A group of families have launched an audacious bid to take over their disabled children's residential care home after it emerged the charity running it faces closure due to huge tax debts and £1m in fees paid to a trustee. William Blake House, a specialist home for adults with severe learning disabilities, faces a potential winding-up order in seven weeks and is under investigation by regulators over serious financial governance concerns.
The families said they no longer trust that the charity's board has their children's best interests at heart. They have accused the board of acting secretively and keeping parents in the dark about a £1.6m unpaid tax bill. They have also questioned the appropriateness and legality of £1m payments to a company solely owned by the charity's chair, Bushra Hamid.
In a statement, the parents said: 'The charity belongs to the 22 residents, not to the board of trustees and the chief executive who through their actions have taken this charity from a thriving community to one at the brink of failure. These people will be gone if the care homes go into insolvency... Our relatives won't.' The families are setting up a not-for-profit company to oversee care services, drawing on professional expertise among them including legal, business, accountancy and social care management.
William Blake House is run on Steiner principles, aiming to create a therapeutic environment where residents are treated as having potential rather than limitations. Councils and the NHS spend more than £3m a year funding its services. The families discovered the home's financial plight last autumn and have since built a parent network. The charity has blamed its difficulties on high agency staff costs and failure of local authorities to raise care fees in line with inflation.
The Charity Commission has opened a regulatory compliance case into potential governance concerns at William Blake House. The charity told the Guardian it had passed the families' proposal to its solicitors and would respond this week.
