Rural charities facing the brunt of Gov pressure as services become ‘expected’
They said the public sector was not only ramping up the pressure, but also expecting more from their services, for less.
Lauren Dean
Under-resourced rural charities are buckling under the weight of increasing demand for their services as the number of referrals for farmers with mental health issues rises.
And charity bosses and volunteers, who met this week at the Farm Safety Foundation’s Resilient Farmers’ Conference on Tuesday (May 21), Stratford-upon-Avon, said the situation could be ‘just the tip of the iceberg’ as a similarly stretched NHS struggled to give farmers the care they needed.
They said the public sector was not only ramping up the pressure, but also expecting more from their services, for less.
Diane Spark, project manager at Upper Teesdale Agricultural Support Services, said charities were being told to become more sustainable with new ways of working but that it was ‘not going to happen overnight’.
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“The amount [of help] that is out there is diminishing, the amount of need that is out there is growing, and it is becoming an ever more competitive world,” Ms Spark said.
Long term challenge
“Especially with Brexit and all the uncertainty, we cannot wait until farmers fall off that cliff edge. We know it is coming and we need to keep the support there.”
The longer-term challenge was not just to those in the agricultural sector, the group said, but to dictators of policy who ‘are deeply challenged in the way that they respond’.
Some patients are having to wait up to 12 weeks for a mental health referral to the NHS.
Jon James, founder of the Farming Health Hub, Cornwall, said: “It is placing a huge amount of pressure on the charities to deliver and it becomes an expectation.
“Whatever we are dealing with at the moment is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Agrikids founder Alma Jordan said she thought Government pressures were due to a lack of understanding about the issues happening on the ground, while rural charities in Wales said they were facing an increasing number of referrals due to a lack of statutory help.
It came after a Worshipful Company of Farmers report suggested pressures, such as mental health, long working hours and rural isolation, would be worsened on the back of changing Government policies.
Defra recently came under fire after it told farmers experiencing late Basic Payment Scheme or Countryside Stewardship payments to contact rural helplines, such as the Farming Community Network.
Tricia Allen, who sits on Defra’s Resilience and Transformation team, said the department recognised the need for strong partnership, leadership and management in the sector and it was looking to ‘co-design policies with the people who are affected by them’.
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