Action for Children sees staff numbers fall by 500

13 Aug 2018 News

Action for Children saw the number of full-time equivalent staff fall by almost 500 in its last financial year, with over £900,000 paid out to staff made redundant.

The charity’s annual report and accounts for the year ending March 2018 have recently been filed with Companies House.

According to the accounts, the charity spent £680,000 on statutory redundancies, and also paid £232,000 in ex gratia payments, which were made to employees when made redundant at the discretion of senior management.

An Action for Children spokesman said the redundancy payments involved 98 members of staff.

Its number of FTE staff at the end of March 2018 was 3,283 compared to 3,757 in March 2017.

Total staff numbers only fell slightly, presumably because many more members of the charity's staff are now employed on a part-time basis.

Action for Children saw a large fall in the number of staff working on charitable activities, where staff numbers fell from 4,319 to 3,814 (not FTE) over the course of the years. But the average number of trading staff rose to 790 from 359 the previous year.

Income drop

The charity’s overall income fell to £151.3m in 2017/18, down from £159.8m the previous year, while its expenditure also fell from £156.8m to £148.8m.

In its accounts, the charity says this is due to a “number of local authorities ceasing to fund children’s centres”.

As a result, the charity’s year-on-year children’s centre income is down £13.8m, or 38 per cent, with a matched reduction in expenditure.

This is despite the charity taking on activity from the collapsed charity 4Children, which operates nurseries.

Some 79 per cent of Action for Children's income is from charitable activities, with just 10 per cent, or £14.6m, from donations and legacies.

In the forward to the accounts, Action for Children chair John O’Brien says: “The climate we have been operating in over the past year has been tough.

“Austerity continues to bite as we have seen with the closure of 128 children’s centres across England in the past year and, with less money available to local authorities, we are having to compete very hard for the funding that comes our way.

“The reality is – and I see this in the projects I have visited - that the need for the services we provide is not going away. In fact, it is increasing.

“With less local authority funding available, we are undertaking new ventures – looking at different revenue streams, and different ways of engaging partners and supporters – so we can continue to provide the services that we know to be essential in helping the children, young people and families we work with.”

An Action for Children spokesperson added: “Due to crippling government funding cuts, we’ve seen a fall in our income as local authorities have been forced to take many of our early help family support services back in-house or close them altogether. This has sadly led to the loss of some staff.
 
“We know early intervention services are still desperately needed and we are finding innovative ways to provide this support, often online."

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