An internal investigation into the RSPCA’s putting down of a 16-year old cat in 2013 and attempt to prosecute its owners for cruelty has seen the charity accused of acting unlawfully, misinforming a vet, hiding evidence and triggering a hate campaign against the cat’s owners by making false claims on national radio. The charity admitted behaving in an insensitive and disproportionate way by threatening the cat’s owners with fines and imprisonment if they did not allow it to be put down. Continue reading →

Debt charity StepChange has called for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to intervene on overdraft fines charged by the banks, commonly £45 for sending a computer-generated letter at a few pence cost, and set a cap on the amount banks can charge for unarranged overdrafts.

StepChange, who receive 15,000 calls a month from people with overdraft problems, say that adding to the debt of people with debt problems is a “vicious circle” that further entraps the bank’s victims.

Patients with damage due to heart attacks are being offered a £10,000 procedure by a charity whereby their own stem cells from their bone marrow are extracted and injected into their hearts, to improve heart function and energy levels, and extend life expectancy, a treatment not currently available from the NHS.

Heart Cells Foundation was started by London businessman Ian Rosenberg in 2003, after he was given two months to live and had to travel to Germany for the procedure. He died, having had three extra years, in 2006 and the work of his charity is continued by his wife Jenifer Rosenberg OBE.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published new guidelines aimed at preventing care homes from punishing residents whose relatives complain by restricting or even banning visits from relatives, or evicting the patients.

The guidelines, published last month, follows a case in Somerset in 2012 where a son was prevented from visiting his 93 year old father, who died three months later, and a case at an Essex care home where an 86 year old was evicted after her children complained of poor care there.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) will be the UK’s first major charity to adopt “opt-in” rules on how it communicates with its donors, though it expects to lose £36 million in donations over five years by doing so.

The rules forbid charities from cold-calling potential donors – they have to wait for donors to contact them and opt in to a relationship. The RNLI expect to lose around 500,000 from the 2 million donors on their database. Continue reading →

The Centrepoint charity for young homeless people, a favourite of Prince William, has been accused of “crude hustling” following allegations that they promised wealthy donors special access to the Duke of Cambridge at this year’s annual Centrepoint Awards event at Kensington Palace in return for a donation of £40,000+. Kensington Palace has declined to comment on the allegation.

The evening featured Craig David, Phil Collins, Ellie Goulding and Dirty Vegas and was hosted by celebrity top-ranker Jonathan Ross.

The fostering charity TACT has apologised for falsely claiming that a man in his late thirties arriving in Calais as a “child refugee” was an interpreter.

Published doubts about the age of the “child” drew criticism from football pundit Gary Lineker who ranted unintelligently that such treatment of “young refugees” was “hideously racist and utterly heartless” proving to many that he should stick to selling football and crisps.