sheltered housing

More on sheltered housing warden cuts in Barnet - an example of the sort of Tory public service cuts we'll see more and more:

We go now to a tall, brutalist council building in Barnet's Totteridge and Whetstone, where yours truly is holed up at a cabinet meeting in a large committee room, watching Cllr Mike Freer, the spiritual void who runs Barnet council, brush aside the concerns of elderly sheltered housing residents who are about lose their cherished onsite warden service in Freer's latest cost-cutting wheeze.  

As reported here recently, Barnet council and its financial team - that group of fiscal legends best known for investing (riskily) £27m in Icelandic banks, where the whole pile tanked - claim they need to find £12m in savings to balance books compromised by inadequate central government settlements (ie, it's Labour's fault - a point that Labour rubbishes, for what it's worth), inflation, and a desire to keep council tax increases below three percent as local and national elections loom.

The council believes it can save £950,000 (re-forecast to £400,000 in a rapidly revised proposal for this evening's meeting) by removing onsite residential wardens (whose tasks include dealing with health and security emergencies, organising GP visits, organising social activities, and checking on residents at least once a day) from sheltered housing scheme. They'd be replaced with a ‘floating’ support service where support workers based at hubs would visit elderly people who met eligibility criteria.

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It's a proposal that sheltered housing residents hate and have complained bitterly about since it was announced. Many feel that tonight's their last shot at putting cabinet members off. That's why hundreds of residents and their family members have turned up to this cabinet meeting to fight the mighty Freer.

Alas - Freer is unmoved before the hordes.

In a 'prearranged answers to questions from residents' session - with unarranged audience cries of 'have you got a mother?' and 'what about all the money you threw away in Iceland?' and 'I'm going to hold you personally responsible for my mother's health' ringing round the room - the disdainful Freer lays out the council's case for forcing residents to give up the wardens they trust and depend on.

And now over at LC with the sheltered housing story.

There will be another protest in Barnet at the council's plans to cut the sheltered housing warden service soon. Will post location details, etc, as soon as I have them.

Updated 28 May 2009

A bit more about the realities of Tories on the ground:

Parked high outside Hendon Town Hall is one of those wretchedly dated, revolving billboards that councils use to spam the masses with unsubstantiated PR bilge: at various turns of the loop, this one proclaims that the Tory Barnet council is 'working for a healthy community,' and 'supporting the vulnerable to live independent and active lives,' and screeds of other modernisation tripe.

All is not lost, though. There is this evening a nice, large protest group under the billboard - a protest group that is made up of exactly the vulnerable Barnet residents that the council purports to so fervidly support.

These protestors are very pissed off. They are Barnet sheltered housing residents, and they're picketing this evening's Barnet council AGM to protest at a council proposal to remove on-site wardens (people who help in emergencies, organise GP visits and appointments, and check in with each resident at least once a day) from their sheltered housing blocks and replace the wardens with a 'floating' support service, whatever the hell that is. They're mostly very elderly (in their 80s and even 90s) and at that unlovely point in life where people become too frail to stand. They're huddled in wheelchairs, or clutching walking-frames, or leaning on carers and chairs.

They're not too sure what a 'floating' support service is, either. The cynics among them have a few ideas - they think the council imagines a system where residents telepathically trip some alarm when dropping dead from heart attack, thus alerting a random officer somewhere in the borough to stop by later on with a shovel.

Bill Campbell, Barnet council's unnaturally oily senior press creature, refused point-blank to say what a floating service was when I told him that I didn't quite grasp the concept - Campbell said he couldn't say what a floating service was until the cabinet voted for or against the concept at its 8 June meeting. I said that someone must know what a floating service was, if only to be in a position to put the concept of it before the cabinet. Campbell said again that he couldn't say what the concept would be. I thought probably somebody could. This went on for longer than was strictly fascinating. Suffice to say a floating service is not one the council wants to brag about. Let's return on 8 June.

Back to the protest: long-time (eight years) sheltered housing resident Mary Dorrie, 87, glares across the small lawn at the front of the town hall, where grinning councillors sweep past the wheelchairs and walking-frames, and up the town hall stairs to their meeting. Some avoid the whole scene by driving past it. They pull up at the front door in cabs and fancy cars. The crowd boos each time one arrives.

'You just can't answer for this lot,' says Dorrie furiously, watching councillors disembark from late-model cars and shake hands with various high-vis-dressed coppers as they enter the hall. 'They're just going in that door and they're just smiling, with all old people sitting out here, freezing. I'd love to get inside there.'