HOMES ADAPTED FOR NEEDS

Families hail adapting their homes a success 

Autistic children spend more time at home 

The cost of adapting homes to allow autistic children to live at home are socially and economically worthwhile, insist their parents. 

In 2016 Big Issue North interviewed the Shepherds in Tingley, near Wakefield. Paula and Lee’s oldest daughter Katlyn, then 15, is severely autistic. This creates difficulties in processing sensory information such as textures, sounds, smells, tastes, movement and brightness. Family life can be difficult when ordinary situations overwhelm Katlyn, who can self harm and be destructive, which can frighten her younger sister, Ellie. 

Thanks to help from the Access Committee for Leeds (ACL), an unfunded body whose volunteers advocate for disabled people, the Shepherds obtained a £40,000 disabled facilities grant (DFG) from Leeds City Council (LCC). This helped install a new, highly colourful bedroom, an indestructible wet room with a steel toilet and a spare bedroom. 

Safe play space 

Katlyn’s self-contained space means Ellie can close her bedroom door to block out excessive noise. “Ellie’s school work has benefited because of this,” explains full-time mum Paula. 

The new facilities allowed Katlyn to reduce her stay at a specialist secure residential school from six to five nights. “This has now fallen to four in the last three years – if she wanted to be here seven nights a week that would be great,” said Lee, adding that everything must be put away before his daughter arrives home from school, where she is increasingly joining in other activities with fellow students. 

“The adaptations have massively benefited the family. We feel sorry for families in similar positions who are refused a DFG, which will mean their loved one spends more time away from home in secure residential accommodation that is costly,” said Paula. 

An annual 43,000 DFGs are awarded. Seven per cent are for people aged under 21. 

The Shepherds’ views are supported by Ian and Karen, from Otley, whose son Joshua is 11. They were awarded a £165,000 DFG. Significant adaptations include additional safe play space for their son, padding to prevent injuries and a big bedroom that allows someone to sleep next to Joshua, helping prevent self harm. There is also a safe outside play area. 

Ian, who quit his job to look after his son, said: “Joshua’s school visits would include some costly overnight stays if we didn’t have adaptations. 

It is exhausting caring for Joshua. We are struggling now with his behaviour and he will get bigger.” 

When families reach a point where they are unable to care for their children at home then the local authority has a duty to accommodate them at a cost of £7,000-£12,000 a week. 

“We look after Joshua because we love him, but doing so reduces public spending and it’s a strong argument for more families with autistic children to have funds to adapt their homes accordingly,” said Karen. 

In 2017, the School of Law at Leeds University and the children’s neurological charity Cerebra, with ACL assistance, studied the cost-effectiveness of home adaptations – averaging £60,000 each – for six disabled children. It was calculated that possibly 14 years of local authority funds had been saved due to the adaptations. The study was incorporated into a 2018 parliamentary briefing into disabled facilities grants for home adaptations. 

Drawn out decisions 

Tim McSharry of ACL said: “Apart from the wellbeing impact on younger disabled people and their families we believe the public purse savings of adaptations are considerable. The government should provide clearer advice, increase significantly the funding and scrap means testing of DFGs above the £30,000 cap. 

“It should replace the discretionary basis that permits the maximum limit of £30,000 for adaptations to be breached with clearer statutory guidelines. 

“Decisions are taking too long, leading to young people becoming looked after in institutions sooner than might otherwise be the case. The government should take time to re-examine the Leeds study and roll it out nationally.” 

A government spokesperson said: “Local housing authorities have a statutory duty to provide adaptations to anyone who qualifies for a DFG. We have invested more than £2.7 billion in DFG, providing over 280,000 adaptations by the end of 2018-19. DFG funding has increased from £220 million in 2016-17 to £505 million in 2019-20.” 

A review of the DFG by the University of the West of England, published late last year, makes 45 recommendations. The government spokesperson said it would respond in due course. 

Theatre of mystery: Bridlington hospital to lose mobile operating

Theatre of mystery 

Bridlington hospital to lose mobile operating 

Trust and firm cite client confidentiality 

Bridlington health campaigners fear for the long-term existence of the town’s hospital after the York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said its mobile operating theatre will close next month. 

This is the latest blow in a long-running saga in which a hospital that had 218 beds when it opened in 1988 now has just 70 in use. 

