At one fell swoop, the Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society is set to close four
superb centres that give more than 1,300 people a year an enjoyable break
and their carers a little time off. The society says a consultation revealed
that people with MS wanted more "holiday-style" breaks.
In order to achieve
this it plans to, er, get rid of some of the country’s best holiday
facilities specialising in supporting the disabilities related to MS. The popular respite centres – Helen Ley Centre in Leamington Spa, Woodlands
in York, Brambles in Surrey and Leuchie in East Lothian – offer facilities
developed over many years of meeting the needs of people with MS, such as
wheelchair-accessible gardens, physiotherapy suites with hydrotherapy pools,
bars and evening entertainments, as well as organising supported days out
for guests. Leuchie even has six accessible log cabins at a nearby resort,
for those who want a bit more independence.
The decision to sell the four centres, or to close them down if no buyer is
found by next year, is due to be ratified at the society’s AGM in September.
The society says that a survey it carried out last year found people with MS
“overwhelmingly want more individualised services, more choice and
holiday-style breaks”.
That’s a bizarre interpretation of a survey that found that more than
four-fifths of people who had stayed in the respite centres found the break
“very beneficial” and another 16 percent found it “quite beneficial”. Almost
all said the breaks were good or very good.
Incomplete survey?
Although the option of “holiday breaks” attracted narrowly more votes as a
first choice for people with MS (30 percent, compared to 26 percent for
respite centres), those most disabled, and therefore more likely to need
special facilities, were the least likely to manage to fill in and send back
the survey. Among carers who filled in the survey, the four respite centres
were by far the first choice. Campaigners against the closure of Leuchie
alone have already collected more than twice as many signatures on a
petition against the closure than completed the MS Society’s survey.
A spokeswoman for the MS Society told the Eye that by “concentrating our
efforts on accrediting holiday and care organisations, campaigning for
better care and services and offering cash grants, we will be able to extend
people’s options so that a hotel break is feasible, if that’s their
preference, and to ensure more hotels and holiday companies are conforming
to disability requirements and offering the necessary adaptations.”
The society isn’t the first charity to want to move away from providing
practical services into trendier campaigning. Scope’s shift towards lobbying
for disability rights in 2005 saw schools and supported living flats close (
Eyes passim).
In Leamington, those who have raised funds for the centre for decades are
furious. Until 2005 it was an independent charity, the Helen Ley Charitable
Trust. Martin Rantzen, a volunteer driver for the centre, has written to the
MS Society trustees, saying: “To abandon the huge investment of voluntary
aid, bequests, donations and covenants spent on the building and recent
multi-million-pound upgrading of the centre would be nothing short of
scandalous waste.”
|
