IHC’s ‘clients’ deserve better
“Smarter data” (July 3) highlights the issue of whether money donated to charities is getting to the right place. This is an important issue for IHC, one of the country’s largest charities. I have been an active member of IHC since the late 1970s and IHC has had big changes over that time.
The most important change is that IHC is no longer IHC: it is now IHC Group. It includes two main companies: IDEA Services, which is essentially what IHC originally was, and Accessible Properties, which is a property-management company. These changes have been accompanied by a big growth in head-office staff, all of whom have grand job titles.
IHC uses intellectual disability to elicit donations for IHC. People are sympathetic to those with disabilities and happy to make donations. However, there is no certainty their donation will help those with intellectual disabilities. IDEA Services, which cares for those with disabilities, gets most of its money from the Government, so a large amount of donated money presumably helps pay the salaries of the large staff in IHC head office.
In parallel with this “corporatisation” of IHC has been a disastrous decline in the quality of the care it provides. In 2010, IHC closed all its sheltered workshops and contract work, which left many of those in its care without jobs or pay packets.
