LEADER’S SPOTLIGHT

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Passing on the baton

The growth of The Care Workers Charity from a small organisation giving crisis cash handouts to social care’s leading charity is one of the great success stories to emerge from recent years of unprecedented turbulence in the industry.

Ben Allen, the man who spearheaded that transformation and in the process raised almost £7 million and supported more than 7,000 care workers, is now stepping down after six years at the helm.

In an exclusive interview with Caring Times, Allen, the chair of trustees, and his chief executive Karolina Gerlich, share how they rescued CWC from near closure and created a major charity operating across many platforms.

The charity is now almost unrecognisable from the one Allen took over six years ago. While able to support those in greatest need with crisis grants, the CWC had neither the funds nor the processes in place to provide grants to all who needed help, many of whom were battling a complex array of challenges.

CWC now provides not just immediate funds but welfare support, training and advice both to care workers and those in the industry responsible for ensuring that care workers are in the best position to carry out their role.

“I took over a charity with no staff at all and an existing group of trustees,” Allen commented.

“CWC now has a 10-strong team led by Karolina who has a vision to take it forward. Although we have provided direct support to thousands of people, we will have provided indirect support to tens of thousands.

“CWC has an amazing reputation now and is known for doing great things. It is the sector’s charity. It was always the sector’s charity, but maybe before they didn’t know it existed or there was a little bit of nervousness in association with it. Now it has been proven to deliver what it says on the tin and do that extremely well.”

The figures speak for themselves. CWC raised £3.5 million in 2020 and a further £1.4 million in 2021.

When Allen took over as chair of trustees in 2016 the charity had been ticking along, raising less than £30,000 a year.

“I think the trustees set it up in a well-intentioned way but there weren’t any employees and there wasn’t really a strategy for taking the charity from raising £20 to 30k to anything more than that,” Allen explained. “There was quite a lot of demand from care workers applying but there were just not the funds to provide them with grants.”

With CWC having got to the point where its very existence had become a matter for discussion, Allen volunteered to try to revive its fortunes.

A board restructuring quickly followed with Vic Rayner, chair of the National Care Forum, and Martin Jones, chief executive of Home Instead, among the big hitters brought in to help raise the charity’s profile.

Allen then brought in Alex Ramamurthy as chief executive, and Rebecca Woolley and Anna Caseby to complete the new core leadership team.

“Alex and I were out doing the sales side going from event to event for proper ‘hard selling fundraising’ and Anna and Rebecca were trying to think of ways to deploy that money to care workers in crisis,” Allen told us.

Caseby soon came up with the charity’s successful grant giving formula with Woolley taking the lead on marketing and support. The new leadership team quickly made an impact taking turnover to over half a million pounds in just over their first year.

In 2018 Allen brought in a new management team, led by chief executive, Richard Muncaster, to professionalise the charity when Ramamurthy, Caseby and Woolley moved on to other roles. A key breakthrough was the launch by Muncaster, with the help of Caseby, of a landmark investigation into the care industry.

The report entitled ‘The beating heart of care: supporting care workers better’ concluded there was a

The figures speak for themselves. CWC raised £3.5

million in 2020 and a further

£1.4 million in 2021.

Ben Allen

desperate need in the industry for more preventative services, identifying the types of interventions the sector needed in order to empower care workers so they could overcome challenges they face. It highlighted that mental wellbeing, financial wellbeing, outside-of-work caring responsibilities, and not being effectively supported by managers were the main concerns of care workers.

Allen is justifiably proud of the report and the way it shaped the charity’s approach to the support it provides. “That was a really good piece of work and something that we should be repeating especially post Covid because the situation has changed somewhat,” he observed.

“Richard laid the foundations for Karolina who then came in and did a really super job of bringing new team members in and further professionalising the charity,” Allen added.

Gerlich has built up CWC into a highly effective 10-strong team working across policy, events and marketing.

“I started just as the first lockdown began in March 2020,” Gerlich recalled.

“Previously, I had been a care worker for many years, mainly in home care, and I was a voluntary chief executive of the National Association of Care and Support Workers.”

