Last residents to leave Auchinlee

AUCHINLEE’S last six patients will be moved out before the end of March, when the Campbeltown dementia care home closes, writes Sandy Neil.

A plan was drawn up at a Kilmory Castle meeting last February to save Auchinlee from closing for a year.

Demonstrators lined the entrance to the Argyll and Bute Council HQ to fight the closure of the loss-making 24 bed specialist dementia home in Campbeltown, used by many Mid Argyll residents and their families.

Late in 2016, its owners Crossreach, a social care charity linked to the Church of Scotland and Argyll and Bute Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP), stated Auchinlee was unsustainable due to the six figure losses, including the high cost of recruiting agency workers to cover staff shortages in a rural area.

An 11th-hour reprieve in mid December 2016 postponed a final decision for three months after Crossreach and the HSCP agreed to share the losses.

Their representatives joined Argyll and Bute for the crucial meeting to decide the home’s fate, alongside campaigners, who feared a move 130 miles away outside Argyll would shorten residents’ lives.

A proposal was agreed for the HSCP, the Integration Joint Board and CrossReach to share the costs of keeping Auchinlee open for a year until March 31, 2018. Health officials estimated it would cost around £291,000 from their cashstrapped budget.

The parties agreed ‘a transitional period was required to develop a local alternative for the existing relatives and this should be in place by March 31, 2018’.

They also agreed that ‘none of the existing residents, subject to their individual needs and client choice, should have their placements outside Kintyre’.

The IJB’s meeting this month agreed two priorities: that residents ‘will not be moved out of the area unless it is their wish’ and the HSCP would ‘do all it can to protect jobs and staff in the area’.

An update presented to the Mid Argyll, Kintyre and the islands area committee on Wednesday stated: ‘We have agreed a moving date with Crossreach of March 22/23 for the six residents from Auchinlee.

‘Twelve posts were advertised and we recruited to eight.

‘The remaining four posts have been re-advertised and this has now gone external.

‘We have recruited six staff from

Auchinlee.’