Children's home fighting deficits

STACY SQUIRES/The Press

ROLL CALL: Cholmondeley Home School principal Anney Collin looks over the school roll, which dates back to 1920

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Funding pressures have forced the Cholmondeley children's home, near Christchurch, to cut staff and services.

The Governors Bay home has made four staff redundant and is phasing out long-term care services.

The home ran up a deficit of $281,714 last year and about $440,000 in 2008. Cash reserves have slipped to $600,000 from about $1 million a few years ago to fund the deficits.

The home, which opened in 1925, offers care for children aged 3 to 12, who come from families with issues, including severe illness, substance abuse and addiction, or the death of a parent. It helped 290 children last year.

Cholmondeley general manager Shane Murdoch said the home wanted to focus on the "core business" of providing open-access short-term care for children.

"As we have looked for more and more revenue, we have looked for more work outside the core. That has started to add layers," he said.

"We are looking at reprioritising the organisation and making sure we can continue Cholmondeley forever and secure a more sustainable way of working."

Cholmondeley treasurer Kerry Dellaca said the recession had also hit investments. "It is not major, but we invest our cash reserves, and you try to be prudent, but a lot of people have been affected by the recession."

Murdoch, who started at Cholmondeley in November, said he wanted to get the home in a more secure financial position.

"Sometimes we would run to a deficit, even though we knew donations were running out and the Government was not able to fund it, but we would do it and cover it with reserves," he said.

"We still have healthy reserves, but if we had not done anything, we would have ended up in trouble.

"We needed to make sure that Cholmondeley is OK going forward."

Donations remained strong, with $910,000 received last year and $797,000 in 2008.

The new focus on short-term care means the home has not renewed a contract with Child, Youth and Family (CYF) to provide long-term care for children.

CYF reduced the level of care it required in its contract with the home at the end of the last financial year, cutting the number of bed nights it would fund.

The contract ended on July 1, but the long-term service would be phased out over the next year. The home is still working with CYF on short-term services.

CYF acting regional director Grant Bennett said the agency still wanted to work with the home.

"We will still be working with the home for respite care and emergency placements," he said.

"Longer-term placements for children in our care will now be contracted from other providers.

"Fewer children came into care in the 2007-2008 financial year. As a result there was a small decline in the number of bed nights we contracted from providers across the region in the 2008-2009 financial year."

Dellaca said the changes at the home should not alarm donors.

"We have a fantastic degree of support from people around the Canterbury region," Dellaca said.

"We do not in any way want to cause any undue concern for those people. This organisation will carry on," he said.

- © Fairfax NZ News