Why cutting grants will lead to far greater expense

Published: 11 February, 2011

• WE fully understand why cuts have to be made in these austere time, but to go for the soft touch and rob the elderly and infirm of what to them is a lifeline is appalling. 

Apart from the fact that pensioners currently using the Great Croft Age Concern centre will suffer through no fault of their own, has anyone thought of the repercussions? 

My mother Violet Delve who is 82 and lives two blocks away in Northiam, has been using the facilities at Great Croft for the past 18 months or so and I cannot begin to describe the difference it has made to her general wellbeing.

A proud person who worked into her 70s, my mother, a widow, had become very insular from her mid-70s onwards and was not eating or getting out and about as she should have been. 

Like many of her independent-minded generation she would not entertain the idea of living with my wife and I, saying that she should stand on her own two feet. As a result, her health and confidence had deteriorated until she started at Great Croft.

This government said “no front-line services would be affected” when cutbacks were announced. I can only tell you what happened to my father-in-law who ended up in a care home for three years at a cost of around £1,000 a week to the taxpayer. 

Apart from being a gross injustice, cutting your grants to Great Croft would inevitably lead to far greater expense. Where is the sense in that? You will also be robbing a group of people who have more than paid their way in society over a long period. 

Great Croft is all a lot of them have in life. 

STEVE DELVE
Wadesmill, Herts