Protests ignored 

Cuts started in 2008 when the Labour health secretary Alan Johnson ignored large protests in the coastal resort and accepted the recommendation of the local NHS trust to move cardiac and acute medical services to Scarborough, 20 miles away. Local residents became accustomed to seeing flashing ambulances rushing seriously ill patients along the busy A64. Sir Greg Knight, the local MP since 2001, who was among the protestors and signed a petition against the rundown of the hospital, said he would expect a future Conservative government to “return all services”. Yet in 2013 the Buckrose Ward for up to 12 mental health patients was closed, with eight beds moved 40 miles away to Hull. 

In April 2018 the Macmillan Ward was also closed. This left three operating theatres for basic and orthopaedic surgery. A mobile theatre unit had been installed at Bridlington in 2013 to support orthopaedic surgery. 

The mobile theatre is leased from Vanguard Healthcare Solutions. According to York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust the company will not renew its contract and the theatre will be removed next month. Neither YTH nor 

Vanguard would answer Big Issue North’s questions about the decision making process behind the ending of the contract, citing commercial confidentiality. 

“Resources are needed” 

The planned closure has come as a shock to staff. Chris Daly, regional health officer for the union Unite, said: “The comprehensive service once provided by the NHS is being eroded and patients are suffering. More government resources are needed. 

“This is a well respected, successful service and who would benefit from degrading it? Why was the lease not renewed? Had the trust given an indication to the firm it would not be renewing the contract? We want assurances there will be no staff losses.” 

The closure has been condemned by Bridlington Health Forum, which brings together voluntary organisations dedicated to defending local health facilities. Its spokesperson said: “The long term existence of the hospital is very possibly in doubt as it is on its knees following numerous cuts.
We want services restored, including outpatients and local rehabilitation beds. Unsustainable and unaffordable travel for even basic healthcare for local residents must be reduced.” 

Unlike at the other hospitals in Scarborough and York that are managed by YTH, patients at Bridlington can be assured that their operations will not be stopped due to a lack of beds. Spare capacity meant that no procedures were cancelled due to bed shortages in the second half of 2017, whereas Scarborough and York cancelled 73 and 147. 

Knight last year wrote to the then health secretary Jeremy Hunt to ask him to do more to ensure facilities at Bridlington were fully employed. He would like to see YTH being more “open, transparent and honest” on the processes that led to the planned removal of the theatre. 

He remains concerned about the hospital being “grossly underused” and disagrees with the removal of some services. However he does not believe the hospital itself is under threat. 

Knight has invited health secretary Matt Hancock to visit the hospital with him. 

A spokesperson for Vanguard said its facilities were designed for short-term use by healthcare organisations. 

“While their use can vary from weeks to years, the facilities may be periodically rotated away from a site, whether that be for maintenance and upgrade work or to help meet the needs of another healthcare organization,” said the spokesperson. 

“Where one of our facilities does have to be removed from a site for whatever reason, we will endeavour to work with the trust to offer alternative provision wherever possible to ensure any disruption to the service they provide is minimised as much as possible.” 

A spokesperson for YTH added: “We are working on an interim plan for our two remaining theatres to minimise any disruption to patients and to ensure as far as possible that we can maintain theatre capacity at Bridlington.” 

MARK METCALF 

Plans by Rochdale Borough Housing to demolish four of the Seven Sisters high rise flats on the College Bank estate are polarising opinions.

Housing body plans to demolish tower blocks 

Tenant group denies misleading residents 

Plans by Rochdale Borough Housing to demolish four of the Seven Sisters high rise flats on the College Bank estate are polarising opinions. 

Two years ago, Rochdale Borough Housing (RBH), which took control of the local council’s housing stock seven years ago, announced a 20-year regeneration project for College Bank and the nearby Lower Falinge Estate and began to draw up proposals, including demolition. 

RBH intends that its proposals will unlock “further major investment, which will regenerate both neighbourhoods with a wider mix of high-quality homes and more green spaces”. 

RBH said any displaced tenants would be guaranteed somewhere “like for like” to live, close to the town centre, if they wished. 

‘Social cleansing’ 

RBH intends modernising the remaining three College Bank blocks. It claims its proposals could lead to 500 new homes on the land, some of which is lying empty. 

Within weeks of the demolition plans being announced a petition of 544 College Bank residents’ signatures was presented to Rochdale Borough Council. Councillor Neil Emmott, cabinet member for housing, claimed the plans “smacked of social cleansing”. 

