Mental health at the heart of cuts debate

• THE New Journal (November 25) gave a very informative account of Camden’s proposed cuts in spending. 

Hopefully it will help residents engage in the short consultation, leading up to the budget being set at the end of February. 

One of the issues that I am particularly concerned about as a Green Party councillor, especially in this time of recession, is mental health. 

Losing your job and even the risk of doing so will cause financial strain and anxiety. For many people there is a sense of loss of status which can also be hard to deal with. 

Proper mental health provision is in these circumstances absolutely vital. With this in mind, I have asked for every effort to be made to keep people in work, negotiating reduced hours if need be. There is plenty to be done in Camden Council. 

We don’t need to put people out of work, especially at a £12million cost to the council and probably much more once the health and other impacts are taken into account.

I also asked for mental health to be on the latest health scrutiny committee agenda to ensure councillors and relevant groups have a full discussion of such issues. 

This coincided with a proposed consultation by the Camden and Islington foundation trust on acute care provision in the area, which assists those with the most serious mental health issues. 

The plans are to make big savings (£3million to £5million) as part of  £20million cuts to the mental health foundation trust’s budget, by reducing the number of in-patient beds by around 25 per cent on the basis that community care services are best and that this number of beds are currently vacant. 

It may be right that community care is the best solution in many cases but we need to be careful about losing these beds. 

It’s also important that we ensure that the community care services we have are what’s needed, and if not that they are strengthened.  

In accordance with this, the health scrutiny committee recommended the consultation be altered to ask how community care services could be strengthened to take into account the reduced level of in-patient beds. I’d like to urge all those with an interest to take part in this consultation so councillors can seek to ensure that the views of residents are taken on board.

CLLR MAYA DE SOUZA 
Green Party, Highgate ward

The blame

• CUTS that Camden’s Labour council have to make are unlike those of previous the Conservative-Liberal Democrat majority, who made cuts to safeguard the freeze on council tax.

It’s the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government who have reduced the council grants. I remember the time Camden had control of it budgets, including its business tax, making Camden one of the wealthiest London boroughs – until 1979 when it was not allowed to collect the business rate tax and had to rely on the then Tory government hand-outs.

I remember attending a meeting at the town hall in the 1980s where everyone criticised the then Labour council which was forced to make cuts because it was not only capped by the Conservative government but had its central grant reduced.

It is not this council who wish to make the cuts. 

It is this government who are implementing the cuts. It is the most disabled, the poorest, and the least able to defend themselves who will find themselves worst off, and it this government that we should protest to, not Camden Council.

GRAHAM BINMORE
Highgate Road, NW5