Highland Council set to axe Assynt care centre

HIGHLAND Council appears set to finally bring the axe down on the Assynt Community Care Centre, in Lochinver, in a bid to cut costs.

Area social work manager Bob Silverwood visited the centre last week and warned staff it was in line for closure.

But officials are holding out hope that services for the elderly might still be available from the building.

They are having talks with local community enterprise group O4O (Older people for Older People) in the hope that they will take over the provision of services to the elderly in the area.

Local people this week expressed fury at the closure and said that a Facebook campaign had been set up in a bid to keep it open.

Social work manager Mr Silverwood’s visit was in advance of a full Highland Council meeting next Thursday (11th February) at which the budget for the next financial year will be set.

The proposal to shut down the centre, which is run but not owned by the local authority, is expected to be on the agenda.

Nine jobs are at stake at the unit which has three respite beds and provides day care, a lunch club, a helpcall service and other services for the elderly.

Staff have been told every effort will be made to deploy them elsewhere.

A Highland Council spokesman this week said the centre, which costs £230,000 a year to run, was operating at only 10 per cent occupancy.

He said: “The respite beds are not being used but we have got to provide 24 hour cover to run. We’re not walking away, we are in discussions with a social enterprise group to see what can be done.

“It is proposed that we will be funding any future service provided by a social enterprise.”

The O4O project comes under the auspices of UHI, the prospective University of the Highlands and Islands.”

UHI spokeswoman Glenda Johnson said the O4O team was working to help the community to design and run a new service called Community Care Assynt. “This would involve a daytime drop-in and resource centre with a lunch club, and there are plans to develop mobile support services in the future,” she said.

Community leaders have long claimed that the local authority had deliberately run-down the centre over the past five years with a view to closing it.

Social work chiefs axed the two residential beds at the centre in September 2005 on cost-cutting grounds, but agreed to continue providing a 24/7 respite service.

However, in November 2006 that service was cut back to weekdays, apart from six weekends a year.

A dedicated action group was set up in 2007 and a campaign launched to reinstate the services.

Chair of the action group, Lairg GP Dr David Slator, was on holiday this week and unable to comment.

In a letter to the NT this week, Durness native Willie Morrison, whose late mother received care at the unit, wrote: “Certainly the council’s social work budget is under very great pressure, but the proposal to close lifeline facilities in a remote community, to save little more than twice social work director Harriet Dempster’s annual salary, is a harsh solution indeed and unfair to Assynt people, who after all receive no discount in council or income tax commensurate with the overall lack of public services.”

Assynt Community Council chairman Robin Noble said: “What I’ve gathered so far is that the council do intend to close the centre, but they have said the community and action group could have two weeks to come up with alternative proposals.

“If that’s true then it is utterly ridiculous to try and solve the whole problem in just two weeks.”

Constituency MSP Jamie Stone said: “It’s important to find out the Highland Council’s thinking behind this proposal. If it is financial, then have all ways of making the Assynt Centre cost-efficient so that it can stay open been considered?

“Secondly, what representations have been made to the Scottish Government regarding the funding it gives the Highland Council to support the likes of the Assynt Centre?

“Thirdly, how would the Highland Council continue to deliver a genuinely local service if the Assynt Centre was to close?”

Councillor for north, west and central Sutherland, Robbie Rowantree, said: “It’s unlikely the centre will be the way we know it now but the local members of the administration are working hard with the community and council officials to look at what alternative provision we can fund.

“O4O may well be one of our models. The current model of care is costing over £250,000 a year and is only used at about ten per cent.

“Two things have happened in Assynt which has created this difficulty. One is the unprecedented pressure placed on the council’s budget by the financial crisis and the debt the country is in. The other is that the council has been funding an expansion Care at Home service and this is now beginning to deliver results. We are following Scottish Government policy which is to deliver care at home rather than through care homes.”