What happens when an AIDS Service Organization gets its funding cut? Part Two

Editors note.  The first post from Iain Murtagh back in October 2011 describing the predicament of The Crescent and its clients had been placed in was a bit of a social media sensation.  You can read it here.  We recently asked Ian for an update, and this is what he gave us.

Iain Murtagh: Following our last article in October we have been very busy indeed! Demand for our services has increased as it became more apparent that the supposed replacement service could not meet the needs of service users in the west of Hertfordshire.

Obviously this presents some problems for us as we have no income to support the work; however we were extremely lucky to have gained the support of The Platinum Trust who provided a grant to fund a professional fundraiser. We have engaged the services of the International Fundraising Consultancy (IFC) and their CEO John Baguley has been working very hard on an appeal to raise funds for our service.

So far as a run up to the events we have attended St James’ Palace for an event hosted by the Duke of York, and The House of Lords to lunch with the Peers and talk about the Crescent and our need for help supporting people living with HIV/AIDS.

Our hardworking designer, Clive Batkin, has produced some simply amazing work, and often with little or no notice, has constructed a wonderful case for support which is to be used at the House of Lords this month.

As part of the fundraising process we have gained support from the Bishop of St Albans, the Right Rvrd Dr Alan Smith, The Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire - The Countess of Verulam, Lord Fowler, Former Secretary of State for Health (who was the architect of the 1980’s “Don’t die of Ignorance” campaign) and has for the last 9 months been Chair of a House of Lords Select Committee on HIV and AIDS in the UK. Most recently we have gained support from Lord Rennard, former Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats and who has offered to host our fundraising appeal at the House of Lords later this month.

The Bishop of St Albans will also be visiting our service on March 5 to learn more about the work we do and to meet Members, Staff and Trustees.

We have gained two new high profile Patrons, CJ de Mooi and James Wharton who have been working hard to promote us and fundraise too.

Mr de Mooi is an actor and television personality and an extremely active campaigner for HIV and gay rights issues, also a Patron of the Sussex Beacon, an HIV support service in Brighton. Sussex Beacon provides both inpatient and outpatient services for people living with HIVand their families. He has volunteered for several HIV charities for many years and regularly participates in fundraising through charity quiz and chess events as well as running in numerous marathons to raise money for a variety of causes.

James Wharton is an out gay British Soldier, a member of the Household Cavalry, who appeared on the cover of Soldier magazine, the armed forces publication, with an in depth interview published on his life in 2009. James married his long term partner, Thomas, in March 2010, James and his husband became the first gay couple to be united by civil partnership, in the Household Cavalry's 350 year history. James has recently toured secondary schools in the UK as a positive role model for Stonewall in their Education for All campaign, talking of his experiences as an 'out' gay soldier in the British Military.In October 2011, James was ranked 17th in the Independent on Sunday's Pink list - the 101 most influential gay men and women in the country.

All of this is very good news indeed but we are still without support from our former funding partners in Hertfordshire and are continuing our campaign to resolve this. We are pleased that our contract was renewed for the Buckinghamshire service, although this is only funded from Buckinghamshire County Council with no financial input from NHS Buckinghamshire as yet.

However a service redesign is in progress which we expect will address this going forward. Unfortunately though the funding is still very low, and not quite 25% of the total funding we used to receive in Hertfordshire and therefore doesn’t allow us to provide a huge range of services on different days in Buckinghamshire, though we have increased this slightly to now offer a Saturday service to help those who work or are otherwise unavailable during the week to gain support.

Lord Fowler said in his supporting statement; “I fully support the work by the Crescent in St Albans for people living with HIV, their partners, families and friends. Over the last nine months I have been chairman of a Select Committee of the House of Lords on HIV in the United Kingdom. This is a crucial health issue and organisations like the Crescent totally deserve our support.”

Lord Rennard has said;“I fully support the work by the Crescent for people living with or affected by HIV, their partners, families and friends. This is a model organisation run by the people it helps, where those affected have a direct influence on how, and where, they receive the much needed help and support to enable them to manage their condition.”

In November last year we met with the Chief Executive of NHS Hertfordshire, Dr Jane Halpin and the Director of Systems Management, Beverly Flowers and are pleased to say that relations are improving with talk of our involvement in service design going forward. Whilst not wishing to dwell on the past too much we believe that this is a sign that it has been recognized that mistakes have been made and there is a desire to address these.

We also have a similar meeting scheduled with Hertfordshire County Council’s Director of Adult Care Services, Ms Sarah Pickup, this month arranged by Mr. de Mooi which hopefully will reveal a similar situation with more engagement with us going forward. Events around and for World Aids Day last year did bring some amazing results, proving that we do have the support of the general public. One event at our staunch supporters, the Load of Hay Public house in Watford raised over £3,000 which is simply amazing. Events in St Albans at the Abbey raising awareness, and our stall in the market with street collections had a very good result too; the result was pretty impressive with seemingly the majority of St Albans City Centre wearing red ribbons from our volunteers.

However this still leaves us in a very precarious position as we are effectively supporting our members without funding which we feel is a little unfair. We continue to publicise the plight of the people in West Hertfordshire who were promised service equitable with that offered in the east of the County but have anything but this from the organisation supposedly funded in our place.

We have already had to make key staff redundant and have effectively halved in size to enable us to run for longer, but still maintaining a full 5 day a week service with evening and weekend events / groups still running as before.

Our outreach and training services continue to be in great demand too. It is hard work, but very rewarding,

We are grateful for the continuing support of the Hertfordshire Advertiser who continue to fight alongside us, as well as local Councillors and MP’s Also the random kindness of complete strangers who have dropped in to see us, find out more about HIV in their community and even volunteer has been quite heartwarming.

We have steadily increased our volunteer base, and now have two therapists amongst the group who have been providing free therapies to members for some time now, ranging from massage and reflexology to more feel good treatments such as beauty treatments, facials, manicure and pedicures.

A lot has been achieved in the last few months but we still have so very far to go, I’m pleased that the two funding bodies in Hertfordshire seem to be reappraising their position but am concerned that this is taking rather a long time. We have so many people who rely on us for support and this needs to be taken into consideration.

Iain Murtagh is Head of Operations/Project Manager, The Crescent Support Group

You can read more about the fight to save The Crescent here.