Rainbow Trust: when a charity has to make difficult decisions

Rainbow Trust Children's Charity, which supports the families of children who have a life-limiting or life-threatening condition, has just announced the closure of its two family respite houses. Whole families would go and stay at the houses and have a well-earned break with full support from the staff.

So the decision by the chief executive and trustees to close the houses over the next few months is a brave one. The houses are popular: so popular that not all the 1,000 families Rainbow supports are able to use the houses as capacity is limited to about 300 short breaks a year. The houses are also attractive and good for fundraising: it is easier to raise money for things (bits of kit, a nicely decorated room) than to raise money for staff posts.

But Rainbow's trustees took a long hard look at what families needed most, and the financial maths of providing different services. Rainbow's main service to families is support at home, not in the respite houses. Rainbow's families lurch from crisis to crisis: a sick child is hospitalised and needs his parents, but the siblings also need to be picked up from school and given supper; a distraught mum looking after a child with medical complications hasn't got time to do the washing; a family needs comforting after a bereavement. Its at these points that Rainbow provides desperately-needed back-up, usually in the family home.

Meanwhile the cost of running the two respite houses is £600k a year. For that sum, Rainbow offers breaks to about 200 of the families it already supports. For the same sum, Rainbow could hire more family support workers and reach another 300 new families queuing for Rainbow's help at home. Looking at it another way, Rainbow calculated that five days of care at one of the houses for two families cost £4,000. The same sum gets 5-6 families five days of help at home - which may be as beneficial to them as a stay in the houses. (To read more on the financial costs and benefits of short breaks for disabled children and their families, and how these compare to key worker schemes, read our report 'What price an ordinary life?')

Rainbow felt that by redeploying its resources, it could have greater impact and reach more families, even if, in the short term, the decision may not be popular.

Resources are getting scarcer. Although some economic indicators are suggesting that the recession is receding, many charities are planning for substantial government budget cuts from 2010 onwards. So charities will have to make tough decisions. And in any case, NPC applauds any charity that is willing to sacrifice something nice but expensive if another option is better for more people.

We hope that Rainbow's supporters will understand this and continue to back it fully so that it can offer more families its valuable service. To read more about the needs of children with a life-limiting or life-threatening condition, read our report Valuing short lives.