with their children and rebuild their lives.

Do you realise how amazing that is?

Do you realise that the vast majority of domestic abuse survivors will never be safe enough to speak out in public like this?

I was one of them.

I spoke about my fears that without universal services for families to attend, those at risk become invisible.

And Oxfordshire is more aware than most about what happens when vulnerable families and children drop off the radar.

I wonder what the future you have planned for Oxfordshire will be like.

I wonder how the three of us who spoke with such passion and strength would have coped without those essential services.

Then I realised with dread that statistically, we might not have all made it out alive.

If this budget is passed, those vulnerable people who will suffer and possibly die will be on the consciences of those county councillors who voted through a budget full of dangerous cuts to Oxfordshire’s children, elderly, vulnerable and homeless.

You might want to blame central government, but you have a choice.

Don’t let this be in your name, Mr Hudspeth.

JILL HUISH
Save the Children’s Centres campaign group leader