A panel meets next week to decide where the axe falls on services provided to vulnerable and elderly people across Oxfordshire.

The Oxfordshire Supporting People Commissioning Body -- a panel comprising of county and district councillors, members of primary care trusts and the probation service -- will put their heads together to decide how to bridge a massive funding shortfall.

Money the commissioning body receives helps about 450 projects and 11,000 people in Oxfordshire, including those living with severe mental and learning difficulties, physical disabilities, the homeless, victims of domestic abuse, the elderly and children.

But the Government has cut the amount of money the county receives to fund these services by £1.5m this year and a further £1m next year.

Worst case scenario estimates put the total potential reduction in funding as up to £13m over six years, reducing the county's 'supporting people' budget from £21.2m in 2004 to £8m in 2011.

One councillor told the Oxford Mail that at least £1.25m of cuts to services -- half the shortfall in Government funding -- would have to be made in the next two years.

Oxfordshire County Council leader Keith Mitchell said he was concerned that victims of cuts would rely on the county's social services department placing further pressure on the taxpayer.

County councillor Don Seale, cabinet member for health and community services, added: "What we are trying not to do is cut things which hit people immediately, for example advice to people with mental health problems. We don't want to leave them abandoned and stranded.

"We are going to depend on the commissioning body to come up with sensible cutbacks in the programme.

"Coming on top of cuts by the Thames Valley Strategic Health Authority, it makes life very difficult and it hurts to have to do it -- there are no soft options."

Since the Government announced it was revising its funding formula -- a complicated calculation determining which authority receives what amount of money -- Oxfordshire's six MPs have lobbied ministers to plead the county's case.

Littlemore-based Oxfordshire Group Homes, a charity working with individuals suffering from severe mental illness, is facing the prospect of a 15 per cent cut to its £800,000-a-year funding.

South Oxfordshire district councillor Dorothy Brown, chairman of the Oxfordshire Supporting People Commissioning Body, declined to talk to the Oxford Mail about the cuts.