Care home petition attracts significant support in hours
WITHIN 36 hours of being launched this week, a petition calling on NHS Highland’s chairman to immediately reopen the Dail Mhor House care facility at Strontian had garnered nearly 600 signatures, with more being steadily added.
Last week the Lochaber Times reported that NHS Highland had agreed to reopen the home for day care and other services but that it would not reopen in the foreseeable future for residential care.
Quizzed over what this all meant for residential care in the long term at Dail Mhor, an NHS Highland spokesperson said last week: ‘We have made no secret that during the period in which essential remedial work has been carried out in Dail Mhor, NHS Highland has been undertaking a process of looking at how we provide sustainable and affordable long-term care in residential settings and until that process has been completed, no decision will be made.’
But the news prompted widespread disappointment and now the community councils of West Ardnamurchan, Acharacle, Morvern, Ardgour and Sunart are calling on people to sign their petition and lobby the board of NHS Highland.
Dail Mhor House was closed in August last year and its five residents temporarily relocated on the understanding that essential plumbing work was required which would take approximately two weeks to complete.
But seven months later community councillors say there is no sign from NHS Highland that the facility will ever be reopened for residential care, and that there is a worsening backlog for respite care.
‘We welcome the announcement to reopen Dail Mhor for day care, but NHS Highland’s failure to provide adequate alternative arrangements for residential and respite care for this area continues to discriminate against former Dail Mhor residents and their friends and families, and continues to fail a community which values its elderly care provision,’ said the community councils in a joint statement launching the petition.
And the statement continues: ‘We call on David Alston, chair of NHS Highland board of directors; Elaine Meade, NHS Highland chief executive and Shona Robison MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport, to reopen Dail Mhor House immediately and enter into full and open dialogue with the community about their plans for long-term community care provision.’
An angry Denise Anderson, Sunart Community Council chairperson, told the Lochaber Times this week: ‘NHS Highland needs to know we will not take this lying down.
‘We are going to fight this and hopefully at the NHS Highland meeting next week when the strategy paper concerning this is discussed, people will see sense and agree this home must be reopened.’
Geoff Campbell of West Ardnamurchan Community Council added: ‘Many of us knew NHS Highland was looking for an excuse to close Dail Mhor, so when this plumbing issue cropped up, they pounced on it. This is closure by stealth, and they shouldn’t get away with it.’
James Hilder, also of Sunart Community Council, said: ‘We must get the home up and running again, and if new facilities are required, let’s use Dail Mhor until these can be put in place.
‘National statistics show that this community should have at least 15 residential care beds, yet we’ve been forced to manage with just six for years, and now those have been taken away.’
And David Ogg, speaking for Acharacle Community Council, commented: ‘The importance for elderly people to be able to stay in the communities they know, near friends and family, cannot be overstated, and is heightened in an area like ours.’
Lochaber lead councillor Andrew Baxter, who attended the recent meeting between the local community councils and NHS Highland, is also now urging people to support the petition.
‘NHS Highland has used every excuse possible to effectively close Dail Mhor House care home in Strontian – something they’ve been determined to do for years,’ said Mr Baxter.
‘Please support the local community by signing the petition.’