Helen Mary and Myfanwy pleased as plans to shut care homes are shelved

Llanelli AM Helen Mary Jones and Plaid's Parliamentary candidate for Llanelli Myfanwy Davies have expressed their delight that council plans to close Caemaen and St Paul’s residential homes in Llanelli have been shelved. Both Helen Mary and Myfanwy last week pledged their to support an action group that has been fighting hard against these closure plans.

The County Council had wanted to close the residential homes in order to finance new home care services but the plans made no provision for care while those services were being delivered and had no detail of the costs or savings to be made. The plans contained no detail about where residents who were too frail for home care would be housed , but officers’ remarks about empty beds in private care homes raised residents fears that they would be sent out of Council care.

Myfanwy travelled to Carmarthen in a convoy of two buses of protesters from Caemaen home yesterday and helped lobby councillors as they arrived for the meeting of the County Council’s Scrutiny Committee. During the meeting, members of the Plaid Cymru group time and again drew attention to the weakness of the report and warned about privatising care by stealth. To the protesters delight, the Plaid group insisted on a vote to reject the plans as they stand. However, a task and finish group will be convened to examine the plans in detail.

Plaid’s Helen Mary Jones said:

"I’m very pleased indeed that the Council’s Health and Social Care Scrutiny Committee has rejected the proposal to shut St Paul’s and Caemaen. I am concerned however that the discussions of the task and finish group around the future of social care in Carmarthenshire should not end up coming to the same conclusions but behind closed doors.

There has been a great campaign in the community to support the care that’s being provided at Caemaen and St Paul’s, and both Myfanwy and I have been fully supportive of the hard work that's been going on. I will continue to support those campaigning to keep this provision available for the people who want it and need it.”
Myfanwy added:

“The Council’s plans were ill-conceived and it was quite right for the Plaid members of the scrutiny committee to reject them on those grounds. It is entirely wrong to make savings at the expense of our most vulnerable people but it seems the Council had not even calculated the costs and had not considered how residents would be cared for while the new accommodation was built.

Moving older people from their homes is distressing and some may not survive a move. I am very pleased that we have been able to win the first battle in this war. Our older people will not be sacrificed to the Council’s half-baked ideas about privatisation. "