Day centre for elderly and help for housebound axed by Islington Council

Published: 31st December, 2010
by TERRY MESSENGER

HOUSEBOUND elderly people face losing help with their shopping, laundry and cleaning under cuts made by the Town Hall.

And pensioners in Highbury have been told their Sotheby Mews day centre will close in March. 

Axing the domestic help service for the elderly would save £150,000. Adult social services chief Labour councillor Janet Burgess said yesterday (Thursday): “The cut means exactly what it says on the packet – stop providing shopping, laundry and cleaning to the elderly.”

She blamed the Tory-Lib Dem government. “I lie awake at night upset and angry at what we’re being forced to do,” she said.

Seventy-nine-year-old Janet Daly from Islington, a freelance journalist specialising in issues affecting the elderly, said: “If they don’t get their shopping, they don’t get fed so they are going to suffer from malnutrition.”

She warned that more elderly people would end up in hospital if this “preventative” service was axed. 

Cllr Burgess hinted that she would be fighting to save the service in talks within Islington’s ruling Labour group in the run-up to a final decision on February 17.

Meanwhile, the chairman of Sotheby Mews users’ board, Henry Bourner, said yesterday he had been told the centre would definitely shut at the end of March.

He said: “I’m right choked off. It’s a family place.”

Cllr Burgess said: “I am hoping  some services will be available for the people who use it the most. But it’s unlikely to be at Sotheby Mews itself.”