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NO RESPITE
 
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.”

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For all these stories and much, much, more, buy the latest edition of Private Eye, available now from all good newsagents.

Issue No: 1269
Date: 20th August 2010
Price: £1.50

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