Tough decision at tough time

I am a young person who has been supported by CLIC Sargent.

The charity have helped me to become the person that I am - without their help and support I wouldn’t be where I am today.

I’d really like to tell you about the ways in which the charity has helped me. I’ve been to MSH many times and loved every minute while I was there but I’ve also heard and seen when families that really need the help and support of CLIC Sargent but haven’t been able to get it when they needed it most.

CLIC Sargent are currently only supporting two out of three... This is not good enough. Without the support of my social worker provided by CLIC Sargent, I wouldn’t have been allowed pizza on the bone marrow transplant ward - I wouldn’t have mentally survived the nine weeks I spent in a room where the windows were bolted shut, the door was not allowed to be opened by me ( I had to use a commode this whole time and dignity and my privacy in these moments didn’t exist).

I wouldn’t have been able to stay in my student house despite not being a student, I wouldn’t have been able to get benefits to support my year and a half break from uni that I was forced to take. I wouldn’t have returned to uni because I wouldn’t have known where to start.

She chased the tutors, contacted student services to get me the extra support I needed, contacted student finance to sort out my loans. I wouldn’t have made it through mentally when the life I thought I was going to have was no longer a reality. I wouldn’t have ever been able to see the positives, I wouldn’t have been able to go on the sailing trips she signposted me to.

I wouldn’t have been able to work on my mobility, I wouldn’t have been able to get a degree, I wouldn’t have been able to look to my future, I wouldn’t be where I am today. CLIC Sargent social workers remove the wouldn’ts from our lives and helps us rebuild our futures.

I’ve written a blog post about my opinions on the proposed closure of Malcolm Sargent House. Currently I don’t feel that the opinions like mine are being shared or heard. I want that to change- it’s great having a quote from one of the ‘ big wigs’ of the charity but people understandably react to this in a negative way- they don’t see like I have the hours they spend chatting to children, young people and their families to find out what helps them, and what they still struggle with and no one is helping them with.

They don’t see the hard decisions they have to face on a daily basis, they don’t see that these people could be on a much higher salary if they were working in the corporate world.

They don’t see like I have how much they care about every single person who has been supported by the charity and every person who helps them support us through volunteering or from their generous donations.

I want people to be able to see what vital services CLIC Sargent offers to people like me, and to imagine what life is like for those not getting the support.

I want people to see that the charity sector need their support now more than ever. I want the public to see that this has to be where the CLIC Sargent focuses because not supporting someone is not fair.

The charity need to work on this service so it reaches all, and it reaches everyone well so more families, children and young people can say CLIC Sargent supported me to be the person I am today. Bob Shields got it spot on in his column about the community backing Malcolm Sargent House.

But before Bob decides to put the CLIC Sargent coin cans in the Twa Dogs pub, just to let him know, CLIC Sargent has advised that any funds raised during this time in hope of money going towards keeping Malcolm Sargent House open can’t be guaranteed.

If after the consultation period expires on July 13th and MSH is shut, all money raised will go down to CLIC Sargent’s big pot and not stay in Ayrshire. I found your article on the local election expenses ( 24/ 6/ 16) highly disingenuous.

By selectively highlighting only some SNP campaign expenses you painted an entirely false picture of which businesses we used during the campaign.

We made significant use of local businesses throughout the campaign. As the receipts you viewed show, we spent some £ 2560 with local printers, including Pro Guide Publishing in Troon and Minuteman Press in Ayr.

We also placed adverts in local publications, and took out insurance through a local broker in Dundonald, in total accounting for a further £ 1400 of our expenses.

In a fast- paced campaign it is not always possible to source materials locally, particularly at short notice and at an affordable cost.

The SNP’s campaign was funded through membership dues and donations by supporters, so the campaign team had to balance using local businesses where we could against getting the best value for money and quick turnarounds for some items of expenditure. The Ayrshire Post is constantly lambasted by South Ayrshire Council regarding reporting of countless issues over the years with the budget cut backs and bin strikes the most recent.

Well, I think they should thank the Post for intervening to facilitate an resolution between Councillor Ian Douglas and SAC on the case of the lost Plaque as reported in last week’s Post.

Councillor Douglas says it is undoubtedly worth a bit of scrap money. Where is it? Has it been stolen? Is it in safe hands? Why has it not reappeared? Who do we call? The Post Busters! Yes, the Post came to the rescue and asked Donald Gillies the council’s head of property and risk, who is in the same building as Councillor Douglas and who probably acknowledges him every day of the week, where has the plaque disappeared to ?

The council’s IT system is flawed but e- mail between people works most of the time and old fashioned talking to one another is actually a good method of communication.

I do applaud Councillor Douglas in his endeavours to have the original plaque re- erected but why did it take him going to the local newspaper to get an answer to his question ?

All parts of William Wallace must be turning in his grave if he could see how the current Guardians of Scotland conduct themselves in Castle Greyskull or should it be Emptyskull ? Whilst we all agree that the movement of flammable material should be conducted with great care it is not helped by ‘ incendiary’ articles like this ( front page, June 22).

The facts are somewhat different to those in your paper; jet fuel ( Jet A- 1 is vastly safer than the petrol driven round in tankers on our streets ( a much riskier environment than rail movements).

Specifically the flashpoint of petrol is - 45C whereas for Jet A- 1 it is 38C.

In non technical terms, if you stand in a pool of Jet A- 1 and drop a lighted match - the match would go out! You can guess what would happen if you did that with petrol!

None of the above negates the fact that large quantities of flammable liquids should be moved with minimum risk to the public. In reply to the letter from Forbes Robertson ( June 17 edition), I would like to say, 10 out of 10 to Mr Robertson. I couldn’t agree more. Why is there never enough funding to support and look after the generation who looked after us when we were growing up, but there seems to be a bottomless pit of cash to be thrown away on an ever- increasing number of methadone programmes to ‘ help’ people who have never been, and never will be, anything other than a drain on our society’s resources?

This needs to stop and a more effective solution has to be found.

How about dropping them off on Ailsa Craig for a few months?