THE more we discover about the proposals to cut care to some disabled adults the more worrying they become.
The council is carrying out a consultation in a bid to find out what the impact would be if funding was stopped for services including day care and respite for people whose need is classed as ‘substantial.’ Services would remain in place for those said to be in ‘critical’ need.
The Examiner asked how many were in each category now but, amazingly, the council has no idea. We suspect thousands could fall into the ‘substantial’ category.
Many readers are deeply worried as to how the cuts may affect them so we wanted to gather together questions from readers and put them to the senior official who signed the letter sent out to thousands of families informing them of the consultation.
We were turned down.
The consultation process seems flawed when simple questions cannot be answered and Kirklees has no idea how much money this could save either in the short, medium or longer term. Alternatively, in the long-term it could prove more costly with people forced into residential care because their ageing parents can no longer cope.
This process is already causing stress and distress and the council’s reaction is doing nothing to ally these fears. Once the consultation period is over will it then be too late to halt the proposals?
