Campaign against care home closures gathering momentum…
Many disabled adults cannot live in the community. Stop closing care homes, begs Rosa Monckton.
More and more individuals and families (including Rescare members) are being affected by the proposals of many care providers, especially larger organisations such as Scope and HFT, to close residential care homes and ‘place people in the community’. Rescare has itself liaised with groups campaigning to save individual homes (such as Stanley Grange in Lancashire).
Last week we reported the launch of the Campaign for the Learning Disabled (CLD, remember this acronym!) and the launch of its petition on change.org , which we recommend you sign.
CLD aims to be a ‘militant’ organisation, in the sense of its “aiming to be an independent voice helping people with learning disabilities and their families and taking up the fight on their behalf”.
Rosa Monckton, co-founder of CLD, is clearly aiming to concentrate media attention on the issue of care home closures and push it up the political agenda. Hopefully, CLD will become the flag-bearer for others who have so far struggled to make make their voices heard. We wish it well.
In the Sunday Times 16th November, Rosa Monckton published an article headed “For some, human rights are the height of cruelty” and subheaded “Many disabled adults cannot live in the community. Stop closing care homes, begs Rosa Monckton”.
The article deserves to be read in full. It ends with these words:
When care becomes a commodity is when care begins to go wrong. With a colleague I have launched the Campaign for the Learning Disabled. We aim to be an independent voice helping people with learning disabilities and their families and taking up the fight on their behalf.
Those without mental capacity or the ability to look after themselves are simply told that they want to be independent. The assumption that everyone has the same desire for “independence” — and that everyone wants to exercise a “human right” to live as if they did not require 24-hour care — is deeply misguided. People with severe learning disabilities deserve to live with a peer group, in intentional communities, where they can be looked after with kindness and compassion and assured long-term continuity of care. It is both the least, and the most, that we can do. We owe it to them and to their families.