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Children's Society chief executive Ian Sparks on the charity's painful decision to withdraw from Wales after 113 years.

Community Care got it right; essential services to children are being subsidised by charities (Comment, page 5, 22 November). That is an uncomfortable reflection on the state of welfare in England and Wales today, but it's a fair one.

So what happens when a charity's income falls behind its expenditure, when the cost of providing services becomes too great and projects have to close? Well, the gap in statutory provision becomes very apparent. This is the reality of the story behind the Children's Society's decision to withdraw from Wales.

Wales is one of the poorest countries in Europe. We work with some of the most vulnerable children and young people there. But we are subsidising our operations in Wales by over £1m a year. Charities require a secure financial base, and when income consistently falls short of expenditure, the sustainability of the work comes into question. We had no alternative but to withdraw from Wales.

Our own efforts to increase our income have been frustrated. For example, our applications for grants were not approved by the Welsh assembly.

We are offering to find ways of transferring our support and resources in Wales to an appropriate body - possibly the Church in Wales - so services can continue after our withdrawal. The task force set up by health minister Jane Hutt offers a way forward. But it needs to ask who is going to fund these services. All the indignation and anger in the world will not provide the answer. Unless there is a commitment to provide funding, these services will cease to function.

For the past 113 years our work in Wales has been subsidised by donations from our supporters in England and Wales. Now we have to ask others to start where we have left off and to make good the difference in funds. The bulk of our work in Wales is based around advocacy services, which are now a statutory requirement there. Is it right that these services should be subsidised by charities? We believe that the voluntary sector's role is to innovate and that income should be invested in pioneering programmes rather than subsidising statutory services.

We now have a practical task ahead. In the immediate future we need to ask where the money will come from to continue services in Wales. And then we must turn towards the long-term future and ask how much is the public prepared to invest in essential services for all children.