Partnerships round-up: Macmillan backs Baxters Loch Ness Marathon

Plus: MyLife Digital Group rides for Dorothy House; fish-oil firm links up with Baby Lifeline; Central England Co-operative votes for Dementia UK; and autism chartity goes into partnership with intu

Macmillan Cancer Support is the official charity partner of the Baxters Loch Ness Marathon and Festival of Running, and is hoping to beat the £74,000 it raised last year. The charity has been the official partner of the event, due to be held this year on 24 September, since 2009. This year it hopes the event will raise at least £75,000, which will go towards funding Macmillan’s support nurses and helpline.

Employees of the data-management company MyLife Digital Group will cycle 130 miles to raise money for Dorothy House Hospice Care. The sponsored ride, on Saturday 5 August, will start at the Dorothy House charity shop in Winsley, Wiltshire, and will visit the charity’s shops in in Bradford on Avon, Trowbridge, Westbury, Warminster, Frome, Shepton Mallet, Midsomer Norton, Keynsham, Bath, Corsham, Chippenham, Malmesbury, Calne, Devizes and Melksham before returning to Winsley. Some members of the team will complete the whole ride and some will join for different legs of the journey.

The supplement company Wiley’s Finest Wild Alaskan Fish Oils has partnered with the pregnancy and baby charity Baby Lifeline. During August and September, 5 per cent of the proceeds of every sale of two of Wiley’s supplements will be donated to Baby Lifeline to help the charity purchase medical equipment and to provide training for healthcare professionals. The company has also donated an oil painting by the nationally recognised artist Anna Rose Bain, which the charity will auction to raise money.

Staff at the Central England Co-operative have voted for Dementia UK as its charity partner for the next 12 months. Customers will be able to support the charity by donating when they visit food stores, funeral homes or travel shops, and staff will also take part in a range of fundraising events. All the money raised will be used to provide specialist support to families affected by dementia through the charity’s Admiral Nurse service and Dementia Helpline. 

The National Autistic Society plans to launch a week-long Autism Hour campaign in partnership with the shopping centre owner intu this autumn. As part of the campaign, every retailer, restaurant and leisure operator at intu’s 14 centres in the UK are being asked to reduce their lights, music and other background noise for an hour at 10am on Monday 2 October. The charity aims to give autistic people a break from the kinds of stimuli that can leave them feeling overloaded with information and distressed. Other shops and services will be encouraged to hold their own Autism Hours across the week as part of the National Autistic Society’s wider Too Much Information campaign to reduce the overload that autistic people can experience in public.

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Game of Thrones actor backs Mencap petition on back-pay

Kit Harington has urged people to sign the online document, which calls for the government to pay the estimated £400m bill faced by care charities in back-pay for sleep-in shifts

The Game of Thrones actor Kit Harington has called on people to sign a petition from the learning disability charity Mencap asking for the government to foot the estimated £400m bill faced by care charities in back pay for sleep-in shifts.

The online petition, which has attracted more than 7,000 signatures, says many care providers face bankruptcy because of the bill, which “could mean the end of social care as we know it”.

According to Mencap, sleep-ins are used widely in the learning disability sector to provide care for vulnerable adults, and until recently workers were paid a flat-rate, “on-call” allowance rather than the national minimum wage.

The flat rate is typically £35 to £45, with workers receiving either the national minimum wage or the national living wage for the hours they spend providing care.

But in the wake of two employment tribunal decisions from last year, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy changed its guidance to ensure the national minimum wage applied to sleep-in carers.

As a result, HM Revenue & Customs has begun asking disability charities to give six years of back pay to affected staff. Mencap said this could cost the sector as much as £400m.

“We are asking the government to urgently commit to paying this bill as the sector cannot afford it,” the petition says. “Government caused this problem: only they can fix it.”

A statement last week from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy said employers that underpaid workers for sleep-in shifts before 26 July 2017 would have historical financial penalties waived and HMRC would suspend its enforcement activity about sleep-in care shifts until 2 October.

“The government will continue to look at this issue extremely carefully alongside industry representatives to see whether any further support is needed and ensure that action taken to protect workers is fair and proportionate, while seeing how it might be possible to minimise any impact on social care provision,” the BEIS statement said.

“The learning disability sector in the UK is on the brink of crisis,” says Harington in the video. “It is faced with a back-pay bill of £400m which it cannot pay.

“Many of the providers of this essential, sleep-in service face bankruptcy. And some of the most vulnerable people in our society will be left without care, without hope and without an independent future.”

Harington, who is an ambassador for Mencap, has a cousin with Down’s syndrome and autism, who has been supported by the charity throughout her life.

Another Mencap ambassador, the DJ Jo Whiley, who has a disabled sister who receives sleep-in care, helped to launch the petition last week.

Jan Tregelles, chief executive of Mencap, said in a statement that the back-pay problem was the “most critical issue that Mencap has faced in 70 years”.

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