News

Older people will die if the Church of Scotland proceeds with its plans to close a residential unit according to a group of relatives campaigning against the closure of Leslie House in Fife.

The Church of Scotland Board of Social Responsibility, one of the largest voluntary social care providers in the country, announced its intention to close nine care units including Leslie House in April. The church blamed the ‘care gap’ between the cost of providing care and the fees allowed by local authorities.

Now a pressure group of relatives called the Leslie House 21 Group is claiming the church failed to inform or consult either residents or their close families breaching their human rights and the church’s duty to care.

David Kellock, the church’s deputy director of social work, explained that it had spent £832,000 in additional revenue on Leslie House over the past five years and £162,000 last year alone. In addition they have costed essential upgradings to the building at £1.5 million.

Kellock, said: "The decision is made by them (the church's board of social responsibility) in private to avoid what could be unnecessary anxiety by the service users and their families. Also, we have to bear in mind the commercial implications that could be compromised if such a decision was made openly."

The Leslie House 21 Group also claims that two local private providers have shown interest in running Leslie House as a viable concern, but the church has rejected these approaches out of hand.

Campaign group chairperson Christine Jackson, whose mother is resident of Leslie House, said: "Many of the original 21 residents are physically and mentally frail with advanced degrees of dementia. It has been well established since 1997 that moving such vulnerable people away from those carers and the environment they have grown to know, suddenly and without any say can prove fatal."