Cuts to services will have a negative impact on young and old.

 

The Green Party candidate in the Penkhull and Stoke by election has criticized plans by Stoke-on-Trent City Council to close the city’s Meals on Wheels service and to axe 10 health visitors and school nurses.

 

Adam Colclough said, “at a time when people in our city are facing unprecedented challenges these cuts will have a negative impact on young and old alike”. He added that “if elected I will oppose these and all other cuts to services on which the most vulnerable members of our community depend”.

 

The Meals on Wheels service, which previously faced closure in 2015, has had its funding extended until the end of 2022 but its future beyond then is uncertain. Information from a report by the city council published in the Sentinel shows that the number of people using the service has gone down from 123 in March 2020 to 84 in February this year.

 

Council plans to cut £1 million in funding from children’s public health services currently provided by Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust could see 3000 households adversely impacted.

 

Speaking to the Sentinel Frank Keogh regional officer for Unite said that years of ‘austerity and attacks on NHS and local government funding’ had already hit services hard, further cuts would put ‘the physical and mental health of thousands of the city’s families’ at risk.

 

In March 2020, the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) published a report into the health of children in the UK, one year on in the wake of the pandemic they updated their findings. They found that progress has stalled in some key areas and things have even started to go backwards. These include tackling obesity, named by the government as a priority, with 34% of children aged between 10 and 11 still overweight or obese. These are links, the report suggests, between this and a rise in child poverty among working families [1]

 

Writing in the Sentinel (Personally Speaking 18^th June) Andy Day coordinator of North Staffs Pensioners Convention says that the fall in users of the Meals on Wheels service is not the result of a reduction in need so much as the service not working properly. He emphasizes the importance of the service to the wellbeing of older people, writing that if it is withdrawn, they are at a higher risk of becoming isolated and depressed and may be less likely to eat properly.

 

Research published by Age UK highlights the impact of the pandemic on the physical and mental health of older people. The data collected in the report The Impact of COVID-19 to Date on Older People’s Physical and Mental Health shows that one in four feel less confident being active than they did previously; one in five felt their memory had declined during lockdown, and 24% of older people living with a long-term health condition felt less independent now than they did before the pandemic [2]

 

Stoke-on-Trent City Council reported, last week a ‘significant’ underspend of £16.4 million and that it would be spending £1.75 million on consultants to help ‘transform’ its services. In February the Conservative controlled council pushed through £6.4million in cuts and raised council tax by 4.99% [3]

 

In a letter to the councilors Lorraine Beardmore and Ally Simcock, the cabinet members for public health and adult social care Adam Colclough calls on the council to reconsider the proposed cuts considering its budget surplus.

 

[1] https://stateofchildhealth.rcpch.ac.uk/evidence/at-a-glance/#page-section-7

[2]https://www.ageuk.org.uk/globalassets/age-uk/documents/reports-and-publications/reports-and-briefings/health--wellbeing/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-older-people_age-uk.pdf

[3] https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/stoke-trent-city-council-records-5538148