Rochdale Council and residents opposed to its plans publicly disputed each other’s claims to speak on behalf of those living at College Bank. There were widely different claims about exactly how many residents’ opinions had been gathered by RBH. 

Although it was never disputed that most Lower Falinge residents backed demolition, former tenants representatives claimed this was because RBH had run down the estate. According to RBH it has supported 62 tenant households between July 2018 and May 2019 to move from Lower Falinge, with over half staying in the town centre area, “including families who moved from flats into our brand new family houses”. 

In May 2019, RBH accused a “small number of individuals on social media of inaccurate and misleading comments” and of personal attacks on its employees. RBH later publicly attacked the College Bank Support Group, claiming a number of residents had been unduly harassed by the group and that it had also “posted incorrect and deliberately misleading information, which appears designed to create unnecessary concerns and paint an inaccurate picture of RBH’s work in central Rochdale”. 

Private sector investment 

Mark Slater returned in 2014 to live for the third time on College Bank. His one-bedroom flat on the Mardyke block – consisting of 15 storeys with six flats on each level – costs £90 a week rent and is not due to be demolished. It is warm inside and soundproof. Slater enjoys a wonderful view, stretching high up on to the nearby countryside. He can look down on familiar sites in a town he was born in. 

Self-employed, Slater helps out at a local soup kitchen. “I know many people who used to need the kitchen and whose lives have been rebuilt thanks to getting accommodation in Seven Sisters flats,” he said. “But they remain vulnerable and they have told me so.” 

Slater himself desperately needed accommodation in 2014 as he was sleeping on a sofa at his dad’s house after his marriage collapsed. He has been active for over 18 months in the College Bank Support Group, which disputes RBH’s claims that it will be able to relocate any displaced tenants in like-for-like property. 

“When RBH advertise online two bedroom flats it is not unusual to see over 70 bids being made for them,” said Slater. “What will happen when hundreds more are added to the list?” 

Slater claimed older people will be dispersed and the subsequent lack of support networks would mean they would become isolated and lonely. He wants all seven blocks refurbished. 

RBH estimates this would cost £10 million per block, equivalent to around £110,000 per property. It says it does not have “any prospect of accessing this level of investment for all seven tower blocks”. 

Asked by Big Issue North to clarify how much funding it would need for its plans, RBH provided no figures. It is in discussion with government about investment but would not say how much it was looking for. 

RBH, which has committed over £25 million of its resources to College Bank and Lower Falinge, has however indicated that its plans will require private sector investment. 

According to Slater: “The flats are iconic and it is clear from examples in Salford and Manchester that people want to live in well-maintained tower blocks. Why not here in Rochdale? RBH is ignoring the views of local people on the estate and should revisit their plans.” 

The College Bank Support Group is working with a group of architects to draw up alternative plans. RBH has said it will consider them if they are “feasible and sustainable, as well as safe and genuinely affordable for tenants and residents”. 

With both sides in the dispute holding divergent views, local MP Tony Lloyd is seeking more information from RBH. He said: “I can’t yet see the big picture as to what we get at the end of
this process. Considerable numbers of constituents have approached me on this matter and proper answers are required to some big questions to reassure everyone concerned.” 

RBH, whose top five executives were criticised last week when it emerged they are to receive considerable pay increases over the next three years, said it was “pleased to have an ongoing and constructive dialogue” with the MP. 

MEMORY IS THE STORY OF THE FUTURE - The Unite oral history project

The lead miners' tales: Killhope lead mining museum

Killhope is a multi-award winning lead museum located in County Durham amidst an area of outstanding national beauty. You travel across some stunning countryside to get there. It’s a stark contrast to the working conditions of those who toiled underground in the nineteenth century. The museum skilfully brings to life their experiences with the highlight of any visit being the underground guided tour. 

The search to unearth the galena, the principal ore of lead that was key to the industrial revolution with extensive use in construction, began at Killhope in 1853. The process was painstaking. 

It took two decades of tunnelling before the first ore was extracted. For a short period the mine prospered but within another 25 years the once 150 strong workforce had dwindled to a handful. 

By the end of WWI the mine, like many others previously operated across upper Weardale, was abandoned. Lead mining that had first started across the wild and remote North Pennines under the ancient Romans thus finally ended. Lead’s toxicity has meant that it has subsequently been phased out of many applications. 

