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Your comments on some of the most popular stories of the day taken from The Scotsman website and Facebook page
Care crisis
The plight of a 91-year-old Edinburgh woman who faced being abandoned at home without care has raises questions about the city council’s care home closure plan.
This situation has been festering for years. Over a decade ago I told Shona Robison that reshaping the balance of care policy would fail. That care homes and downstream hospital beds should not close without certain community resources being in place. The Edinburgh situation shows the failure .... not enough care at home staff. People stuck in hospital waiting on packages or care homes. But they propose to close more care homes. The consequence will be increased bed blocking. Meanwhile, people are finding care packages reduced or cut across Lothian.
Jacqueline Bell
Can’t think why there is a chronic shortage of staff...
Iain Brough Proposals to close five care homes makes no sense at all when there's a shortage of carers. Are they looking to sell the land to developers for more unaffordable/student housing?
Heather Ford It begs the question how safe a bedridden individual is even with a care package. What if there was a fire or some nasty individual broke in? Doesn’t bear thinking about.
Jacqueline Brown These homes are closing due to being deemed unsuitable, probably due to legislation within the Care Commission changing. It can be something like size/ access or no en-suite. A lot of these homes were built a long time ago and can’t be re-modelled. Councils all over are going to have to find a way to care for the elderly in their communities. This is
Scotsman.com & @Thescotsmannewspaper
not an SNP problem, this is Uk-wide.
Jane Dickie
Independence is inevitable, they say, as supported by the young. Is that why they get “freebies” and the elderly are treated like this? Shocking.
Robert Muir
It makes you wonder how many are being left to fend for themselves. I hope it doesn't take a death to get the councils to stand up and be counted.
Margaret Cummings
I despair at the treatment of the elderly in Scotland.
Paula Docherty
Most care home are privately owned. Please stop blaming the NHS and councils. Start pointing the fingers at the owners of these privately owned care homes.
Paul Mcmungall Covid has given the council the opportunity to close these homes. They say the homes are unsuitable, but they also say they have the money to invest in care at home. Care at home requires much more assessment than coming into a care home.
If a patient is in hospital they can wait months for a package of care to become available. Their home has to be assessed, equipment needs to be sourced, risk assessments need to be carried out for the service user and the staff. Nurses,
GPS, all health professionals will be put under more pressure to do home visits. Lastly, if a service user goes into hospital for something like an infection they will lose their package of care and have to reapply for it. It’s unreal. The homes need to stay open. There is space for new residents but they are being wound down. It's sad as the workers are all amazing and the council are losing such a vital service to the community.
TED talk
Kay Resarf
The First Minister set out her vision for Scotland’s role in tackling the climate crisis, and spoke about the role of smaller countries in climate action at a TED talk in Edinburgh in the run-up to COP26.
She has lots of ambitions – improve education, stop drug deaths in Scotland, independence etc and she hasn't delivered on a single one of them in all the time the SNP has been in power. Waste of hot air and time even thinking of listening to her.
Martin Goodman
Can't wait to hear she's putting a halt to all North Sea oil production, and banning deforestation in Scotland.
Kyle Danko
I’m sure the Russian, American and Chinese delegations will be blown away by what she has to say.
Elizabeth Mcarthur
It wasn’t that long ago she was advocating for an independent Scotland to be a world-leading oil producer that would make Scotland “wealthy”. She wanted new funding for exploration of new oil fields as well as expansion of existing ones. The brass neck of it!
Margot Stewart
I bet she is seething at not being invited to the main event.
Charlie Duncan