Sunday 13 January 2013

Silence from Medway council over future of elderly care homes

Concern over the elderly and specialist care homes within Medway council are again under scrutiny. (some bits archieved here and here) Maureen Ruparal, a former Libdem Councillor who led the fight to defend the selling off of the Dementia care home of Nelson's court has again raised the issue with a letter to the Medway Messenger:


The ways of Medway council become more and more hard to understand.

  Residents, staff and relatives of service users in our linked service centres are fed up with sitting in limbo and not knowing what is happening.  At a meeting last Autumn, after the campaign to keep these centres in council control was lost council officers assured us that we would be kept informed, and we were also promised that specifications for the tendering process would be run past us before being published. 

 So far, nothing appears to have happened at all (after one and a half years of uncertainty), and I am forcibly reminded of the shambles when there was a huge rush (and incidentally huge expense) to empty out the sheltered schemes over six years ago.  Then Shalder House, one of the homes in question, was only sold last year!

  Private sector care homes in Medway have taken a bit of official criticism over the past few months, can we hope that the Tory controlled council are having second thoughts about disposing of the best run care homes in the area?

Medway Council are apparantly still not taking this seriously.

This is an important issue for residents and their families and will have serious ramifications if not addressed and handled correctly.

It is too late to save the homes, we tried and failed.

It is not too late to make the process of privitisation as painless as possible but we need the Council to assist in this and be as transparent as possible.

It is not playing politics to say;

Families and residents are concerned and worried, they can't be left in bureaucratic limbo - they're listening, time for the Council to start talking.

1 comment:

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