Outcry At Plans To Move Alzheimer Facilities

Carers of people with Alzheimer’s disease have attacked “outrageous” plans to move a day centre to another part of Hull. Hull Council wants to move people who use the day centre in Bellfield Avenue in east Hull, to the Fernleigh centre, on Waterloo Street, in west Hull. The council say they can no longer use Bellfield as it also houses a residential unit for children.

But retired prison officer Bob Clappison, whose wife Eileen was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s five years ago, said that was nonsense as a locked door divided the two units.

And he blasted the “underhand” way in which the decision was made. He said: “We were invited to a discussion on a possible closure and when we got there we found it was a fait accompli. I didn’t even know there were children there and my wife who goes three times a week didn’t know. The buses they use are small minibuses and they are not going to run a bus without it being used to its maximum. I

“f my wife was picked up first she’s going to sit there while it goes round east Hull picking people up. A lot of Alzheimer’s people are incontinent and if they are going to be sat on a bus for an hour we are going to get a lot of incidents. It’s very undignified. It is outrageous for them to cut services even further than they have already been cut.”

Meetings have been held with carers, but there will be further rounds of meetings with carers and sufferers and assessments, before a move sometime next year.

Angela Dunn, Hull Council’s head of community care, said the Commission for Social Care Inspection had asked them to consider the “appropriateness” of mixing children’s residential services with older people services. “We have decided it is not appropriate to have that sort of mix based on the national standards for residential care,” she said.

She said they wanted to keep staff and clients together and would make an assessment of everyone’s transport needs.

They were also looking, with the primary care trust, at moving the occupational therapy service they had at Bellfield to a new centre.

Council leader Coun Carl Minns said: “This isn’t about budget cutting and quality of service. This has been forced on us by the commission.”