Presbyterian church confronts the changing face of its health and social services
Delegates to the Presbyterian Church's General Assembly have been told that the landscape of health and social care within the church family is vastly different today from the one in which many of the PCI’s services were established back in time.
“Government policy, commissioning practice and professional thinking have increasingly moved towards prevention, independence, community-based provision. Many of these changes are positive as they reflect a desire to give people greater independence, dignity and choice," said Caroline Yeomans, interim director of the church's council for social witness.
However, she warned: “Yet they also require providers like the council to adapt, and as a Church organisation, we have not always adapted as quickly as the environment around us has changed.
"Some of our services were developed for a different era. Some structures were built for a different model of care.
"Alongside this changing environment, our Council for Social Witness has carried significant financial and regulatory pressures,” she added.
The CSW director explained that while the external environment changed rapidly, the level of strategic attention given to and by the council did not match the scale of the changes.
"The Church, through its various structures, collectively accepted arrangements that enabled underlying financial pressures to accumulate rather than be fundamentally addressed, becoming increasingly disconnected from the realities of modern health and social care.”
This has led, she said, to a significant and unsustainable deficit of £3.6million by the end of 2025, which “represents years of accumulated pressures, years of rising costs, years of increasingly complex care needs, years of policy change and years in which funding failed to keep pace with inflation and workforce pressures.”
The Presbyterian Council for Social Witness (CSW), presented its report at General Assembly, setting out its vision for providing social care services.
While addressing the challenges of providing care in the current environment, it also says that the council is at a "defining moment".
The services provided by Presbyterian CSW in Northern Ireland include provision of residential, nursing, supported housing, respite and day care, along with a number of community-based programmes, specifically short-term supported accommodation to ex-offenders.
Presenting the report, Mrs Caroline Yeomans said: “This is not an ordinary moment in the life of the Council for Social Witness. Nor is it an ordinary moment in the life of health and social care across Northern Ireland.
"For years, CSW has sought to demonstrate the Christian compassion through practical service.
“Recovery is about creating services that are sustainable, effective and fit for the future.
"Recovery is to ensure Christian social witness remains a vibrant and credible expression of church mission for generations.”
* In a resolution, the Presbyterian council for social witness asked the General Assembly to recognise the necessity of a recovery plan in whatever restructuring option is "undertaken and welcomed the church to explore and finalise decisions on a recovery plan”.