‘Hang your heads in shame’

YOUR story on Friday, October 7, highlighting the plight of Peter Adams, severely disabled by muscular dystrophy and facing a loss of care support, is a damning indictment of West Sussex County Council’s programme of pernicious cuts in care support to the most vulnerably in our society. Mr Adams requires 24-hour care.

The council considers five hours is more than enough and has cut his funding accordingly, condemning this poor man to a living hell.

Sadly, his case is but the tip of the iceberg; 4,500 other disabled and elderly people in West Sussex are to lose all their care support.

Thousands more are nearing the end of their lives with little in the way of savings, or with lifelong disabilities such as Downs syndrome and cerebral palsy. They face cuts in care similar to those of Mr Adams.

This shameful state of affairs is part of a programme to save £79 million over the next two years.

Councillors are forcing the disabled and elderly to shoulder 40% of these cuts.

They are wrong in believing these cuts in care support will lead to any savings.

The experience of other councils which have gone down this road is that those like Mr Adams, who lose their care, quickly deteriorate and require far greater medical care in the future.

We pride ourselves on being a civilised society.

Priority cases like that of Mr Adams must come ahead of weekly bin collections, £100,000 salaries for council employees, inflated expense accounts for councillors and the millions spent on consultants, some of whom charge £2,400 a day for their services.

WSCC is one of the most affluent councils in the country, yet its record on care support is one of the worst.

In a recent survey, conducted by Demos [independent think tank], this council came out a lowly 143rd out of 152 councils in England and Wales.

The ruling Conservative councillors who voted for these cuts should hang their heads in shame.

Barry Pickthall, Don’t Cut Us Out Campaign