Telford cottage care home forced to cut service
Volunteers in Telford say they will have to cut an independent day care service from five days a week to three because of cutbacks to local authority budgets.
Trustees at Wellington Cottage Care plan to cut the current five-day service for adult users but hope to avoid redundancies.
Trustee Terry Gilder said: "The centre has experienced a recent downturn in the number of people using the facility largely due to the encouragement at both national and local government level for people to receive care in their own homes and also the method of making payments directly to recipients.
"Until recent years most of the guests were referred to Wellington Cottage Care by the local authority and payments made directly to the trust, but in the past year, most local authority funding has been withdrawn leading to an annual loss of income in excess of £70,000."
But Mr Gilder said the trustees are 'confident' of continuing to offer the service.
He said that support and caring staff will be required to change their working hours to ensure the centre remains open three days each week.
Users of the day care centre and their representatives are being informed of the changes to the existing openings which should come into effect within the next three months.
Wellington Cottage Care was launched in the wake of the closure of the town’s cottage hospital in September 1989, initially with the intent of retaining the 18-bed facility for the care of the terminally ill and those needing post-operative rehabilitation.
A campaign launched by Wellington Town Council saw the Rev Rex Hallam appointed as chairman of the trustees and leading the effort to establish the buildings as a day care centre.
The centre opened in 2001 financed by donations and Wrekin and Telford Council’s social care budget, along with profits from Wellington Cottage Care's charity shop, now at Crown Street.
