Have you signed the Petition yet? It is to keep our local health and care open, and in public hands

Sign petition here - or download paper petition form here

In agreement with the current petition to keep our local health and social care services. We need to look after those who have worked all their lives and have paid into the Welfare State.

Yet Cheshire East Council seems to be determinedly closing those Day, Respite and Assessment facilities on which we rely, and over which the council has a legal 'duty of care'.

Coupled with that East Cheshire NHS Trust, having closed our Knutsford Tatton Intermediate Care Ward (18 beds - very well thought of) four  years ago, has been so overcrowded in its Macclesfield Hospital Langley Ward, that it has taken a range of Intermediate Care beds in what might otherwise be respite bed spaces, at Hollins View, (15 beds) and Prestbury House and Belong Village, Macclesfield. That further reduces the number of full time and/or respite beds available to family carers.

With the advent of Caring Together within Eastern Cheshire, and the government awarded 'Pioneer' status across the whole of Cheshire, this is the ideal time to get our services together and working for the good of the public whose money paid for these mangled services. That is the stated aim of both Caring Together and the Pioneer status.

So let us give it our backing. Get the signatures coming in, to support the CCGs to provide services which the caring public actually needs, rather than acting in response to the direction of spin of the political football.

But it is really important that this happens before every local useful supportive caring service has been sent to commercial organisations - or charities - leaving us all as beggars, within a system for which we have paid.

We must provide adequate day care and respite care so that our family carers are not too overburdened, leaving them with no life at all of their own. That will help to keep the disabled, ill and old at home, where they belong. Respite must come in the form of safe and good quality overnight and 24 hour care, as a right.

Family Carers need rights! Not charity or lack of certainty.

If family carers are turned into beggars, they will lose heart and far more readily give up their work, leaving the system which is already creaking at the seams, to finally collapse. It must not come to that.

We do not have anywhere near enough full time care or nursing placements in this area. Our day and respite care places are currently being decimated as a deliberate act, by Cheshire East Council. No commercial enterprise would have the same 'duty of care' as that of the Local Authority. 

So we must ensure that the Local Authority retains that 'duty of care', rather than allowing it to be frittered away as it shuts down our social care places. 

No commercial enterprise is obliged to provide 24 hour care, nor day care. It is far cheaper for them to concentrate only on full time care. Family carers need day and respite care.

Please sign the petition and encourage others to also sign. Pass it round and ask that everyone else also passes it round.

The National Health Service is by its name - National. The Local Authority social care is also a part of our National care network. Therefore anyone, anywhere in the UK can sign this petition. I urge you to do so.. and pass it round. 

Paper version of the petition which you can take around your groups and organisations:

Print it off yourself and return it to the address shown by 
23 April 2015.. which is St George's Day