Some time ago, I wrote a letter to say that West Sussex County Council should be named and shamed for its handling of the closure of St Giles, a residential home for adults with physical and learning disabilities in Lancing.

Well, we are ten months down the line of that closure process and it has been the most horrendous experience imaginable.

As part of the so-called public consultation process on the future of St Giles in September 2003, my brother had his future needs assessed by an independent social worker from Leonard Cheshire Homes.

When I finally saw this report, I neither recognised my brother's needs within it nor his future wishes.

So, for the past ten months I have had to fight to get him properly assessed and even now it hasn't happened.

The latest rewrite of my brother's care plan says that an optional service for him from social services is accommodation with wheelchair access - this despite the fact that he is wheelchair-bound and losing what little mobility he has as he gets older.

If this situation hasn't been bad enough, the independent advocate who was employed by social services to give my brother a "voice" during the closure process has offered the most derisory of services.

Her original role was to help him complain to social services about his assessment if he felt it was wrong.

Despite being employed from September 2003, my brother's advocate never read his assessment to him. In fact, the first she saw of it was in March 2004, two months after the closure of St Giles was announced.

According to The Disability Rights Commission, his situation represents discrimination because he has been given a service he had no hope of ever accessing.

But can I get my brother's advocate removed by social services? No.

Having recently found out that his advocate had had only six weeks' training and no previous experience of advocacy when she first went to St Giles and having endured a number of other incidents, I finally asked the advocate to leave my brother alone.

I now find myself worrying about what will now happen to him because as social services have reinstated this advocate without any discussion. How can this be fair?

However, my biggest concern has been my brother's emotional well-being. Over the past ten months, I have watched him enter a spiral of decline as he has become distressed at the dispersal of not just residents but long-term staff from St Giles who he views as extended family.

Not only does my brother not know where everyone has gone to - no one has guaranteed any form of future contact for him. Some of these friendships span decades as my brother has lived in St Giles for 30 years.

Meanwhile, West Sussex County Council has continued to force through the closure of St Giles, apparently without any embarrassment at the mistakes that have happened.

The council still insists that my brother's quality of life will be better met elsewhere but having seen all the alternatives to St Giles, my brother has been offered, I know this to be untrue.

I hope social services are forced to take a good look at what they are doing with the closure of St Giles because until they do, I can see no end to my brother's misery.

-Anita Stepnitz, Portsmouth