After three years of providing much needed wellbeing support to NHS workers, the charity Duty to Care has had to make the difficult decision to close this Spring.
After three years providing over 6,000 free mental health and wellbeing support sessions to NHS staff, the Duty to Care Trustees have had to take the difficult decision to formally wind up the charity as of Spring 2023.
It has been increasingly challenging to balance the demand for our services with the funding received from the multiple streams pursued by Duty to Care’s leadership. We are extremely disappointed to close at a time when supporting NHS staff is so vital.
Our dedicated and highly motivated team of Trustees, staff, practitioners and volunteers have worked extremely hard since our establishment in May 2020. During that time, we have delivered free mental health and wellbeing sessions to NHS staff across the UK and are desperately sorry that we will not be present in the future to do more of the same. The challenge of financial sustainability, despite the rising demand for our services, has finally become too significant to continue.
Harriet Hunt, Duty to Care Founder and Chair of Trustees said ‘We are proud to have been able to fundraise and deliver our service for three years and are extremely saddened by the fact that the demand for our service has surpassed the speed at which we can generate income. Clearly more healthcare workers than ever before are facing challenging times at work, and it’s heartbreaking that they will no longer have free access to our services, despite our best efforts.
At a time when so many charities are struggling to survive, we find ourselves forced to take the responsible decision to stop our service in a controlled and considered way, and we are developing plans for winding down over a period of time to allow those we support and who work with us to make necessary arrangements. We want to thank all those who have supported Duty to Care, especially our team and our brilliantly generous corporate and private donors.
Our Trustees remain fully committed to raising much needed awareness around the need for more government support for our NHS workers, who dedicate their lives to looking after us and who need access to wellbeing services to continue their roles.’
We acknowledge how difficult this news may be to receive. We will do our best to ensure that any NHS worker in need is signposted to other organisations providing support in our absence. We will do our utmost to support our staff in finding work and ensuring their wellbeing.
Our aim is to close the charity responsibly in Spring 2023. As we progress our closure, we will look to respectfully wind down contractual arrangements between partners, suppliers and sponsors. Any news in this regard will be posted on the website and social channels in the coming weeks.
We kindly ask that you do not donate to Duty to Care in response to this news. We want to ensure that your donations go to charities that can still support NHS staff in need. We will post more on this in due course.
We want to thank everyone who has supported us, and we hope that our legacy will continue to inspire others to support NHS staff in need.
On behalf of the Trustees
Duty to Care
https://www.dutytocare.info/nhs/s/announcement
I feel immense gratitude for being one of their wellbeing practitioners during this time, and for the opportunity to work with a number of NHS workers both during and post the pandemic. This has been, and continues to be, a time of immense pressure for NHS workers in the UK.
However, I also feel very sad and disappointed that the charity are having to wind down, as this truly is a service I would have hoped could grow and reach more workers, rather than end. I sincerely hope that other similar initiatives may arise, but above all else, I hope and pray that the present NHS crisis can be overcome, with satisfactory working conditions for workers, better pay and better support.
Thank you to the whole team at Duty to Care for this initiative, and thank you to all of those who work for the NHS.
If you are interested in hearing from one of the voices of those who benefitted from Duty to Care's services, here is a podcast I made a few years ago, featuring Esther, one of the NHS workers I had the pleasure to work with closely during the Pandemic.