A charity which has provided care for vulnerable people in Wales for 40 years has closed because of a social care funding crisis.<\/p>\n
Cymryd Rhan (Taking Part) had been using its reserves to prop up its service \u2013 but those reserves have now run dry and the charity ceased operating yesterday (Monday, March 31).<\/p>\n
The charity supported vulnerable people to stay\u00a0in their own homes, easing pressure on the beleaguered NHS.<\/p>\n
The Llanidloes-based charity provided support\u00a0for\u00a0about 2,000 people in various parts of Wales including Flintshire, Wrexham, Ceredigion, Merthyr and Powys.<\/p>\n
But over recent years the organisation says it\u2019s been forced to hand back its care contracts to councils because it wasn\u2019t being paid enough to provide the standard of support required.<\/p>\n
And now the charity is closing because of the funding headache \u2013 with bosses saying: \u201cenough is enough\u201d.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Nick Evans\u00a0said jobs would be lost and the care of hundreds of vulnerable people the charity had on its books would be transferred to alternative groups.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe\u2019ve been in Wales for 40 years and the charity was originally set up by a group of parents whose sons and daughters had finished their special education and were struggling to find opportunities beyond their education.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last year we had about 300 individuals that we have supported.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have massively reduced, but we were running at around a couple of thousand people at the height of our work.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur decision to stop is because we can no longer live with the fact that people\u2019s choices and the\u00a0controls they have around their lives are being interfered with because of the attitude by which funders and commissioners are going about their daily business.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are being placed in a position to live with underfunding but also to meet the same expected requirements under the regulations of quality and monitoring.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo\u00a0Cymryd Rhan has decided enough is enough because we can no longer guarantee our ability to do the right thing for people.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, the decision and the recommendation I made to our board of trustees is that we should stop, it\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Evans, who has led the organisation\u00a0for 10 years, said the charity had been working to find alternative groups which can support the 300 people it had on its books.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe have found alternative options for a lot of those people and we have been strengthening our volunteers as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cOthers are trying to find alternatives as well, so there\u2019s a bit of a mixed bag there.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said jobs would be lost\u00a0as the charity folds.<\/p>\n
Mr Evans said: \u201cIn the last two years we had about 146 staff, but we had a wave of handing back those contracts and a lot of the staff transferred to the new providers.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, we\u2019re down to about 25 staff. Out of that, 20 are transferring to another provider and there will be five posts made redundant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Evans said the funding problems came to the fore a few years ago when the charity had to hand its contracts back to Wrexham Council or risk going bust.<\/p>\n
The charity said at that time the fees paid by the council were so low that it faced an annual loss of more than \u00a3100,000 if the contracts carried on.<\/p>\n
Mr Evans said: \u201cWe have been for about a year working closely with a number of commissioners, but in reality this started for us back in 2023 over the fiasco with the Wrexham contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe then decided that we were going to continue to trade and adjust things where we would chase more grants.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we tried again to adjust our business model based on what people were needing in their communities \u2013 but it is just too unpredictable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started handing back and giving notice on contracts towards the end of last year with an explanation as to why we were doing that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have\u00a0basically been transferring everything back and as from Monday we stop trading.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the closure of the charity is another worrying development in the Welsh social care sector.<\/p>\n
Members of the\u00a0Care Forum Wales campaign group have been warning the impact of National Insurance and wage increases as well as how much councils were prepared to pay for care will affect the sustainability of many organisations and care homes within the sector.<\/p>\n
Mr Evans said the social care sector was facing huge financial challenges.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThis decision that we have taken isn\u2019t just because we have spat our dummies out and thrown our toys out the pram because we want more money.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s far deeper than that. We\u2019ve spent the last few years really engaging with the local authorities in bringing about the changes that people keep talking about of needing a reform in social care.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we have changed our own organisation and delivery methods to meet those challenges and share that learning with the local authorities, but they themselves continue to behave in the same way. \u201c<\/p>\n
The charity\u2019s chair of trustees Freda Lacey\u00a0said the way contracts were structured made it difficult for the organisation to know what it would be paid for delivering its service in the long term \u2013 meaning there was constant financial uncertainty.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cIn terms of business modelling we\u2019ve always chased the long-term contracts with the councils, we\u2019ve always looked at their seven-year contracts with a three-year extension so we have a business model with stability.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem with the annual uplift fee is those contracts are year-on-year, you can\u2019t control, influence or know what those uplifts will look like into the next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery year when you come into January you start asking the question about the uplifts.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see\u00a0there\u2019s an increase in staff salaries coming in terms of Real Living Wage increases, operational delivery costs are increasing as well, but you are at the hands of the local authority to decide what they are prepared to give you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mario Kreft MBE, the chair of Care Forum Wales, said: \u201cThe news that Cymryd Rhan is being forced to call it a day is tragic but sadly all too predictable given the chronic underfunding of the social care sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt defies logic that a local authority expects a charity, or indeed any care provider, to operate at a loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are severe legal and financial implications for any trustees who accepted such operating conditions and we completely understand why Cymryd Rhan felt they had no choice but to bow out of their contracts. It is completely unsustainable to have to subsidise social care services commissioned by a council.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegrettably, Cymryd Rhan\u2019s situation is not\u00a0an isolated case. We have long warned of an unjust postcode lottery of fees with local authorities and health boards, with an ever widening North-South divide which has seen local authorities in North Wales paying irresponsibly low fees.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the meantime, care homes, nursing homes and care providers across Wales are closing or withdrawing from contracts because they simply cannot afford to continue at the current levels of funding.\u201d<\/p>\n