Pressure mounts on Kirklees Council to save Heckmondwike care home from closure

Claremont House at Heckmondwike and Castle Grange at Newsome are the two care homes the council has earmarked for closure as it looks to make a £47m saving in the current financial year.

The plans are currently going through public consultation and its cabinet will make a final decision on the future of the sites early next year.

A recent full council meeting saw Donna Mallinson, whose mum lives at Claremont House in Heckmondwike, address the council regarding a petition she had created to save the home, which has now amassed more than 4,700 signatures.

She told the meeting: “Every single one of the residents are cared for and loved as they should be and are living out their final years in a loving, happy and stable environment. And we families all have the peace of mind that this is exactly the case.

“Kirklees’ proposal to close these homes is flawed, has inaccuracies and fails to report on the reality of what would happen to these vulnerable and poorly residents if they choose to close the home and force them to live somewhere else.”

She explained that the only option for families would be to move their loved ones to private sector care homes.

Kirklees Council was said to have provided details of six private homes that are aesthetically comparable to Claremont House but Ms Mallinson said that insufficient detail was provided on the quality of care or the costs involved.

When it comes to costs, she claimed the weekly costs for a self-funding resident would rise by between £250 and £472 in the private sector homes.

She also said that families of local authority-funded residents would be required to top up fees by at least £100 per week.

Cabinet member for Adult Social Care, Coun Jackie Ramsay, said: “As families, you are rightly concerned about the implications for your family members.

"As a cabinet member, I’m not only concerned about that, I’m also trying to balance that with the social care outcomes for everybody in Kirklees and also of the other services that we’ve got that the council needs to deliver for our residents.

“The reality is that there are some areas of provision where the council needs to play a greater role and other areas where there are already other organisations providing that sort of care and given all the pressures on social care at the moment, and on the council as a whole, not just financial, the council needs to focus on the areas where we have the greatest need.

“As the residential care sector has stabilised and recovered following the pandemic, pressures on social care have grown.

"Long-term residential care is an area that the council feels it should not be focusing time and money on at this time and instead using some of that time and money in areas where the council will have a clearer role, that’s what the consultation is about.”

Leader of the Conservative group, Coun David Hall, said he was convinced a solution could be found to keep the residents in their current homes through talks between the council and the private sector.