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 | You and Yours - Transcript BBC Radio 4 |
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| TX: 13.07.05 - Katherine House PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON |
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| Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON Phasing out institutions, housing people with disabilities, has been government policy for the past 20 years. The idea is that with the right support people can live independent lives in the community. But questions are being raised about whether this model is really suitable for everyone. In Tameside in Greater Manchester Katherine House, which has 15 residents and also provides respite care for people with mental and physical disabilities, is faced with closure. Residents and their families claim that the alternative care they'll receive in newly built self-contained flats won't meet their needs. We'll be discussing that in a moment with the council and with the lawyer now representing the residents. First though, Louise Cocker went to Katherine House to meet some of the people who live there. PARKINSON Brian Parkinson. I can't tell you how long I've lived here because I've lived it that long that it's got a way of life. COCKER And what kind of care do you get here Brian? PARKINSON Brilliant - 24 hour care, which I do need. On my last visit to the hospital the doctor told me that I needed 24 hour care and if I didn't receive it me best idea was to move out and - I might as well move out and live on me own. COCKER Why do you need the 24 hour care? PARKINSON Well I had a brain abscess and since then I've suffered from epilepsy and of course I have seizures, some which are quite heavy and if I do I flake out altogether. Probably if I happened to have a seizure during the night I don't know what would happen, whereas here there's always some staff to help me. BRINKHALL We're in the lounge, the smoking lounge, and at the one side there's the kitchen where they make all our brews and everything. Saturday evening we turn it into a little social place and have games and everything. My name is Victoria Brinkhall and I live at Katherine House. I sit in that room, the boys - some of the boys are in that room, there's games in that room, there's Mark in that room. This is my room. Do you want to go into my room? I've got everything here and I have to have a buzzer. Now I've got two buzzers because it's big - my room - it's not - I can't reach the one buzzer, so there's a buzzer over there - can you see the buzzer over the back of my bed, there's one at the back of my bed but it takes such a long time, so what they've done they've put another buzzer over this side because I couldn't reach it at one side. ACTUALITY - CHATTING IN HOME This is another lounge, this is the no smoking lounge. Now the kitchen - everything's the same but it's no smoking. I think they're all outside today aren't they. Everyone's outside aren't they today. TERRY This is Thomas, he's 67 and I'm his cousin Terry. He's been in here shortly after it opened, he's been here over 20 years. And he needs 24 hour care. He needs a care for everything, he can't do anything for himself apart from speak and be a bit cheeky. He needs to be got up in the morning, via the use of a hoist, and fed - give him his drinks - and his catheter and everything like that, so he needs to be constantly monitored. Thomas has in his room decanters with drinks in and he likes to have a drop of brandy before - sometimes and so they have - the staff have the time at night to give them their drink but in the new place he'll be told what time he has to go to bed because the staff will be going off duty. ROBINSON Residents and relatives at Katherine House. Yvonne Hossack is the solicitor representing the residents, councillor John Taylor is responsible for personal services in Tameside. Councillor Taylor, why are you closing Katherine House? TAYLOR We need to go back to 1999. Tameside Council realised that Katherine House, a good example, what we were looking at was two bathrooms for 20 people, we realised that the rooms were no longer meeting the criteria that we needed. In our opinion the building was no longer suitable for meeting the needs of those people there. So we decided that we would like to renew it. And the first stage of this was to contact the residents. Our preferred option was to remove the people from Katherine House, put them in temporary accommodation, and rebuild Katherine House on the existing site. And the residents told us, in no uncertain terms, that they didn't think that was a good option because in their opinion they thought people would not be moving back. So we then looked at another option, again consulting with them, to find another site, somewhere in Tameside, and rebuild there. Again, we wanted a purpose built building that would meet the needs of people with physical disabilities. The residents made it clear to us again that they didn't want to move from the Ashton area of Tameside and we accommodated that, we found a site, made all the plans for rebuilding the new facility and found out the site was contaminated and needed a quarter of a million pounds to rebuild. We went back to the residents and told them that it would be a better option to find an alternative site somewhere else that we owned, they said they couldn't do it, they said they didn't want us to do that. And fortunately, we found a site which is on the very next street to Katherine House, so we then went ahead with these plans to rebuild. ROBINSON Now as I understand what will replace Katherine House are purpose built self-contained flats but what about the standards and levels of care? We heard Brian Parkinson ask what will happen if he has a seizure in the night, we heard Terry say about his cousin, Thomas, that when he moves from Katherine House they'll decide what time he goes to bed because the staff will knock off. TAYLOR The staff will knock off at 11 o'clock - that's what time the full-time staff will be there. There will be somebody on site permanently. They will actually sleep on the site and we have what is known as a community response team in Tameside where we can use that team to put people to bed late at night if that's they want. And what we would do, we have done, we'll assess everybody - we'll look at their needs and see what they are. Now if their needs tell us that they want to go to bed at 2.00 a.m. in the morning we will meet that need. ROBINSON Well let's bring Yvonne Hossack in to the discussion. Why then are you opposing this closure? HOSSACK We're opposing it - these people don't have much as it is, as you've heard ... ROBINSON They don't have what sorry? HOSSACK They don't have much. What they do have is the home and they have each other. Now Councillor Taylor's told you that they were consulted, what they were told was that a like-for-like home would be built, that they would all be able to live together, that they would have their staff going with them. That changed so that the staff weren't going with them, but they were absolutely assured that they could all move together and that all their needs could be met. They - the council says we will assess them - they should have assessed them before they made any decisions whatsoever. I've had them independently assessed, only two of them would be safe without 24-hour care and oversight on site... ROBINSON Well Brian P - rather Councillor Taylor says there will be someone on site all the time. HOSSACK They'll have a sleep in at night, that's not the same as on site 24-hour provision and those of us who've been care providers and the people who need the care know that there is a fundamental difference between somebody sleeping there and somebody being - waking - popping in, being on-call. If they need help on the night - in the night they will have to call a call centre. ROBINSON What's the legal basis of your challenge though? HOSSACK We say that there was a failure in consultation because they were misled and clearly misled as to what the new home would be. So they weren't consulted on what the council's actual proposals were. That it's irrational, that it's unlawful in that it's an unwarranted interference with their Article 8 rights to live as a family. ROBINSON Councillor Taylor, the Department of Health told us that these decisions should be made locally in their view but that there must be proper consultation, now clearly something must have gone wrong or the residents wouldn't have hired their own lawyer. TAYLOR In terms of the consultation absolutely nothing has gone wrong. The first letter went out to the residents on the 24th of the 6th '02, giving them details of what we were planning to do. We're now in 2005, we've been consulting for years on this issue. The residents who are there now will tell you that we've taken them to look at sites all over the country, looking at models of care. We've shown them different models of care in sheltered housing. They chose this model of care, they told us this was their preferred option. We gave them three or four housing associations who would build this facility for us, they chose this housing association. We've been consulting on this more than anything that this authority has ever done. ROBINSON Yvonne Hossack, is this a one off case? HOSSACK No I see it around the country. I see it in the north of the country, through five London boroughs, down to the south coast. It comes from a government who say that people can live independently. Government has a fundamental misunderstanding about the needs of disabled people and what keeps them safe. I and others have written to government to say that the government policies are causing the deaths of my clients, terrible trauma, unwarranted interference and they treat me and the clients with propaganda about independence - it's based on a fundamental misunderstanding, they must revisit it and they must do it now. ROBINSON Yvonne Hossack and Councillor John Taylor, thank you both. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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