Enjoy getting there 

The North Pennines moorland is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.  Its internationally significant geology has seen it declared a UNESCO Global Geopark - a status similar to UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites - which is designed to support sustainable economic development of an area, primarily through responsible tourism. Geological trails have been developed across the landscape. Geology festivals and events have been organised. 

The area contains much of the UK’s upland hay meadows, heathland and blanket bog. There are red squirrels, otters and rare flora and fauna. One of England’s biggest waterfalls - High Force - is a popular tourist destination.  

The industrial workings that have taken place across the North Pennines have also left a lasting legacy with abandoned quarries and spoil-heaps of waste materials removed during mining dotting the hillsides, which are sparsely populated by houses and farms. Their inhabitants live higher than anyone else in Britain. 

Whether by vehicle, bicycle or foot it is a fascinating journey to Killhope where - following its lease in 1968 by Durham County Council - minor repairs began the process of turning it into what is now an internationally recognised attraction. An interpretation visitors centre, large wheel, restored former working buildings and the underground mine, reopened to visitors in 1996, are on the site along with an affordable cafe, bookshop and play area for younger children. The museum hosts many school visits.

Many lead miners, who were forced to work because their small farm holdings provided only a meagre income, lived too far away to go home each evening and so lived on the site. “Up to thirty would sleep in the lodging shop with up to five in each bed with the youngest pair sleeping at the bottom end. The miners would bring food and clothes with them. They’d cook on an open fire a stew for tea and porridge for breakfast. Because very few could afford a change of clothing then there was a constant, often unsuccessful, battle to try and dry clothes overnight,” explained Mary Driver, the museum duty manager.

Miners could not avoid wet feet as the best footwear they could afford was wooden clogs, which were of little protection against the water that covered the floor throughout the 1.5 mile deep mine, where the average temperature was a chilly 7 degrees centigrade  Many miners ended up with trench foot and the damp conditions also contributed to respiratory problems such that very few lived beyond 50. 

Miners, who worked underground using candlelights, would organise themselves into small squads of four or six. “They sought to find a string of galena and if they believed this might indicate that their was a rich vein to extract they would try and strike a bargain (agreement) with the mine agent to allow them exclusive permission to work that area. 

“Mining generally relies on brute force to bring down rocks. Galena is different as if it gets hammered it can turn into worthless dust. Extraction was thus a slow process, explosions being aimed at creating splits across the rock. It was a case of carefully removing the ore, which was then transported by ponies to the surface. Only after being washed, a process undertaken by young less well paid workers who had to face the often inhospitable outside elements, and weighed ready for smelting did miners, all of whom were had to provide their own tools, get paid. Naturally the pay of each team varied considerably. Most faced a continuous battle against the conditions to earn a living. I try to explain both the geology of the mine and the working conditions on the tour, each of which I tailor to those on it,” said underground guide Nick Hutchinson who has a keen interest in all forms of mining as many of his descendants were miners. 

The underground tour lasts around an hour and got a big thumbs up from Nick Thompson from Sunderland who felt it was the highlight of his visit. The Walti family from Zurich were also pleased with Manuel, who’s 8-year old son Jacob had proposed the visit as he is fascinated by mining, remarking upon “how patient the miners needed to be in extracting the ore especially on occasions where if they had not previously found much galena they must have feared having no product to take to market, meaning they might not even cover their costs.” 

The most lucrative years at Killhope were between 1874 and 1878. WB Lead, the mine owners who dominated the lead mining industry across Weardale, then built a new water powered crushing and separation plant only for the lead market to collapse soon after. 

“The industry was always facing periods of boom and bust,” said Mary Driver. It was why many local people preferred to emigrate. 

The visitors centre includes some fascinating correspondence between two young local lead miners, Joseph Graham and John Peart, who emigrated to become farmers in the US, and their families and friends they left behind.  The communication provides a glimpse into the arduous and generally short lives of people from lead mining communities.

Packed with crystals and minerals found by lead miners working underground, the museum also contains a series of spar boxes, a local unique folk craft tradition that combines great beauty and craftsmanship. 

Visiting Killhope costs £9.00 for an adult day pass and a family pass for 2 adults and 2 children is £25.00. Whilst the museum is off the beaten track it certainly worth making the effort to get there. The scenery alone is marvellous but if heavy rain is forecast check before you set off as flooding can be a problem. 

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