RABI PULLSOUTALLSTOPSINF&MCRISIS
RABI PULLSOUTALLSTOPSINF&MCRISIS
The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution has been swamped with calls for help
since foot-and-mouth broke. Its income from donations has rocketed. It has even got
a new chief executive. Life at the RABI – and for all the people it helps –
will never be the same again. Tim Relf reports
RABIs story is really two stories: the old RABI and the new RABI.
The new one was born on February 20, the date foot-and-mouth reappeared in this country.
Before that date, you could visit Shaw house, the charitys Oxford headquarters, and find it quietly but resolutely doing what it had been doing for the past 140 years: helping those in need in the farming community.
After that date, requests for help soared as farmers and their families – hit by the epidemic – saw income shrink or disappear. Daily calls to the emergency helpline, traditionally running at two or three, peaked at 320.
To keep pace, RABI doubled the number of staff, trebled the number of phone lines and made its emergency helpline a 24-hours-a-day service.
At the busiest point, 22 people were in the building compared with fewer than half that a year earlier. Staff, at times, were kneeling on the floor doing the filing.
Explosion
"One day the phones started ringing," says RABI general manager Jackie Newman. "It just exploded." Since then, Jackie and the team have often been working 12 to 14-hour days. "Coming in with the milkman, going home with the cleaner," as she puts it.
The charitys turnover has shot up (its received more than £12m in donations since late February), its profile raised and the office, now, is unrecognisable as the place it was a few months ago. "The organisation that I joined two years ago does not exist any more," says Jackie.
The changes have enabled it to make grants totalling more than £6.5m since the start of the epidemic, helping pay for everything from animal feed bills to school shoes. The money has gone to 6500 working farming families, more than 33 times the number helped during the whole of last year.
The cash has been a lifeline to many who, against a background of BSE, swine fever and the general agricultural depression, were in financial trouble even before this latest body blow to the industry, says RABI press officer Nicholas Bond. "They were at the extent of their overdrafts anyway."
He, too, has been in the vanguard of the changes at Shaw House. While the systems in place were working, they could not cope with the volume of work that foot-and-mouth brought, he says. "Necessity is the mother of invention, and that has certainly been the case here."
As farmers around the land brace themselves for the tough times ahead, RABI continues changing and the hard work for everyone in Shaw House goes on. "At one point someone from The Samaritans said we were the most important building in the country," recalls Jackie Newman.
Quite a compliment, really.
* Anyone requesting assistance from the foot-and-mouth crisis fund is asked to fill out a confidential form.
It asks about the applicants farming and family situation, plus other financial details (savings, other income, etc).
The form is simple and asks only 13 questions.
Applicants also have to provide details of a referee (eg, an accountant, GP or NFU official) to support the request.
While speed is a priority, applications are closely vetted. "If people fill it in openly and honestly, it will be treated on its merits," says a RABI spokesman.
The completed form will then be considered by one of the 11 RABI trustees.
The charity has an upper ceiling on what can be paid.
Money can be sent out quickly – in a handful of cases, cash has been sent out immediately by special delivery.
Those in hardship can make more than one application.
More cash is needed desperately
RAISING more money is a key aim of new RABI chief exec, Tony McMahon.
Ex-Army aviator Tony, whose appointment follows John Walliss retirement, reckons demand for RABI cash could rocket.
This is the result of the farming crisis, plus the trend of people living longer and retiring earlier. "A triple whammy."
Tony is seeking a "scientific assessment" of what the future need will be. But the number of full-time beneficiaries could, he says, more than double to 4000.
RABIs cash reserves will be needed long into the future as the effects of foot-and-mouth continue to be felt for months and years.
One of his first tasks is to recruit a full-time fundraiser, who will try and woo corporate money. "The charity has to start working harder to get funds."
And, though keen to further modernise the organisation, he is conscious of the support it gets as a result of its "current image and face".
"The challenge now facing us, as foot-and-mouth ceases to be headline news, is to maintain public awareness of the continuing difficulties facing the farming community."
Tony, who was chief environment and safety officer for the Army, was born and raised on a farm. "Its in my blood," he says.