A former charity has relaunched as a community interest company (CIC) after it stopped operating as a charity earlier this year.
Centre for Adults’ Social Care Advice, Information and Dispute Resolution (CASCAIDr) stopped operating on 31 March after it was unable to find a way of “remaining financially viable” and spent the remainder of its income on paying its debts and running a final campaign.
Now called CASCAIDr CIC, the organisation only provides information about legal frameworks to its beneficiaries after offering charitable legal advice previously.
It now offers free specialist information services, podcasts, fact sheets, logic programme and a one-off question and answer service.
Background
At the time of writing, CASCAIDr's entry on the register remains active and shows its total income for the financial year ending March 2023 was £170,000 against expenditure of £125,000.
Filed 120 days late, the accounts show that it had no employees or staff costs.
The CIC still operates on a not-for-profit basis and Belinda Schwehr, who founded the charity, leads the new organisation.
‘Could not viably run as a charity’
Schwehr, director of the CIC, said: “We found we could not make running complex advice for traumatised people viable as a charity, not even subsidising it with chargeable services. Advice expertise has become unaffordable.
“However, by converting our trading company into a CIC, we have been able to give it the benefit of the name, and the goodwill from all we’d ever achieved, and the get-up of the website, which is of no use to anyone else.
“We’ve rebranded and thought hard about how to spread the cost of keeping the information at a good level, rather than dumbing down and just giving information away for marketing purposes.”
