Axed Residential Care Beds Could Be Restored By New Administration

Residential care beds for the elderly, controversially axed from a Sutherland community care centre by the former Highland Council, could yet be restored under the new political administration in Inverness, it is hoped.

Members of a campaign group seeking to reinstate the beds at the Assynt Centre in Lochinver are to meet newly elected councillors for the North, West and Central Sutherland ward.

Group spokeswoman Madeline MacPhail said: “We’re going to have discussions on where we are now and what we are going to do. I brought this up at the hustings before the election and each of the 11 candidates said they would support re-opening this issue. After the election I sent letters to the three successful candidates in our ward just to remind them of the issue.”

She added: “We have high hopes. We think that, maybe for the first time for some time, councillors are going to run the council instead of officials.”

The group’s optimism has been bolstered by the decision, made at the first full meeting of the new SNP/Independent led council, to abandon an unpopular plan to privatise a number of Highland care homes, including Duthac House in Tain. Their hopes rose further with an announcement by the chairman of the housing and social work committee, Margaret Davidson, that care for older people would be a priority within the new administration.

Social work chiefs axed the two residential beds at the Assynt Centre in September 2005 on cost-cutting grounds, but agreed to continue providing a 24/7 respite care service. But in November 2006 councillors voted to cut back on the respite service, restricting it to weekdays apart from six weekends in the year.

Campaigners are also concerned that the Assynt Centre is no longer providing a warden service to a nearby complex of 12 sheltered houses. Not-for-profit organisation Trust Housing, owners of the Assynt Centre building and the housing complex, previously paid the local authority £13,000 a year to provide the service but have now appointed their own warden.

Mrs MacPhail said: “Now it would appear that Highland Council have handed the whole enterprise over to Trust Housing with no input from the staff, whom the residents of the sheltered housing knew and had come to trust. And, of course, the fee from Trust Housing has ceased as well.

“Hence we have a situation where, in some weeks there are no respite care residents – the very nature of respite care – but the staff is sitting there with little or no work to do. In the past they looked after not only the residents and day-care clients in the centre, but also the sheltered housing residents.

“There is a feeling that social work got rid of their service to the sheltered houses, and also the income to the council that came with it, because they thought that by now the respite care beds in the centre would be closed.

“They, of course, planned to get rid of all that by December 2005, as revealed in e-mails we obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.And they would have succeeded probably, if we had not mounted a campaign. It seems to me that it is essential to stop the council in its tracks before the whole of North-West Sutherland loses any facilities left to them for care of the elderly.”

Mrs MacPhail added: “It is inconceivable, but true, that the council has dismantled a facility much needed and prized in this area. We need our residential beds and full week-long respite care reinstated. This would make full use of the staff and provide a necessary service to the area – a service that those in the more populated areas take for granted.”

A Highland Council spokeswoman confirmed that Trust Housing had decided to make their own warden arrangements. However she stressed that home care, lunch club and day care services were still provided by social work staff and the centre to sheltered housing residents.

“Discussions with Trust Housing are ongoing concerning rental and other financial issues,” she said. “The reconfiguration of the Assynt Centre service has allowed the return to the trust of the former ‘warden’s house,’ which was actually used as offices. This not only makes available a small family house for rent but will of course be reflected in a lower property rental to the council.

“Highland Council offered to retain the warden and community alarm functions for the trust houses. The decision to make the new arrangements was taken by Trust Housing.”

The spokeswoman said the provision of a seven-day residential service at the Assynt Centre would require the recruitment of additional staff at considerable additional cost, for which there was no available budget.