Funds were boosted by around £400,000 in donations from the public as media appearances by Gerlich significantly raised CWC’s profile during Covid-19.

“We have not really seen that since and at the time the majority of donations were around £5,” Gerlich said. “That was from people who said: ‘I have experienced or am experiencing financial hardship myself and know what it’s like’. That demographic at the moment just does not have the money to spare. We are very aware that the people who are most likely to give to us from the general public are not able to do so.”

Significant donations also came from the sector including £30,000 from Hallmark Care Homes’ chair and founder Avnish Goyal and £100,000 from HC-One.

The structures Allen and his newly appointed team put in place ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic and the £5 million raised over two years – a hundredfold increase on the figures inherited – enabled the charity to provide a whole raft of support to thousands of care workers who had been plunged into a national crisis.

Allen recalled: “We were going into Covid, so we had to get the staffing and organisation right and figure out how we were going to fundraise and support care workers when we knew we were facing a major crisis.”

With care organisations facing considerable financial stress due to the pandemic, Gerlich successfully pivoted the charity towards major funders by targeting national trusts and foundations.

“We have supported over 5,000 care workers with the Covid grant so far with direct financial support,” Gerlich noted. “Our original goal was £100,000 and we reached that within a week. So Ben said what’s the next goal? So we went for £1 million which I think we reached within two months. Then it was just up and up.”

With the pandemic having eased, Gerlich led the expansion of the CWC into mental health support for care workers through signposting and the provision of grants for mental health training and counselling.

“Over half of people who leave the care sector do so because of mental health exhaustion and less than 20% of care homes are actually doing something about this,” Allen noted.

Gerlich added: “We wanted to make sure that if care workers wanted mental health support they could access it.”

Over 80 people have so far participated in the programme with training provided for over 50 mental health first aiders.

“It’s a slow burner but whoever accesses it they are really happy with the outcomes and they say it really helps them,” Gerlich added.

Major fundraising events such as the Care Sector Fundraising Ball, which is led by Goyal, have further boosted the charity’s profile and coffers bringing in a record £400,000 at this year’s event. >

> Further funds are raised through popular annual events such as the Three Peaks Challenge and Royal Parks Marathon.

Gerlich said many more events were planned for next year in order to give people the opportunity to engage in the different ways they enjoy to provide support.

Looking ahead, Allen said the very need for the CWC highlighted the fundamental issues of pay, recognition and support that are sadly lacking in the social care workforce.

“That’s one of the things we need to grapple with as a sector,” Allen noted.

“I really want people in the charity and the sector to come together to make sure care workers get the pay, recognition and support they deserve. The complexity of the role is similar to a healthcare worker in the NHS yet the salary is about £6k less. That needs to be sorted and the sector needs to wake up a little bit and step forward to making that difference, otherwise they are more than sleepwalking into a major problem.

“I am a hugely optimistic as a person. Maybe it was unrealistic to expect that the charity could do as well as it has over the last six years. Perhaps it’s unrealistic to believe that the charity will to be able to continue to achieve what it needs to do over the next six years. I think it can. Let’s call it optimistic realism.”

As he prepares to step down for incoming chair, Home Instead chief executive, Martin Jones, Allen leaves a powerful legacy at CWC with thousands of care workers having benefited from his determination to succeed.

Gerlich said: “Ben has led the charity through a period of extraordinary transformation. His entrepreneurial spirit pushed the charity to grow rapidly and respond to the needs of the sector. I am very grateful for him giving me, a former care worker, an opportunity to lead a charity for care workers and bring in the changes needed. I appreciate his trust in my approach and passion for the sector. He will be missed but I am sure his support for the charity will continue.

“I am delighted that Martin is taking on the role. As we move towards an uncertain winter, with the cost of living crisis, uncertainty regarding the trajectory of the pandemic and the economic picture, Martin will provide calm and insightful counsel and support to myself and the team at CWC.”

Karolna Gerlich

Anita Goyal celebrates this year’s record breaking Care Sector Fundraising Ball total