Exclusive By Phil Coleman

Last updated at 12:08, Friday, 06 July 2012

More than half the staff at a leading west Cumbrian drug and alcohol charity are facing the axe as managers battle to balance the books.

Dave Smith

The Workington-based Rising Sun Trust is the latest casualty of the economic downturn, which is starving vital charities of cash.

Some in the county have already gone to the wall after running out of cash.

The award winning Rising Sun Trust was set up in 1999 by Dave Smith after the death of his 18-year-old son Ryan, who was a drug user.

With funding becoming ever harder to come by, the charity must now downsize, and lay off five of its eight staff.

The charity’s drop-in service has funding to the end of the year but a number of support groups run by the trust are at risk and a move out of its main office in Fisher Street to somewhere cheaper is now on the cards.

Mr Smith said: “To be fair to our funders, they have been very supportive, and when my wife and I set up the trust we said that if we could keep going for three years it would be okay.

“Then we set a target of keeping it going for ten years. We have been open now for 13 years and we’ve done some good stuff, though you always wish you could do better. But it’s the government funding that is hard to tap into and getting money is becoming harder and harder.”

Along with the Carlisle based Cumbria Alcohol and Drug Advisory Service, the trust has in the past benefited from £60,000 funding from the local primary care trust.

Health chiefs recently awarded a key contract for drug and alcohol services to the Manchester West Mental Health Foundation Trust.

Mr Smith said that the Rising Sun Trust would seek to concentrate more on preventative drug and alcohol education work with local schools and businesses.

He said he had been driven to continue with the charity’s work by the memory of the lives which have been lost to drug and alcohol. But he paid an emotional tribute to the staff at the trust who he said he regarded as friends and family.

“They have worked so hard,” he said, pointing out that the work of the charity ultimately saves money for the taxpayer by preventing criminality and reducing the need for medical intervention.

“It takes pressure off the NHS,” he said. “The government started talking about the voluntary third sector, but when you work with people as intensively as we do you can’t expect the voluntary sector to do that.”

Workington MP Tony Cunningham, a patron of the Trust, said that the charity’s work is vital.

“They have helped so many people,” he said. “They’ve been a lifeline, trusted because they know what they are doing and because they’re local.

“If people end up in hospital or in the criminal justice system because of drug or alcohol addiction, the costs to the tax payer can be huge,” added the MP.

“The Rising Sun Trust is somewhere for people with these problems to turn to, and they’re often people who are desperate for help.

“Part of the Big Society should be ensuring that organisations like this are able to help local people. So where does what is happening now leave that policy? Where does it leave the idea of localism?”

First published at 11:27, Friday, 06 July 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk