8:50am Monday 15th June 2009
FIVE day care centres for the elderly – including three mobile units for rural parishes – are shutting as Herefordshire Council seeks savings.
All five centres are either underused, no longer viable, or both, in a plan confirmed by the cabinet this week.
Leominster’s Norfolk House will go, with clients off to nearby Waverley House. Others ending are the mobile services to Dinedor, Sellack and at Arkwright Court, Leominster.
The providers of mobile centres serving Canon Pyon and Staunton-on-Wye have already shut, with clients going to Weobley.
Councillor Olwyn Barnett, cabinet member for social care, said making the recommendations had been difficult and would leave some service users unhappy.
But members agreed the £50,000 worth of savings outweighed keeping current arrangements.
Earlier this year, a special scrutiny report showed wide variations in the way centres were used compared to the money spent on them. It recommended new assessments for accessing day services and developing community-specific initiatives.
A six-month analysis of contract values and capacity compared to levels of use showed the overall cost was higher than it should be.
Travel arrangements to and from centres were criticised as “chaotic, illogical and inefficient” and are set for a shake up too, cutting the number and length of journeys users are making.
The biggest loss under the plan is Norfolk House, the last in-house day service in the county. It is next door to the Waverley House centre, which comes under the council’s 30-year contract with Shaw Healthcare to provide a seven-day service for 20 people a day.
Cabinet was told Norfolk House could not meet the standard offered by its neighbour and was duplicating a service.
Clients from the other closing centres would transfer to local equivalents, with friendship groups kept together where possible.
Opposition leader Councillor Terry James said the recommendation should see an end to the “shipping” of elderly care clients to centres around the county.
All other centres remain unchanged.
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