Care home funding fear
QuestionsoverStrathendrick future
The future of Strathendrick Care Home is still in limbo.
The 12-bed home in Balfron faced the axe three years ago to support the funding of Stirling Care Village.
The closure was averted when councillors for the area persuaded Stirling Council of the need for a local care hub, providing short-term respite care and intermediate care.
The integrated joint board is now the body responsible for the service at the home, despite Stirling Council owning the building.
The cash-strapped IJB is currently carrying out a review of all its services, including the future of the care home, which council officials expect could cost up to £533,000 to keep open until the end of the year.
At a virtual meeting of Stirling Council last Thursday local councillor Alistair Berrill, who has been working to try to save the home, raised concerns over a reference to the home in a wider report on the council’s finances.
He asked why a sum of £100,000 allocated to the care home was not being carried forward and whether it indicated there had been a decision taken to close the care home.
Chief finance officer Jim Boyle said there were a number of proposals where the sums had not been carried forward in the reports and insisted: “It’s nothing to do with any decision to close the care home.”
The council’s finance and economy committee was told in February that an options appraisal was underway in the health and social care partnership but that no decisions had been made.
At that time, committee chair Margaret Brisley said: “The building is our asset so if the IJB, after their options appraisal, decide they are not going to use it and have no other use for it it will be up to the council to look at what to do with it.
“But until such times as we have heard from the IJB we just have to wait for the outcome.”
Tory councillors had said the issue was causing local concern and if the IJB decided to close the home the decision would reflect on the council as well as leaving the local authority with the question of what to do with it.
In December social care bosses from the Clackmannanshire and Stirling health and social care partnership denied there were any imminent plans to stop services for the elderly at the rural care home and no decision had been taken.
The previous month council social care managers said they were looking into the possibility of using Strathendrick for other types of care, including for children, and that the IJB was considering whether it could be used for adults with disabilities.