Protest to save Montrose Care Home as it's future hangs in the balance.
Paisley's Montrose Care Home at risk of closure as staff say shutdown would be 'devastating'
Staff and families rallied outside Renfrewshire council HQ in a bid to put pressure on the council to rethink their plans.
Members of the integration joint board (IJB) – responsible for oversight of Renfrewshire Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) – will consider whether to approve or reject reducing the care home estate through the shutdown of Montrose at a meeting on Friday.
A petition has been launched and signed by more than 1,400 people and a Facebook group called 'Save Montrose Care Home from closure' has also been set up. Tasha, who has worked at the home for 12 years, added: "We also have around 40 members of staff and we really don't know what our situation is or what would happen to us. It's a family. It's always been a care home that's always had a high standard of care. It seems a very unfair decision to take."
According to a report to the IJB, the proposal based on the selection of Montrose would provide a saving of £399,000. If approved, admissions to the three homes would be paused to allow bed numbers to be balanced and capacity used for affected residents.
There would be a period of at least four months before residents would move to a new home, unless an individual and their family wanted to move sooner. The report explained: "This is to enable full consultation and person-centred planning to take place with every person to understand what is important to them and their loved ones, and to reduce the impact of the moving process as far as possible."
Paisley's Montrose Care Home at risk of closure as staff say shutdown would be 'devastating'
Staff and families rallied outside Renfrewshire council HQ in a bid to put pressure on the council to rethink their plans.
Members of the integration joint board (IJB) – responsible for oversight of Renfrewshire Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) – will consider whether to approve or reject reducing the care home estate through the shutdown of Montrose at a meeting on Friday.
A petition has been launched and signed by more than 1,400 people and a Facebook group called 'Save Montrose Care Home from closure' has also been set up. Tasha, who has worked at the home for 12 years, added: "We also have around 40 members of staff and we really don't know what our situation is or what would happen to us. It's a family. It's always been a care home that's always had a high standard of care. It seems a very unfair decision to take."
According to a report to the IJB, the proposal based on the selection of Montrose would provide a saving of £399,000. If approved, admissions to the three homes would be paused to allow bed numbers to be balanced and capacity used for affected residents.
There would be a period of at least four months before residents would move to a new home, unless an individual and their family wanted to move sooner. The report explained: "This is to enable full consultation and person-centred planning to take place with every person to understand what is important to them and their loved ones, and to reduce the impact of the moving process as far as possible."
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:06 Save our home! Save our home!
00:13 Montrose won't close! Montrose won't close!
00:16 This is going to have a devastating effect on my mother.
00:19 This has been her home for four and a half years
00:21 and what the council are doing in effect is evicting her from her home.
00:25 My name is Natasha Martin and I am a social care worker at Montrose Care Home.
00:30 So today we wanted to, we really wanted to let people know about our campaign,
00:36 make the public aware of the fact that our home has been proposed for closure.
00:41 We feel that it really is a situation that we need to highlight.
00:47 We cannot see our residents relocated to a different home.
00:52 We do think that the impact would be devastating on them.
00:56 So that is our campaign, is to try and let the council know that we are not,
01:01 we're not willing to accept it. We're fighting for our residents, for our residents' rights.
01:07 Relocation for somebody who is, you know, able-bodied and young would be stressful enough,
01:13 but actually for somebody who is elderly in their 90s,
01:17 when they've been in that setting for say five years, to be relocated to a different place,
01:23 we believe that the impact is going to be absolutely devastating on their mental wellbeing and their physical wellbeing.
01:30 We feel that it's actually, you know, almost against their rights as people.
01:33 That's their home. To relocate them just seems wrong.
01:36 Please think carefully about this. The impact of it is going to be absolutely dire.
01:42 Our residents, they know us so incredibly well. They trust us. We love them dearly.
01:48 To move them and to separate all of us is going to have such a devastating impact.
01:54 We really feel that Montrose Care Home is a fantastic home.
01:57 The Care Commission has reported that in the past.
02:00 We're known as a very, very good care home, so to close it just seems incredibly unfair and just wrong.
02:07 So the families in general haven't been given all the information that they should have been given.
02:13 So they're feeling very, very uncertain.
02:16 And obviously it's a huge worry because they know that the impact on their parents or relatives could actually be fatal.
02:25 And that's the truth of it. The stress of this can cause and it will lead to fatalities. I'm quite sure of that.
02:33 My name is Deborah Stafford and I'm representing my mother, Joyce McMenamie, who is a resident in Montrose Care Home.
02:39 To be honest, we weren't informed very fully at all.
02:42 There were meetings held at the end of last year, two meetings that some of the residents, relatives never even heard about.
02:48 We did eventually get to one at the end of January. That was it.
02:52 And then as of last Friday, we were told the decision will be made tomorrow.
02:56 And if a care home is closing, it will be Montrose.
03:00 I feel absolutely disgusted. This is my mother's home.
03:03 This is not just a relative's living in a care facility.
03:07 This is their home. This has been my mother's home for four and a half years.
03:10 This is where she feels safe. This is the environment she knows.
03:14 There are also people there who have been there for over 10 years.
03:18 And unfortunately, these people, some of these people will not survive this move.
03:22 It is disgusting that the council yet again are putting the most vulnerable of our society at risk.
03:27 This has to stop. This is immoral. This cannot go ahead.
03:31 You have to think about the elderly people of your society who have lived and worked all their lives.
03:38 My mother has dementia. I haven't told her yet because I know this will completely and utterly disrupt her.
03:45 And she will be very, very unsettled.
03:47 So I haven't told her as yet because I just don't know how she's going to be.
03:51 Everybody's of exactly the same view that it's disgusting the way it's been handled.
03:55 It's disgusting that it's even been considered.
03:58 Nobody has thought about the people concerned in this.
04:02 They tell us they have, but we feel that they haven't.
04:04 My name's Claire and I'm a social care worker.
04:07 And all I've got to say is we're the voice for the people who can't speak for themselves.
04:10 They're vulnerable. The staff jobs are completely safe. We're not here for us. We're here for them.
04:15 I hope the council change their mind and don't close any of the care homes.
04:18 We need them all. We need more care in this community, not less.
04:21 They're all heartbroken and worried and stressed, but it's not for themselves. It's for the vulnerable.
04:26 Everybody here is here because they care about individual people.
04:30 We're not numbers. They're not numbers. They're individual human beings.
04:33 The thing is, we know because people will be scared. They'll be worried.
04:38 They have no idea what's going to happen to them.
04:40 There's some people, their mental wellbeing will dramatically be affected.
04:45 It's just a really sad thing to see.
04:48 Save our home! Save our home! Save our home!
04:53 [Music]
04:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]