A close call for the vulnerable

Tough decisions about where we house adults with profound disabilities have been challenged by a local advocate and expert. Frank le Duc reports

Two homes for adults with learning disabilities are to close. The decision has taken months to make. One reason for the decision taking so long is that those who live in the homes are among the least able to express their views. Councillors from all three parties on Brighton and Hove City Council – Labour, Conservative and Green – have asked officials to explore different options and ensure relatives, carers and staff have their say.

Even after the decision was taken to close the two homes in Hove and Portslade, the matter hasn’t been allowed to rest. Jason Carlisle, an advocate who lives in Hove and who works for the charity Mencap, urged councillors to consider whether they needed more and better information.

“It is playing politics with the lives of our city’s vulnerable and voiceless people”

The key reason behind the decision is money. The council is being asked to cut costs. Closing the two homes will save more than £400,000 a year. The justification is that the council spends much more on services for vulnerable adults than most comparable councils. At the same time the ruling Green group in Brighton and Hove wants such services to be run by the council rather than private providers or those from the voluntary sector.

It seems likely that one of the homes to close – in Old Shoreham Road, Portsade – will become part of the council’s housing stock. A neighbouring council property is already earmarked for transfer to Brighton and Hove Seaside Community Homes, a standalone organisation set up to lease and renovate council houses and flats.

The homes that will close – the other is in New Church Road, Hove – are relatively small and more expensive than some of their slightly bigger counterparts. The equivalent of just over eight full-time jobs will go as a result of the closures. Temporary staff are currently doing some of the work where staff have left their jobs but not
been replaced.

All these, and other factors, have been in play as councillors and officials have juggled budgets, their legal responsibilities and their duty of care to some of the most vulnerable adults in Brighton and Hove.

Even during the consultation, some have questioned the council’s other spending priorities, such as cycle lanes. But the reality is that within the council’s overall budget, each department is being asked year in year out to make savings in running costs. And projects like cycle lanes largely require one-off sums of money, much of which has come from outside bodies. The council’s share has tended to come from sources such as parking fines which can only be spent in limited ways.
Mr Carlisle raised concerns that at least one relative had felt threatened into withdrawing an objection to the closure of one of the homes. He was assured that the intention was to spell out the hard realities, not to make any kind of threat.
What was less clear was that the closure decision was not quite divided on party lines. The casting vote was needed after Councillor Ken Norman, Conservative, backed the closures. When the Tories ran the council, he had responsibility for adult social services. He said that no one wanted to make these sorts of decisions but the alternatives in all likelihood would be worse. It was better to plan ahead and act now, he said, minimising the sort of difficulties identified in Mr Carlisle’s impassioned plea.

ADVOCATE PLEADS FOR A RETHINK
Jason Carlisle, an advocate for vulnerable adults and a regional campaigns officer for Mencap, told the most recent meeting of the council: “I’m here today to talk to you regarding the impact of the decision to close two residential homes for adults with a learning disability in Hove, the manner in which that decision was arrived at and some of the figures being quoted.

“It is my understanding that the current gross expenditure for running both 228 New Church Road and 267 Old Shoreham Road is a combined total of £964,760. This figure is from a unit cost analysis done in March of this year.

“Council leader Jason Kitcat claims that current estimated savings to be made by closing both these services are around £600,000. This would mean that the council would then be allocating a budget of only £364,760 to provide a frankly bare minimum service for those affected. The difference is roughly two thirds.

“I fail to see how these complex and vulnerable people can have their needs met to an acceptable standard given the enormous cut in the budgets proposed. The people who this affects will suffer significant risk to their personal safety as a direct result of this decision. I cannot see how a service of comparable quality, safety and dignity can be offered given the reductions proposed.

“Remember, these are people whose disabilities were deemed so severe by managers employed by this council that they were not consulted on this proposal that directly affects them due to the heightened anxiety and the resultant likelihood of both challenging and self-injurious behaviour that this consultation would cause.

“Imagine then if you will, the state of heightened anxiety and distressing behaviours that are likely to occur if they are forced to move from homes that minimise all these risks as far as possible into new bigger and much less homely and frankly more institutional environments. This is going backwards and is certainly not valuing people. And it goes against everything government says about independent living, rights, choice and people’s control over their own lives.

“I’d like to illustrate this point with detailed knowledge of one particular person affected by this decision. I’m going to tell you about the last time she moved house, from somewhere she wasn’t particularly happy, to the place she has now eventually become the most settled anyone who knows her has ever seen her.

“It took her years to settle enough into her current home. In the first few years after she moved her anxiety was heightened to such an extent that it produced in her extreme self-injurious behaviour in which she would spend hours every day repeatedly banging her head against the wall of her bedroom, leaving her with a large open wound in the middle of her forehead that has become a permanent scar today.

“It is only because of the excellent trained staff team and the accumulated familiarity of her home environment over the last nine years that has enabled her to reduce these distressing daily incidents to virtually nothing.

“So the decision to close her home will in all likelihood condemn her to repeat those negative behaviours over and over again for who knows how long. That is not right. It is not fair. I ask you, what choice or control is she being given over her own life? And that’s just one person who is affected.

“Please think about all those who will be affected in their own way by this decision… Councillors, I urge you to conduct a full review and explore all other options that would be
less damaging to our city’s most vulnerable people.”