Charity Cash Crisis due to Covid-19

Covid-19 has affected fundraising

A charity cash crisis has affected dementia patients and their carers as hundreds of day care services have shut for good, a newspaper investigation has found. Dwindling funds have seen vital local groups for vulnerable adults slashed by a third since the beginning of last year.

Covid restrictions halted fundraising opportunities for facilities that provide everything from lunch clubs to memory-boosting activities – services both patients and their carers rely on. There are also budget cuts to the local councils who also deliver these services.

‘Family members and sufferers have no respite whatsoever,’ says Hilda Hayo, chief executive and chief admiral nurse at Dementia UK. ‘Many of these vital day care services are run by charities, but they are beginning to run out of money. Fundraising events haven’t been able to go ahead since last February, so there’s been virtually no income.’

Many have been forced to shift their focus to offering advice over the phone or directing people to other local services instead.

Day-care centres were, in fact, never ordered to close at the start of the pandemic, but local councils and organisations in the UK had to comply with strict hygiene rules, with groups of just 15 allowed. On May 17 this year the UK Government ruled that 30 people could take part in Covid-safe day care, with special allowances made for what it termed ‘support groups’.

Despite this, figures compiled by the UK’s leading social care charity, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, show that many have not done. This body measures nationwide day-care capacity – the number of patients than can be accommodated by such facilities. This figure now stands at 52,000, down from 80,000 pre-Covid. One Alzheimer’s Society employee, speaking anonymously, accused the charity of effectively blocking her from reopening her service in the East of England.

They offered ten weekly group sessions before it closed in March last year. In April this year, despite demand from patients, the charity did not try to reopen it.