Welmede and Avenues have merged

Avenues Group and Welmede announce today that they have merged. Welmede has become an operating subsidiary of Avenues Group.

Our organisations share similar visions and values, making them an excellent fit.  By combining our resources and expertise, we believe that the merger will enhance and strengthen our work, create opportunities for supporting more people in local communities, and provide greater resilience to cost pressures and future challenges in the social care sector.

Formal discussions have been taking place since April this year and due diligence was carried out over the summer. The boards of Welmede and Avenues met independently in September and each approved the merger, and statutory bodies have now provided final clearance. Service users and their families, staff, stakeholders and commissioning partners have been informed. Of paramount importance during our discussions have been the people we support and those who will need support in the future. We are committed to ensuring the same quality service provision for everyone, and service users will continue to have the same support workers.

Another of the key aims of the merger is to protect services and job security for as many of our loyal workforce as possible by reducing expenditure and becoming more cost efficient. No support staff are expected to lose their jobs as a result of the merger.

With Welmede’s housing experience and Avenues’ expertise in providing care for people with complex needs or challenging behaviour, the dovetailing of our organisations should result in a ‘win-win’ situation for all.

Steve James, Group Chief Executive Officer at Avenues says, “It is well known that the care sector is under severe financial constraint and this is likely to continue for the time being. We feel that strength can be drawn from combining the expertise of our two organisations and that by going forward together we can enhance our model of best practice for our service users and maintain the highest quality of care.”

Mark Packer, Chief Executive at Welmede says, “We are delighted that the merger process has been completed and it is representative of our shared values that this has happened so smoothly. Our commitment is to provide the highest quality services to all the people we support as well as developing new and innovative schemes as part of the Avenues Group. Together we will be stronger in these challenging times.”

8 November 2016