Economic Reality?

A charity has been forced to axe a popular social club for young disabled adults due to a huge drop in donations.

Over the past 12 months the Hamelin Trust in Billericay, has been hit by a dramatic 50 per cent drop in cash coming in.

This has now led to the charity having to scrap its weekly social club for teens and young adults who have physical and mental disabilities.

Which hasn’t been met with understanding of the situation by everyone:

One father of a group member, who did not want to be named complained families had been given the news of the closure “out of the blue” and called for the charity to re-think its decision.

And…where does he think the money’s going to come from?

This doesn’t look like a fakecharity to me, it seems it gets most of its funding from the Lottery, local businesses, and public donations. With money tight, that’s going to have to stretch further than ever.

However, Rachael Rafferty, director of operations at the charity, in Stock Road, said: “The decision to close this group was not under any circumstances taken lightly.

“But there were many factors to this decision.

“The group has been operating as a loss for years and we’ve been subsiding it with about £5,000 a year.”

And now it can stretch no further. Perhaps, rather than berate the charity for doing the sensible thing, the parents and relatives could maybe pull together, do some fundraising, organise their own social activities, rather than rely of the charity doing it for them?

Because the devil’s in the detail:

The social group started off 12 years ago with ten members who met within the safety of the charity’s Hamelin House building.

Now it has expanded and get-togethers are always held in public – bringing health and safety concerns into the frame.

Rachael added: “A lot of the service users are vulnerable and they have a range of disabilities.

“We did a review of the group and established we really did need at least two paid-for trained staff to be at each session.

“We just cannot afford to train and employ another staff member and we can’t allow the group to be run by untrained volunteers.

“We have a duty to think about the safety of the public or our employees and our members.”

So it’s the usual story; excessive overheads and regulation – that can be absorbed by large multinational companies or government agencies – are killing the smaller organisations.

But as Longrider points out, it’s not just the H&S legislation that’s to blame:

“Health and safety is everybody’s responsibility. The next step is for the civil courts to start rejecting spurious claims.”

Indeed. But until we get some judiciary with a common-sense approach, we're doomed...