Chapter 1 — Institute of Charity

Introduction

Once numbers of residents began to fall in the 1960s, financial problems would have arisen and, indeed, this led to the closure of Upton in 1966. By the time the Kennedy Committee reported in 1970, the capitation grant as a system of funding, which depended on high rates of committals, was clearly inadequate, and alternatives had to be found. In the case of Ferryhouse, these alternatives were not finally put in place until the early 1980s, when an annual budget based on submitted estimates was agreed with the Department of Finance. During the 1970s, however, significant increases in the State grant alleviated the position for those institutions like Ferryhouse that continued to operate.