Last month 127 years of Catholic history disappeared, largely unnoticed.
It happened when the Cabrini Society handed over its remaining services to a secular agency.
Earlier this year, Cabrini had closed or transferred all its community projects. It was all too obvious that the little that remained - the fostering and adoption service and a residential unit in Kent - could not last long. It hasn’t, and with a transfer to an international charity, the Diagrama Foundation, Cabrini is no more.
As the Catholic Children’s Society, it served Arundel & Brighton, Southwark and Portsmouth. It changed its name in 2009 after it opened its doors to gay adopters, but retained the support of the bishops, who continued to allow collections and other giving so that parishioners could continue to support Cabrini’s several other services.
But whatever the external financial pressures that have caused this demise – and with it the end of a Catholic social care presence in a swathe of south east England - Cabrini hardly helped itself. Jonathan Pearce, its last chief executive and non-Catholic, who was employed on a hefty salary believed to be £100,000 left last year after just 10 months.
Mgr Nicholas Rothon, a trustee, said this was the rate you pay “the rate for the job” – as The Tablet reported in August 2012 - yet this was more than that paid to the director of Cafod, an international organisation, with an income (then) of £48.8 million a year, ten times that of Cabrini, and with dozens more projects and far more staff.
How has it come to this? Undoubtedly, like all charities, Cabrini faced problems arising from low or no increases in fees received from local authorities and the costs of paying for unfilled places at day care and residential centres. But Cabrini does not seem to have been open about the details of its problems. For example, when it announced it was closing and transferring community projects, it referred to financial difficulties but not that the loss that year would double to £875,000. (in 2011 it had increased its income by 8 per cent.)
It is also believed that Cabrini at one time was employing eight fundraisers, for which they also paid agency fees, but none stayed long, and their combined salaries must have been at least £250,000 a year.
In recent years the society has played down its Catholic identity. Its website stated only that it was founded by a bishop – there is no mention of denomination – and said nothing about its Catholic roots or ethos. A number of senior employers, who were Catholics, left. Effectively, ignoring Catholic support jeopardised what had been 60 per cent of its income.
All this happened while the society had a number of Catholic trustees, including two clergy, Mgr Rothon and (at one time) Mgr John Hull.
It is rather extraordinary that, given all that has happened, Hilary Brooks, the acting chief executive of Cabrini, signs off in her letter to The Tablet that “this is an exciting time for Cabrini”.
Terry Philpot is the author and editor several books on children’s services
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I'm surprised that Terry Philpot, with his close knowledge of the Cabrini Children's Society, should suggest that in its previous Catholic Children's Society identity, "it changed its name in 2009 after it opened its doors to gay adopters." As a Child & Family Social Work manager for a London local authority I supervised fostering and adoptive placements from 1980-1989. Some of the children we placed were with same-sex couples, although the law at that time only allowed a single person to adopt, rather than an unmarried coupled - of either sex. Some of our most successful placements were with lesbian foster-carers, placed through the auspices of the then Catholic Children's Society.
It was on this basis that, when the law changed in 2006 allowing civilly-partnered same-sex couples to adopt, the CCS declined to abandon its long-held practice. Following the controversies around Catholics and same-sex adoptions, I remember its Director saying at the time, " we haven't discriminated before, and we're not going to start now!" The CCS and a number of other Catholic child-care agencies then became independent of Diocesan structures, but retained both a truly Catholic ethos, and grassroots Catholic support. While Cabrini may now have taken another route, other agencies have not.
Thank you for carrying this story and the helpful analysis. It reminds me of the importance of the strong FIT FOR MISSION stance taken by Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue and his. Lancaster successor Bishop Michael Campbell.
In my time working in a school in Brentwood diocese I was most happy to be a trustee of Brentwood Catholic Children's Society and be associated with its wonderful work of supporting families and young people in need especially through work in Catholic schools. I also experienced similar work in Westminster Diocese.
Here in Ireland I have been increasingly concerned at the seeming unwillingness of many Catholic bishops to ensure that their diocesan agencies are FIT FOR MISSION. Thankfully last week the bishops of the north of Ireland divested themselves of their children's society and in Dublin our archbishop made it clear that the non-denominational Catholic Housing Aid Society, that many saw as causing scandal, had no right to call itself Catholic.
There is nothing wrong with church divesting itself of institutions where its ethos has been submerged by purely secular values. This happened in the case of the St John Bosco Youth Club in Drimnagh, which had such a positive formative influence on my own faith development. The club continues to flourish and do god work but now in a secular environment with its own secular value system.