Case Study

Ingeus is on the Case

8 Nov 2024

“Ingeus hasn’t taken credit, they don’t realise the incredible impact they’ve had,” is how Ian Benbow, Managing Director of Case-UK Ltd describes the support Ingeus has given to his family-run wellbeing business. As an Ingeus partner, delivering the Able Futures Access to Work mental health service to participants across Wales and the South West, his fledgling business has taken flight under Ingeus’ nurturing eye over the past eight years.

Yet when Ian founded Case-UK back in 2016, it was driven by desperate personal need. A former professional footballer, Ian moved into senior community regeneration and local authority roles before a diagnosis of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (Sudden Death Syndrome) changed his life. Fighting back from a near-death incident resulted in severe anxiety, depression, and him leaving his job.

“The impact was ten times worse than anything I imagined mental health could be, the research and experience in my previous work didn’t prepare me for the reality. I became unemployable overnight,” he says.

Finding that employers were unwilling to give him a chance, Ian established Case-UK to aid his own recovery and support others in similar situations. His ‘springboard moment’ came when he was invited by Ingeus to collaborate on a bid for the Able Futures programme. Subsequently winning that first contract has resulted in great things.

Case-UK now employs 80 members of staff across the UK, including 18 contact centre staff in Merthyr that operate the Able Futures out of hours and Welsh language service. Its mental and physical health services have supported more than 7,000 people to remain in work and the business has won significant peer mentoring and in-work support contracts from the Welsh Government. They are venturing into providing roving community coffee vans and café franchises and Ian’s own stable income has given him the ability to support pro-bono bid writing for local charities netting more than £3.5 million worth of funding.

“None of this would have happened if Ingeus hasn’t believed in me in those early days,” reflects Ian, who celebrated Case-UK being named Best Business in the Welsh Government’s St David’s Awards. “From nothing – one man with mental health problems – we’ve grown to a multi-million turnover business directly aligning our services to the Welsh government’s legislative targets. Ingeus gave us the opportunity and the resulting evidence of success to open the door to that.”

Connecting with other organisations in the Ingeus partner network has also benefited Case-UK. They are collaborating with fellow-Ingeus supply chain partner Health 2 Employment on the Red Dot 365 occupational health project via Innovate UK and the Department for Work and Pensions.

“We enjoy innovating and piloting new approaches to improve access and outcomes,” concludes Ian. “Able Futures and Ingeus sit firmly at the centre of our delivery but have

given us the springboard to a much wider scope. We’re hoping next to move to an employee benefit trust so that our own team, many of whom have lived experience of mental health issues, will share ownership of the company. Ingeus can be indirectly proud of that achievement too!”